Why is English important?

You cannot choose not to study English in the VCE® Exam. Further, regardless of the score you achieve, the VCE® Exam disallows English from contributing only ten percent of its worth to your overall study score. This is in contrast with other subjects, which contribute less to your overall study score if they are one of your two weakest. Consequently, achieving a high score in the VCE® Exam will be tricky if your study score for English suffers. Needless to say, focusing a little bit more on VCE® Exam English pays dividends. For students who are also preparing for admissions tests, the same careful reading habits are especially relevant to UCAT Verbal Reasoning.

What’s not so obvious is the magnitude of those dividends outside the context of the immediate effects that a high study score for English has. Hence, this is a subject that isn’t needless to say. Understanding the rationale for the mandatory status of English helps to illuminate its essentiality.

 

Frustrated?
If English is not your strength, you might be slightly frustrated at this blog. Confirmation bias is a habit to which we’re all naturally susceptible. We embrace arguments that conform to our beliefs, and dismiss those that don’t. When I’m frustrated at a certain argument or contention, I feel a great urge to dismiss it, abandon it, or simply ignore it. Those habits are incidental to frustration. When we’re frustrated, we’re less accepting of things. One source of frustration is incoherence and ambiguity. For example, when a movie doesn’t make sense, it frustrates us. We give the movie a poor review.

Examiners do the same for exams. If your response to a Chemistry or History question is riddled with incoherence and errors of grammar, the examiner becomes frustrated. An accurate answer may indeed be hidden in there, however, the lack of sophistication in the communication of that answer inclines the examiner to cut the response little slack. This should, of course, be contrasted with the effect that clear and concise answer has. The examiner is onto her 27th paper for the night, and you’re lucky number 27. She’s frustrated because it’s dark and she’s tired, and students before you made little sense in their responses. However, being the star that you are, you cheer her up. Your answers are clear. One or two are inaccurate, but she cuts you slack, because you’ve clearly mapped out your thought process. She is able to follow your train of thought. There is no ambiguity -- no unnecessary expenditure of time. Having saved her 5 minutes of her precious time, she’s far less likely to punish you for trivial mistakes. The same discipline of interpreting information without ambiguity is also central to UCAT Decision Making questions, where the wording of a prompt can change the answer.

 

Don’t be Frustrated
Don’t be frustrated. The message that’s incoherently and ambiguously hidden within my blog is that you can improve your score for all your subjects simply by improving your skills in one. Put a little bit of extra time in English because it will pay dividends for all your other subjects - except those, perhaps, that are comprised exclusively of numerical responses, and even then, worded problem-solving tasks such as UCAT Quantitative Reasoning still reward precise reading.

If you can boost your abilities in English, you’ll benefit from an improved study score in that subject, and then in all the others. Your clarity will improve the examiner’s inclination to award you a high score, and convey a greater level of sophistication and understanding. Your subject score will be better. Your ATAR will be better. If you are aiming for undergraduate medicine, stronger English can support your ATAR while you also plan around UCAT requirements for medicine. Like all good investments, this one works for you. Improve your English, and your numbers will get bigger.