VCE English Question Thread

[superalexnguyen]

for character based prompts in text reponse, If the prompt only mentions and focuses on one character, are we allowed to talk about other characters, or does it have to specifically answer the prompt only.

[Alter]

It depends a bit on the prompt, I suppose. However, it's normally perfectly fine to talk about other characters or else your discussion may be severely limited. For example, you might explain how a character's relationship or partnership with another's evolved over time, and what this tells us about the book. It could also depend on what you're studying, too. Some texts have few major characters (e.g. Mabo), whereas others are filled to the brim with many characters that are interrelated (such as Stasiland). This might mean you have more or less room to facilitate a discussion on more than just the character given in the prompt.

[geminii]

Hey everyone,

For Year 12 English in 2017, I know that there will be no context essay for the end of year exam. Anyone have any idea what it is being replaced by for the exam?

Thanks

[Cornrow Kenny]

Hey everyone,

For Year 12 English in 2017, I know that there will be no context essay for the end of year exam. Anyone have any idea what it is being replaced by for the exam?

Thanks

IIRC it will be some sort of creative writing task.

[Alter]

In the English exam the context piece will be replaced by a currently unnamed task in which you have to compare two different texts and analyse them together eg Stasiland and 1984. It's a bit more reminiscent of a text response but you're looking at more than one book afaik.

Lauren made a post on it somewhere but I can't seem to find it at the moment. More information is also available on the VCAA website if you search in the English study designs.

There is also a compulsory creative SAC during the year, which is what the above poster may be thinking of.

[superalexnguyen]

Regarding the TEEL formula in text response, what exactly am i expanding/ explaining ?

[Alter]

hi superalexnguyen,

At this stage of your paragraph, you'll be explaining and expanding on the general idea or premise that you brought up in your topic sentence. It can also mean explaining the evidence preceding the sentence. This means that the "E" will be an extension of what you've already written; you're taking your logic a step further and explaining the impact or intricacies of your initial statement to the reader. Don't feel obliged to very strictly follow this format, however. English is very flexible and there's no definitive way of setting out every paragraph. That being said, I'll show you what I mean with an example, because such a structure is a good way of ensuring your essays are coherent.

Let's say I'm writing an essay on Stasiland and the prompt asks me to discuss the theme of absurdity. I plan out my essay and this is for the first body paragraph that I write.

In Stasiland, the theme absurdity is used to highlight the ruthless and fundamentally sinister nature of the GDR's secret police.

Above is the topic sentence of my paragraph. I've got a central idea that Anna Funder employs a theme in order to make a particular point about what she thought. However, as you see it right now, I've only got a very limited amount of information. I haven't actually explained what this means and I haven't given evidence. Below is an example of what a sentence might look like explaining this idea.

Funder notes that, "despite his family history", Torsten was still sought after by the Stasi to see if "he would inform for them". This preposterous notion that a victim of the Stasi himself would agree to working for them illustrates how irrespective of an individual's experiences with the state, the Stasi desired total control. Ergo, they preyed on the most unlikely candidates to spy for them. In this way, Funder suggests that the Stasi were completely unforgiving when it came to achieving their set goals.

Using this explanation, I've given reason for why I've chosen my idea that was in the first sentence of the paragraph. At the start, I brought up my evidence, and then I've gone on to explain my evidence after that. Hope this makes sense.

[superalexnguyen]

hi superalexnguyen,

At this stage of your paragraph, you'll be explaining and expanding on the general idea or premise that you brought up in your topic sentence. It can also mean explaining the evidence preceding the sentence. This means that the "E" will be an extension of what you've already written; you're taking your logic a step further and explaining the impact or intricacies of your initial statement to the reader. Don't feel obliged to very strictly follow this format, however. English is very flexible and there's on definitive way of setting out every paragraph. That being said, I'll show you what I mean with an example, because such a structure is a good way of ensuring your essays are coherent.

Let's say I'm writing an essay on Stasiland and the prompt asks me to discuss the theme of absurdity. I plan out my essay and this is for the first body paragraph that I write.

Above is the topic sentence of my paragraph. I've got a central idea that Anna Funder employs a theme in order to make a particular point about what she thought. However, as you see it right now, I've only got a very limited amount of information. I haven't actually explained what this means and I haven't given evidence. Below is an example of what a sentence might look like explaining this idea.

Using this explanation, I've given reason for why I've chosen my idea that was in the first sentence of the paragraph. At the start, I brought up my evidence, and then I've gone on to explain my evidence after that. Hope this makes sense.

thank you!,

[Cornrow Kenny]

There is also a compulsory creative SAC during the year, which is what the above poster may be thinking of.

You're probably right haha! Doesn't effect me really 

[Sine]

What intermediate steps should I take between reading the texts and writing essays?

[Alter]

What intermediate steps should I take between reading the texts and writing essays?

Build your own interpretation of the text
A lot of people seem to overlook the "response" part of text response. It is all too easy for people to view the task as simply regurgitating essays using ideas given by their teachers or those they stole from text guides. You should try to avoid this trap by building your own opinions and attitudes towards what happened in the text. This is particularly important for books where you're dealing with serious or typically taboo themes. In all honesty, this is something you may do subconsciously to a very great extent and you would have likely also done it while reading the text. Either way, by building your own interpretation, you begin forming ideas and conceptions about how the piece works as a whole to achieve a particularly meaning or meanings.

So why is this so important? Well, above all, by building your own interpretation of the text, you will ensure that the essays you write in the future will have coherent and consistent arguments. If you were to simply amalgamate a bunch of different ideas that your teacher or classmates have mentioned in passing, your response may seem like it lacks consistency in interpretation. On the other hand, if you have your own opinion on which characters are "good" or "bad" (for example), you can begin to formulate your own answers as to what views and values you think the author or director holds.

Construct a quote bank
This will be a massive help for you when writing essays. It goes without saying that you won't be able to write a great English Text Response without having evidence to back up your points. As a result, at one stage or another you'll need to learn quotes that you can use to support the ideas that you will argue for. Similarly, if you're doing a movie such as Mabo, you should gain an understanding of the filmic devices that occur, when they occur, and why they are used. This can go hand in hand with the next step (sorting quotes by themes), or you could even organise it by character or, at the very least, chronologically.

Establish the main themes of the text
Out of all of the prompts that can appear for your text, you'll more often than not be able to link the question with one or two major themes of the text. If you've already gone through all of these yourself, you're saving yourself a lot of trouble trying to decipher essay questions in the future. Once you've done this, you can ask yourself "what is the author of the text trying to say about theme xyz?"

Practise planning essays
Grab a huge list of potential questions that you can get for your TR and go through them one-by-one. I liked to highlight the ones I thought were simple in one colour and the more difficult ones in another. Try to pick some pieces of evidence that you could use for each question/prompt so that you will quickly be able to recall quotes etc. when you're doing the real task. Moreover, it's important you understand which questions you find difficult because it's likely that they will all share a common thread. If you can identify where the problem lies when you're doing prompts, you'll be happy that you didn't have to write out 5-6 paragraphs just to understand you don't get what's going in with a particular character.

[tashhhaaa]

Build your own interpretation of the text

In my humble opinion, this is a must. No getting around this -- if you want to write well and do well, you need to think for yourself

[Swagadaktal]

Hey guys, need some feedback on my oral presentation, before i redraft my oral i want to get feedback on my current one.
It's on how the government deals with indigenous disadvantage
pm if you want to help me out
thanks
ilys

[thepandaman]

Hi guys i need some help with my oral regarding formulating some solid arguments to back up my contention. My topic is child vaccination laws and to give you some background info, the government is basically going to be restricting parents from receiving government child benefits if they do not get there children immunized.

My contention is that instead of penalizing parents, we should focus on the real roots of the issue which is the lack of education and misinformation people are fed when it comes to vaccinations. The part I am struggling with is to come up with 3 solid arguments.

So far I have something along the lines of 1. parents need more education so that there misconceptions can be corrected. 2. There needs to be a ban on over exaggerated stories of the rare side effects of vaccinations as this simply feeds more misinformation to the public. I am not sure what my third argument should be and also not sure how I can clearly distinguish my first two arguments from one another since they are quite similar. Would appreciate any help or even suggestions on bettering my first 2 arguments because I don't feel too confident in them

[qazser]

Your Thoughts on Prison Reform

Current ideas
-rehabilitation in prisons over punishment to reduce recidivism rates (Using Norway as an example comparing to US and Aust)
- Solitary confinement in prisons resulting in mental illnesses