I think it just seems pointless to me... like writing essays, whats the point? I just cant see why... haha hope i dont offend anyone, its just my honest feeling towards english :(
No offence taken, I'm pretty sure every VCE student has thought this at some point.
Where do I start...
From a purely pragmatic standpoint, English has to count in your top 4 subjects for Year 12 (unless you're also doing Englang or Lit.) so assuming you want to do well in VCE - a fairly safe assumption on AtarNotes ;) - it's worth investing some time in what is essentially a very easy subject once you've got the conceptual understanding.
In terms of why you should write essays, it's often the best way to improve, and it's pretty much the only way to consolidate your knowledge. If you were to ask the same thing of another subject (ie. why do practice exams for maths? why rehearse my oral for my language study?) you'll get your answer. It's not like you should be constantly churning out essays all year; I probably wouldn't have written any more than 20 throughout Year 12. There are many other ways to study which are much more effective for some people:
- writing practice paragraphs rather than whole essays --> can be good to test out ideas or structure on a small scale
- compiling notes for T.R./Context texts --> forms a good base to refer to later when you do start writing essays
- developing your own repositories to draw from, ie. vocab/ techniques for L.A, quotes for T.R. and ideas/research for Context --> again is often more useful than writing stuff before you know what you're doing.
- collecting and organising prompts/ coming up with your own --> helps you understand the text and the kind of questions that might arise from a VCE English standpoint.
- class discussions/ talking about the texts or your approach with peers --> never underestimate other people's insight
- reading over high scoring responses --> working out what makes these pieces high scoring can help you implement such concepts in your own work
- marking other people's essays, regardless of quality --> this will give you a good indication of what the assessor is thinking
You get the idea.
Where you get your motivation is entirely up to you. Some students are entirely extrinsic, eg. 'I want to beat my smart arse friend' or 'I to get amazing results and share them with the world AtarNotes.' Others do it for their own reasons, eg. personal (and sometimes arbitrary) Study Score aims, or that rarest reason of all: knowledge for knowledge's own sake.
Even though I enjoy the idea of English (surprise!) I'm not really a staunch defender of the practicality of the current VCE course. Yes - most of you will never have to worry about writing an essay again. Nor will you ever be weighed down by the intricacies of topic sentences and contention identification. Unless you go on and do an English degree, but what kind of idiot wastes her life doing that!?
(http://www.gifbin.com/bin/102011/1319738930_homer_simpson_hides_in_hedge.gif)
However, there is some underlying lesson to be learned in practicing expressing yourself clearly and concisely. There are very few careers out there that don't rely on some form of communication.
If you're like me and don't find yourself invested in the numerical outcome, you could always find interests between the lines of the study design. For instance, did you know there's a word that means 'pertaining to, or suited to horses'? There is. It's 'caballine.' You can use that in a Context essay - if you can make it relevant. My friends used to challenge me to incorporate the most bizarre things (current record is fruit bowl, Albuquerque, and coathangers, all in the one essay.)
I even wrote one of the GAT pieces without using the letter 'e' for a $50 bet.
and yes, I totally won
No VCE subject is inherently enjoyable; your mindset will make all the difference. I could spend an hour typing up all the great things I've discovered, or the stuff I never would have learned if I hadn't first begun to engage with the English course, but my best advice is for you to make it enjoyable in your own way - whatever that may be.