Here is an outline of each section of the English Year 12 VCE course, including an overview of what you will need to achieve throughout the year and some tips for success. Your level of achievement in Units 3 and 4 will be determined by School-assessed Coursework SAC and the end-of-year examination. The percentage breakdown of the study score in VCE English is:.
This Area of Study is broken into two SAC components — an analytical text response and a creative response. Each SAC component is worth 30 marks 60 out of the marks allocated to Unit 3. By now, you will have had lots of practice writing essays, but it is important to remember that your essay will need to demonstrate a strong understanding of how the form and features of the text create meaning and impact the reader, viewer or audience.
In your creative response, the same strong understanding of the text is required — you should be familiar with the form and features, the implied ideas and values, and how readers respond to the text. However, your understanding of these elements will be demonstrated creatively rather than analytically. Make thoughtful decisions to adopt or adapt the structure, conventions and language of the original text in your own writing, and consider the impact of your decisions on your audience.
Keep track of these decisions, as you will be required to provide a written explanation along with your creative response. Your written explanation must provide insightful justification for the choices you made regarding content and your approach during the creative process. You must be able to demonstrate meaningful connections to the original text and a complex understanding of purpose, audience and context. TIP: Read and annotate your texts several times. See advice on how to annotate here if you require a helping hand.
For example, how does a playwright use stage directions to demonstrate power relationships between characters? How does a filmmaker use cinematic devices to introduce themes? How does a novelist create suspense throughout the plot? Including these tips in your essays is a surefire way to push them to the next level.
Thanks again for getting this far, unless you just scrolled to the bottom hoping for a TLDR. Written expression is often overlooked in our essays. Often, if we are made aware of clunky or awkward expression, we are also not quite sure how to go about improving it.
Although sophisticated and pertinent ideas serve as the foundation of a successful essay, how we construct our sentences and express these ideas may be what distinguishes a good essay from a great essay. Take your essay and read it out loud. Let your own conscience guide you in terms of whether a particular sentence flows well, is complete and makes sense.
Keep your eye out for these small errors in particular: Grammar: Does your sentence actually make sense? This is not grammatically correct! This is because this example only contains a subordinate clause and is lacking a main clause.
This is what we call a main clause or an independent clause. What happened after Wendy ate her apple? This is the information that is missing from the latter clause, making this a subordinate clause or a dependent clause. Sentence length: Did that sentence just go on for 5 lines on a page and you are out of breath now? You can most probably split that overloaded sentence into two or more sentences that make much more sense.
Check whether you have a clear subject in your sentence. If you have three different ideas in one sentence, give each idea its own opportunity ie. The opposite also applies: if it is for a very short sentence, did that sentence pack enough content or analysis? One spelling error or half-finished sentence in an essay will not severely affect your mark, but they can easily add up if they occur often enough.
Consequently, this will distract the reader from engaging with your ideas fully and thus disrupt the flow of your essay. Try not to be casual or overt in your writing as it can be quite jarring to read and unfortunately give readers a potentially negative impression of your piece. Use of first person in creative writing is fine though if required. They are redundant and do not add much to your ideas and analysis. Try omitting them and see whether that helps your sentence flow better and seem more formal.
Sentences that seem disjointed or a clear connection can make it difficult for your teacher or the assessor to join the dots between an idea and an implication or consequence. Use linking words as they are fantastic for explicitly showing the reader how your ideas are related and thus allow your writing to proceed smoothly.
Therefore, hence, thus, thereby, consequently, subsequently, in addition, additionally, furthermore, moreover, on the other hand, on the contrary, however, henceforth, and so on… The list is endless! In general, having a wide vocabulary will allow you to express your ideas and analysis more accurately as you are likely to have access to a precise word that can capture the essence of your idea.
Make a vocabulary list for a particular text or for Language Analysis such as tone words and aim to use varied language to convey yourself well. Focus on verbs and expanding your list of synonyms for words such as shows, demonstrates, highlights, emphasises, suggests and so on.
An individual, character, author or director may not only be conveying but also denigrating or remonstrating or bolstering or glorifying or insinuating. Adding precision to your writing through careful vocabulary choice will distinguish your writing and also add complexity. Also make sure that you understand the nuances of each synonym and that they are used in the correct context! They are synonyms after all - not the same word! Reading sample essays, The Age Text Talks, reviews and more of the texts you are currently studying will expose you to not only a multitude of interpretations of your text, but also to different sentence structures, writing styles or vocabulary that you could incorporate into your own writing.
I would also highly recommend that you read outside of the texts you are studying if you have time, whether that may be novels by the same author or even newspapers. If you do not write, you will never be able to improve your written expression.
Put pen to paper or hands to keyboard and start constructing that essay. You can only fix your writing once you have writing to fix. These phrases, though seemingly innocuous, are like an undetectable poison to the hopeful VCE high achiever.
The more you hear them, the more likely you are to believe them. Though be warned, subscribing to misguided and complacent ways of thinking could seriously limit your potential in English. English can definitely be studied for. In fact, studying for English is necessary to thrive in the subject. What many students fail to recognise is that studying for VCE English is a vastly different experience to studying for any other subjects.
With a subject like Chemistry, it is easy to split up a large topic into its constituent sub-topics and study them all in one sitting. Studying for English is different in every way.
Again, in stark contrast to other subjects where one topic can be studied for over a set period of time e. A day, week etc. Essential VCE English study tactics such as reading the newspaper daily and analysing its articles, can become a part of your life, as I made it a part of mine. In this way, not only does studying for English become possible, it becomes accessible and easy to do too. Weaving English study into your everyday life will also cause you to feel accomplished and satisfied.
These feelings, unfortunately, are rarely felt in a hectic, fast paced VCE environment and therefore act as an incentive to maintain VCE English study throughout the year. Failing to adapt your study patterns or failing to study at all for that matter leads to a negative spiral of disillusionment and disappointment, causing the once enthusiastic English student to disregard the subject completely. There needs to be space in your essay for ideas to develop and some sentences other than the introductory and concluding sentences will have no quotes in them.
Each quote or group of quotes needs to be quantified in its own right so that it adds sustenance to your essay. If you use a quote, you need to pair it with a concept. If you can use quotes effectively, then you should be able to justify a huge number of abstract viewpoints about any work.
There is no set number that constitutes a correct amount of quote. To ensure that you do not use too many quotes, read over your essay to check that your ideas are clear and the quotes substantiate the concepts that you put forward. For every quote you write, ask yourself, does it support my idea and is it relevant to my essay topic? For every small point that you bring up, you can collect quotes and perhaps use three to four short quotes see point three.
On the other hand, there is such thing as using too few quotes. This one is common mistake made among those students who decide that they can get through VCE English without reading the texts. The solution is easy. Read the text and make mind-maps of themes and ideas along with quotes from the text that suit. In order to do this, you can read each text at least twice - once to soak in the work, and a second time to work out ideas that require that bit more understanding, and to find those relevant quotes that you need for text response.
Quotes that are too long tend to become redundant and a waste of time to memorise and write down. The examiner or marker will also lose interest if your quote spans over more than a line or so. A group of smaller quotes might be more effective in supporting your contention. Of course you should rely on your own judgment and expertise. It is your essay, your ideas and therefore you should decide what types of quotes work best and when!
To evidence your understanding and knowledge of the text, collect several short quotes one to four words long from different areas of the text. A common mistake is simply peppering quotes that you remember throughout your essay to make it look like you know the text. Finally, to effectively use quotes, you should be embedding your quotes correctly to ensure that your essay flows.
You should be able to read the essay aloud, with quotes, as you would read a speech. One read of this and you'll never go wrong with quoting again! Check it out! We all know that to be successful at English we need to have decent vocabulary.
Any essay can risk sounding bland and monotonous if you can only express your ideas using a limited span of words. Mixing up your essay with some interesting words will:. Remember that simple is best, but sprinkling with some vocabulary will definitely spice up your essay! Although it's important to improve your vocabulary, students often get the wrong impression. You're not improving your vocabulary to sound smarter, but to optimise your ability to use the right word to express your ideas clearly.
Find out more about this in the blog post - Why big words can make you look dumber. We'd all love to hear and learn from those who have been our VCE shoes before, especially when you've cut out some hours of your sleep to study, or had your head stuck in your books for over 3 hours at a time - getting some real advice would give you that buzz of inspiration and motivation right?! Well, that's exactly what we've done for you in our latest YouTube video release. Enjoy this interview with three of VCE Study Guides' brightest tutors - you can get to know them better, and also hear the advice they have for you, from regrets to study techniques.
This is the process of ensuring that comparable assessment standards are applied to students from every school in Victoria who are enrolled in a particular study.
Find out more about Statistical Moderation. You can apply for a Statement of Marks to find out the maximum mark that you can get for each question on an exam, and the mark you obtained. The Statement of Marks will also give you the correct answers to the multiple-choice questions, where applicable. Personalised Statement of Marks application forms are included in the results package sent to each Year 12 student in December Find out more about Statement of Marks.
If you want to find out more about your exam results, you can apply to inspect your completed written exam papers and audio recordings of music performance exams. You must obtain the relevant Statement of Marks prior to the inspection and, if possible, arrange to have the study teacher present. When schools are closed, inspections can take place at the VCAA.
You are required to make an appointment with the VCAA to hold the inspection. You can look at your exam paper for 15 minutes. Personalised Inspection of Exam Materials application forms are included in the results package sent to each Year 12 student. Find out more about Inspection of Examination Response Materials. Although GAT results do not count directly towards your VCE results, they play an important role in checking that school-based assessments and examinations have been accurately assessed, and in calculating Derived Examination Scores DES where applicable.
If students have done well on the GAT, then their achievements are likely to be high on their school-based assessments and examinations. If your final examination score is significantly different from the score predicted by the GAT, school indicative grades, other scores for the study, and scores for SACs and SATs, your examination will be assessed again. Scores may go up or stay the same but will not go down as a result of this final check. The calculation for a DES uses all of your available scores in the affected study, and the indicative grade for the examination and the GAT component scores.
Find out more about how the GAT relates to school-based assessments and examinations. You will have the following statement on your Statement of Results:. If you had an authorised GAT absence, you will have the following statement on your Statement of Results:. This student has not obtained results in the General Achievement Test in owing to an authorised absence. A student with an unauthorised GAT absence will have the following statement on their Statement of Results:.
This student has not obtained results in the General Achievement Test in owing to an unauthorised absence. For the GAT, the state mean for each area of study refers to the average for all students in the state. Find out more about the GAT. If your results package has not arrived, it could be because you changed your address during the year and your school did not tell the VCAA.
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