Mayukh lets you in on 5 secrets you must be aware of if you are a current Year 11 student looking to do Units 3 & 4 English next year:
- VCE® Exam English is your most important subject
This is not just something your English teachers say to you to motivate you to study. Firstly, all students must complete at least one Units 3 & 4 English subject (out of a selection of mainstream English, EAL, Literature and English Language) to pass VCE® Exam.
On top of that, English must also figure as one of your ‘top four’ subjects. If you perform poorly in other subjects such as Maths or Biology, you at least have the assurance that they will fall into your ‘bottom two’ subjects, meaning that only 10% of study scores you get in each of these subjects will contribute to your final ATAR. This is not the case for English. No matter how good you are in your other subjects, if you do poorly in English, there are no concessions and your ATAR will suffer.
If you know English is one of your weaker subjects, now is the time to practise!
- Study design changes
You may also be aware that VCAA is transitioning to a new study design that commenced this year for Units 1 & 2. Class of 2017, you will unfortunately be the first group of Year 12’s to be examined under VCAA’s new Units 3 & 4 study design (which makes you the guinea pigs). If all goes smoothly, teachers and students alike will be able to adjust to the new study design, and VCAA will set a fair and equal English exam. But on the off chance that confusion does arise, it is important that you make yourself familiar with the new course design for English so you know what is expected of you.
For more information on the VCAA study design changes, see
https://gradready.com.au/posts/vce-english-study-design-changes-in-2016-17
Some tips to help you succeed:
- Read and familiarise yourself with your texts early
Before you enter Year 12, you will have a long break of about two months which gives you a great opportunity to relax and refresh (or stress if you did a Units 3 & 4 subject in Year 11!). This gives you ample time to read all of your texts for English, and really, that’s all the holiday homework you need to do for English. But too many students come into the school year without having touched their set texts for English during the holidays, which sets them well behind their classmates from day one.
- Write fluently
How do you make an essay
sound good while keeping to time? When we are forced to write under pressure, we often lose track of our sentencing and structure, go off on tangents and even make simple mistakes like omitting or misspelling words. Three essays in three hours is not easy to do, but it is still important that your work is fluent. Even if you have great content and ideas, an examiner is not going to spend hours trying to decipher incoherent and poorly structured writing.
- Argue with conviction
In English, the
manner in which you present your case is more important than the actual arguments you make. The reader might not agree with you at first, but you can convince them otherwise with great evidence and explanation. Now, essay writing is not the same as debating or persuasive writing. But
all essays are argumentative in their nature. In your text response or language analysis essays, what you are presenting is a contention and a set of opinions. Whatever your contention may be (you might even present both sides), argue for it as if you were in a court case. Leave no holes in your arguments so that the reader can’t find any way to counter it.
Calling all Year 11 VCE® Exam students – want to get a head start on your year 12 VCE
® Exam English? Join our experienced VCE® Exam English tutor
Mayukh Rahman on Monday 17
th of October @ 7pm on GradReady’s
VCE Prep GradReady Facebook page for a live and
FREE VCE® Exam English seminar covering everything you need to know to excel in Year 12. Just like our Facebook page,
VCE Prep GradReady, and come back Monday 17
th at 7pm to tune into the seminar.
