50 in English, available for queries :)

[brenden]

Why have you got that time breakdown the way it is?

[Yacoubb]

Why have you got that time breakdown the way it is?

Well its not really so much broken down, its more of just a rough estimate. That was how long it generally took me for each section during year 11 english when we did a 3-hour exam for both unit 1 and unit 2 English.

[literally lauren]

Don't make your time restrictions too harsh, you might get a really easy L.A. piece and a god awful context prompt. It's good to know what your strengths are, but be prepared to re-strategize (?) once you're in the exam. Even SACs can sometimes be a good challenge, forcing you to throw all your preparation out the window

Firstly, 850-950 is fine. Obviously quality>quantity, but it's generally hard to score really well with less than 800 words. By the end of the year, hopefully you'll have so much to write that you'll be well and truly over that limit anyway. (There's actually no official 'limit' though, just general advice based on what teachers/assessors have told me.) Don't worry about writing more in SACs, that's good practice for expressing all your ideas or tackling difficult prompts. Focus on content for now, it's easy to fine tune the word count towards the end of the year.

That said, if you're heading towards the 1200+ range, you might need to cut down. This isn't the case for everyone, (I think my T.R. essay would have been around that, and I know others who wrote even more) but ~900 should give you a rough guide as to how much VCAA want you to cover. They're not expecting a thesis, or a whole lot of background details. Maybe go through some of your SACs/practice essays and work out how much of your essay is critical analysis vs. how much is irrelevant waffle If it's all good then just keep doing what you're doing, but if you find there are a few sentences or chunks of paragraphs that don't really accomplish much, then concentrate on whittling down your essay to the important bits. Assessors are more impressed with what you can do effectively in a short space than how much you can cover in an hour.

Re: timing. 15 minutes is probably too long for editing. Try to edit as you go rather than waste time at the end rereading the whole thing (especially if you're not a fast reader.) Just practice as many different article formats for L.A. and prompts for Context and T.R. so that very little will surprise you, and you'll give yourself the best chance at the end of the year

[Yacoubb]

Don't make your time restrictions too harsh, you might get a really easy L.A. piece and a god awful context prompt. It's good to know what your strengths are, but be prepared to re-strategize (?) once you're in the exam. Even SACs can sometimes be a good challenge, forcing you to throw all your preparation out the window

Firstly, 850-950 is fine. Obviously quality>quantity, but it's generally hard to score really well with less than 800 words. By the end of the year, hopefully you'll have so much to write that you'll be well and truly over that limit anyway. (There's actually no official 'limit' though, just general advice based on what teachers/assessors have told me.) Don't worry about writing more in SACs, that's good practice for expressing all your ideas or tackling difficult prompts. Focus on content for now, it's easy to fine tune the word count towards the end of the year.

That said, if you're heading towards the 1200+ range, you might need to cut down. This isn't the case for everyone, (I think my T.R. essay would have been around that, and I know others who wrote even more) but ~900 should give you a rough guide as to how much VCAA want you to cover. They're not expecting a thesis, or a whole lot of background details. Maybe go through some of your SACs/practice essays and work out how much of your essay is critical analysis vs. how much is irrelevant waffle If it's all good then just keep doing what you're doing, but if you find there are a few sentences or chunks of paragraphs that don't really accomplish much, then concentrate on whittling down your essay to the important bits. Assessors are more impressed with what you can do effectively in a short space than how much you can cover in an hour.

Re: timing. 15 minutes is probably too long for editing. Try to edit as you go rather than waste time at the end rereading the whole thing (especially if you're not a fast reader.) Just practice as many different article formats for L.A. and prompts for Context and T.R. so that very little will surprise you, and you'll give yourself the best chance at the end of the year

Thanks so much for that!

[walkec]

Hi Lauren9460,
I had Parent Teacher Interviews this week and my English teacher was talking about there being ways you can study for English throughout the year instead of always focussing on practice pieces and going over your texts.

I'm planning to ask him exactly what he meant this week, but I was just wondering what you did in terms of "studying" for English besides doing practice pieces and getting feedback?

Thank you 

[RazzMeTazz]

In an expository essay are you allowed to use symbols and motifs from the set text, as evidence to support your big idea?

[literally lauren]

Hi Lauren9460,
I had Parent Teacher Interviews this week and my English teacher was talking about there being ways you can study for English throughout the year instead of always focussing on practice pieces and going over your texts.

I'm planning to ask him exactly what he meant this week, but I was just wondering what you did in terms of "studying" for English besides doing practice pieces and getting feedback?

Thank you 

Of course!
Practice pieces are only really helpful once you have the content under control. And rereading the texts stops being beneficial after the fifth or sixth time anyway.
How you study will be highly dependent on your strengths in English, so talk to your teacher about how you can improve. I'm a big advocate of reading, so if you're concerned about written expression or vocab, read as widely and as often as your schedule permits. Try to find books/articles etc. that are a bit above your reading level (there's no sense ploughing through books if you're not learning anything.) This doesn't mean you should go straight for a 1000 page book or something you don't understand. As with your practice essays, you should always complete a task with a goal in mind. For essays this might be a hard prompt or shorter time, and for reading you could be looking for more sophisticated vocab or different forms sentence structures.
Apart from that:

• Go through the feedback your teacher gives you and with practice, you'll be able to interpret 'teacher talk' and work out areas for improvement.
• Read essays from past students (check with your teacher to see if your school can provide any A+ examples) or go on VCAA's Past Exam website to find some samples. Even if they're not written on texts you're studying, try to identify what they're doing well, and where the marks are being distributed.
• Read some study guides (general essay tips and/or text specific pieces depending on what you need to work on)
• Silly as it may sound, think about things. Often teachers will set this as homework, eg. "think about this character's motives and development" or "think about which prompt you want to write on." Though it may sound like you have no homework on these nights, in fact what often separates the good from the great students is their thinking.

Of course this isn't a substitute for practice essays, but much like maths or science there's no sense churning through practice exams before you know the formulae.

[literally lauren]

In an expository essay are you allowed to use symbols and motifs from the set text, as evidence to support your big idea?

Yes, but not as a substitute for an explicit reference to the text. Theoretically you can just use the ideas of a text to support a Context piece, and your teacher might encourage this, but at the end of the year examiners prefer REALLY EXPLICIT REFERENCES., like, 'In Bertolt Brecht's play 'Life of Galileo' this concept of conflict being inevitable is compounded through...'
Annoyingly this might make your work seem quite clunky, but try to get it done once or twice to fulfil the 'relevance' criterion. For the rest of your essay though, these subtler motifs and tropes can be excellent evidence for your discussion.

[Edit:] Just realised I assumed you were talking about context pieces. For an expository Text Response of course these things are often very strong evidence, but remember for context it's more about the general ideas. You don't want your essay to read like a T.R. in that it sticks too closely to the set text. Move in and out between examples and discussion, using symbols and motifs is fine though.

[Chang Feng]

Hi,
could someone please check my language analysis of this article (http://www.theage.com.au/comment/too-many-smartphone-photos-too-few-memories-20131021-2vx00.html)
My language analysis skills are very appalling right now and help would be much appreciated. thank you so much

[Rishi97]

Hi Lauren
First of all, thanks for all the advice you have posted on all previous posts. They are sooo helpful and beneficial.
I am currently doing "A Christmas Carol" in school and I would like some advice on how to best prepare for the exam. Do you think it would be beneficial if I summarised all the staves and wrote all the important quotes for each character?
How would you go about this?

Thanks

[Einstein]

Hey Lauren not sure if you replied or not, couldn't see your comment. How do i structure a creative context essay?

thanks

[RazzMeTazz]

Yes, but not as a substitute for an explicit reference to the text. Theoretically you can just use the ideas of a text to support a Context piece, and your teacher might encourage this, but at the end of the year examiners prefer REALLY EXPLICIT REFERENCES., like, 'In Bertolt Brecht's play 'Life of Galileo' this concept of conflict being inevitable is compounded through...'
Annoyingly this might make your work seem quite clunky, but try to get it done once or twice to fulfil the 'relevance' criterion. For the rest of your essay though, these subtler motifs and tropes can be excellent evidence for your discussion.

[Edit:] Just realised I assumed you were talking about context pieces. For an expository Text Response of course these things are often very strong evidence, but remember for context it's more about the general ideas. You don't want your essay to read like a T.R. in that it sticks too closely to the set text. Move in and out between examples and discussion, using symbols and motifs is fine though.

ohhh okay thankyou!!! That helps alot!

Haha nah I was talking about context pieces!
thanks!!

[brenden]

Hey Lauren not sure if you replied or not, couldn't see your comment. How do i structure a creative context essay?

thanks

I'm sure you could see this comment if you looked for it, which I'm assuming you didn't, because it took me less than thirty seconds to find Re: 50 in English, available for queries :)

[Einstein]

Yeap, sorry for that, I'm sure he did reply, which I'm grateful for. I'm maxed my Internet so I'm dealing with 64kbps for the remainder, so its painfully slow. Thsnks

[Einstein]

I'm still unsure about the structure