ATAR Notes: Forum
VCE Stuff => VCE English Studies => VCE Subjects + Help => VCE English Language => Topic started by: qshyrn on August 26, 2009, 03:43:28 pm
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all the english subjects suck and i have no interest in them, but i wanna get the highest possible cause its a compulsory component....
which subject would more likely get me a higher mark?? english or eng lang?
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English Language. It's more analytic than 'creative', it's more about presenting information than writing a point of view.
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what about doing english or literature? (being really bad at englishes)
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I think both literature and language require much more work than English.
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You probably know this one already, but 'choose subjects you enjoy'
From the sound of your title though, you're not gonna enjoy any but change it slightly to - 'choose subjects you hate less' :P
In this case you might want to pick the one with more of your friends? I know it kinda goes against the whole 'dont pick it because of peer pressure' thing, but I have to admit that the people I do EL with make it so much more enjoyable. I personally didn't pick it because of that reason (In fact, most of them didn't do 1&2 and went into 3&4, making them the ones giving into peer pressure) but my point is that:
Enjoyable = more motivation = more chance of a higher score
In terms of scaling, EL is better. This means if you do well, you will be rewarded.
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ok, thanks for that.. i guess ill just pick english lol (stick with the majority).
but thought of writing 3 essays in 3 hours in the last exam sends shivers down my spine.... i can probably write one average one in 3 hours-guess ill just have to practice.
i had a look at some of the eng lang exams and they look REALLY HARD .. soo it doesnt really help lol(and you still have to write essaYS!!!)
if only there was an english with no essays.
oh, and yeah im a VERY scientiffic person (as u can tell from my subjects-ASIAN5) - but looking at the englang exams, they don't seem really scientiffic loll.. or have i just got it all wrong?
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The exam only looks hard because you don't know what's asked of you.
I think English is a lot harder. For me, I can't seem to find and dish out what the assessors and teachers want. There's also a lot of texts to cover compared to the one test for English Language? (not too sure about that)
OH AND I'M SHOUTING VERY LOUDLY RAWR
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I do EL and not English but from what I gather:
English
Advantages:
You have a concrete set of texts to study from.
If you're good at essays then that's all you have to worry about.
Not much theory...?
Disadvantages:
Essays
Bullshit
English Language:
Advantages:
More applicable theory and less bullshit
More scientific: You gather evidence and present your case.
One essay, 2 extended short answer questions
Disadvantages:
You have to be pro-active, which means extra research. "What you put in is what you get out" as my teacher would put it.
While you don't have to cover texts indepth, they are vital to understanding the course. The more you read the more you know.
The course is very big, but you only get tested on some of the stuff in the exam.
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I heard this somewhere, but I forgot where exactly....
Literature - Very Grey, you can bullshit all you want
Mainstream - Grey, you can bullshit somewhat
Language - Black and white, you can't fudge facts.
Don't know if thats entirely true though, as I only do EL
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do you have to do any orals? and do you only have to do an essay at the exam?
so is this subject basically rote learning/memorizing stuff???
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No orals for me, I THINK my teacher said that Unit 4 does not allow for any orals, but Unit 3 there is a choice.
SAC 2 & 3 were essays for me. BUTTTTT language essays are different. Basically you just put the information into essay form. You don't really have an opinion even though topics may say 'do you agree'. The main point is to show you have the information and knowledge to back up your choice.
Yes, it is memorising stuff but slightly different. If you do the subject, you'll know what I mean :P Its hard to explain.
Find someone in your school that does both English and Language and ask them - they'll be able to give a better comparison i reckon.
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I did english unit 1/2 and eng lang 1/2, and I chose eng 3/4.
I recommend eng lang 3/4, a much better option.
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English Language is the English subject created for people who hate English. Do it.
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I heard this somewhere, but I forgot where exactly....
Literature - Very Grey, you can bullshit all you want
Mainstream - Grey, you can bullshit somewhat
Language - Black and white, you can't fudge facts.
Don't know if thats entirely true though, as I only do EL
While it's true that in Lit and English you can say whatever you like on the exam, you still need a substantial amount of evidence to back up your argument. It's not as easy as stating random bullshit.
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I suppose it means in Lit and English, the evidence can be pulled from thin air and made up...?
I remember who said it now, it was my EL teacher making a comparison between the 3 Englishes so maybe it is slightly biased hehe..
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It means that Lit and English is more about interpretation and your own ideas, whereas Language is more about facts.
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English language all da way, and yes i had to do an oral presentation in unit 3!
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It means that Lit and English is more about interpretation and your own ideas, whereas Language is more about facts.
I'd argue that success in language requires a degree of creativity and intepretation. If you want to write an essay that jumps out of the page, you have to make your own observations about language in society, and find your own evidence to back up your contention.
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Perhaps, but it's still a bit stark in comparison to Lit, which is entirely based upon your own ideas. :p
Though that's not to say that it's a bad - or easier - thing. I'd struggle with Eng Lang, given that I absolutely suck at taking in certain types of data.
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I'm not doing Eng Lang this year but I picked it for next year. Because some of my friends also picked it *headdesk
I'm doing both English and Lit this year but God, lit is so draining. I've come to the realisation that I'm definitely not a lit person but I'm not entirely sure about Lang either.
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I skipped Lang 1/2, but apparently the 3/4 is quite different to the year 11 course.
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I skipped Lang 1/2, but apparently the 3/4 is quite different to the year 11 course.
Oh? Is there anything in 1/2 that helps with 3/4?
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I skipped Lang 1/2, but apparently the 3/4 is quite different to the year 11 course.
Oh? Is there anything in 1/2 that helps with 3/4?
It's good to go over the basic metalanguage and terminology from the 1+2 course before starting 3+4. You can cover it in a week of revision so it's not that difficult to learn. Usually the 3+4 course will devote a few weeks to revising the necessary knowledge from 1+2 anyway, although it's always helpful to have some preliminary knowledge on the subject before your first SAC.
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As lynt.br said, nail the metalanguage. If you have a few hours to spare, read over a few popular linguistics books (such as "Blooming English") to gather a bit of a feel for how language reflects society.
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I reckon, if you're really dedicated to getting a high score in EL it's easier than for English since usually most people write about 15-20 essays during the whole year for EL but if you think about it, you could probably write heaps more essays throughout the year. They're only meant to be 45 minutes, so you could easily do several per day if you wanted to. If you can write heaps of essays you will become really fluent and totally pwn everyone else. I reckon if people did as many Essays as they did exam papers for Spesh and Methods then it would become a lot easier to score high,.
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If you "hate" a subject ur usually bound to get mediocre marks in that subject
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You could always just do ESL and circle all the nouns and verbs with all the other VCAL students if u really hate english that bad.
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You could always just do ESL and circle all the nouns and verbs with all the other VCAL students if u really hate english that bad.
Im pretty sure ESL is nuthin like that nor VCAL
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ESL is effectively a watered down English course which gets marked up. It follows pretty much the same course outline, albeit with slightly different texts. If you hate English, your going to hate ESL as well (Although this begs the question: if you qualify for ESL, why would you even consider English, which marks down, to ESL which is 'easier' and marks up?).
Circling nouns and verbs would actually be closer to English Language than English. English is more of a general cultural study rather than studying the mechanics of English. Even EL only covers the fundamentals of English partially, with most of the course devoted to the applications of language.
To OP: Judging by your subject choices, I'd hazard a guess your the more science/mathematical type? If this is true then I'd recommend English Language all the way. Both Literature and English/ESL are going to have significant focus on textual interpretation and essay writing which most people who favour sciences/mathematics despise. While English Language does require essays, they are much less prevalent in the course (only one in the exam) and, as someone else mentioned, they are much closer to a scientific thesis (e.g., you usually argue your contention through supporting evidence which you have researched yourself) than the English/Literature essays. There are also no 'interpretation' style questions.
The other parts of the EL exam are short answer questions and a much more akin to those you'd find in a science type exam. These are essentially just testing your memory and logic - another advantage to science minded students.
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I reckon, if you're really dedicated to getting a high score in EL it's easier than for English since usually most people write about 15-20 essays during the whole year for EL but if you think about it, you could probably write heaps more essays throughout the year. They're only meant to be 45 minutes, so you could easily do several per day if you wanted to. If you can write heaps of essays you will become really fluent and totally pwn everyone else. I reckon if people did as many Essays as they did exam papers for Spesh and Methods then it would become a lot easier to score high,.
Hmm, even though writing a lot of essays helps, I wouldn't say it's the defining factor in success. If your writing's already quite fluent, it's probably better if you spend your time developing your ideas.
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I think most of what I'm going to say has already been talked about by the above posters (to an even greater level of detail), but here's my two cents:
Having done English Lang. and doing English, it really depends. Are you more analytical (judging by your subject listing)? Do EL. Do you like to think big and write about complex ideas within a few texts? Do English (or Lit.). For me, though, I felt EL was "easier" for my tastes (simply because of the amount of essays you have to write in EL would normally be less, and the fact that I was more an "analytical" person anyway...) and also the workload would probably be less demanding (in my opinion, of course).
That's not to say you would get higher marks though - be prepared to research a fair amount if you do EL (perhaps even more than in English, even accounting for the Context component of English) to score exceptionally well in the essay section (in the exam). But it's definitely more concrete (black/white) compared to English (and, to a more extreme level, Lit.).
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sorry to revive an oldish thread.
but how difficult would EL be doing as a subject outside of school? like once a week classes?
would a lot of private study be needed?
i'm considering doing EL as i am terrible at english and really want to have a high english score.
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I think it would be quite hard to do EL outside of school. The EL course is very broad, and the EL textbooks do not cover it in necessary depth. Unless you are very diligent, stick religiously to the study design and do lots of your own research, it will be hard to learn it by yourself.
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I think it would be quite hard to do EL outside of school. The EL course is very broad, and the EL textbooks do not cover it in necessary depth. Unless you are very diligent, stick religiously to the study design and do lots of your own research, it will be hard to learn it by yourself.
well i'd have a 3hr or so class each week outside of school. i'm just not really sure about this class and what sort of work i'd have to do outside. :| or how difficult EL is going to be, i really don't think i've capable of getting much higher than 35 in lit/english, whereas in EL it seems if i study for it i can (: what do you mean by your own research?
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To do well in English Language, you need knowledge that is much broader than the scope of the course. That means that you either need to pore through articles looking for examples and read a plethora of linguistics books, or you need a good teacher. Good teachers can often point you in the direction of the information, whereas if you're by yourself, it'd be a lot harder to do.
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I think it would be quite hard to do EL outside of school. The EL course is very broad, and the EL textbooks do not cover it in necessary depth. Unless you are very diligent, stick religiously to the study design and do lots of your own research, it will be hard to learn it by yourself.
well i'd have a 3hr or so class each week outside of school. i'm just not really sure about this class and what sort of work i'd have to do outside. :| or how difficult EL is going to be, i really don't think i've capable of getting much higher than 35 in lit/english, whereas in EL it seems if i study for it i can (: what do you mean by your own research?
Nevermind, I was assuming that you would be doing one of those long-distance programs. But yeah I guess if you have classes then it would probably be ok. By your own research I mean you have to do wider reading and you have to keep up to date with language phenomena in order to show the examiners you know your stuff (this is for th essay mostly).
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^ Thanks for replies :)
Yep definitely doing it at a centre once a week with a class! I wouldn't be able to do this solo, does anyone know the best one to do it at? (i'm speaking to my vce co-oridinator next week about this - if i can ever do it ha)
hmm, so i'm assuming that my teacher will tell us what sort of articles we need to go through? this research that needs to be done sounds quite vague ;|
is most of the assessments done essays? or is that only for the exam? is there a lot of prepation for this essay, and is it as structured as an english essay or more factual like the humanities essays we did in grade 10?
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go to tye & english in glenny
http://www.tyeandenglish.com/TNEindex.html
had a few friends go. i personally didn't go due to not knowing about it at the start of the year so i cbb half way through
i recommend the book living lingo + macmillans 1&2. i have macmillins 1&2. $15 if u need it otherwise im selling it to lil kddies at my school next week!
i have the typical henimeninefashjkfjask however u spell it was well but my friend SHOTGUNNED IT
eng lang isnt a hard subject but requires constant practice of essays and applying the knowledge
for instance when we were learning about spoken, i applied some principles eg grices maxims to peoples convos and found it very interesting. well thats just me, i like to test what my teachers say.
. i know u do psych but its not like psych. psych can be rote learned. eng lang cannot be rote learned except for the definitions which you don't have to usually define.
goodluck
edit. your own research is like say finding out more about certain areas; eg a part of eng lang requires some form of knowledge about teenspeak [broadly speaking is the language used by teenagers], its been used for a while, but let's say 50years ago the teenspeak terms were rad, cowabunga, but teenspeak in present times is different as it now includes terms such as sick(referring to something that is interesting), whats up bro (to greet close friends) and do not contain previous teenspeak terms. this is just a small scope of eng lang. those examples weren't good either. im so sleepy atm .
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^ Thanks, but i live way to far from glenny haha, i found out i can only do it at CAE during the day once a week. i gues that's not too bad.
I don't need those books as of yet, as i won't decide if i'm doing it until early next year :| but thanks for the offer.
EL sounds so unusual - i don't really understand how to write these essays and such. how will i know what sort of research to do, and is the essay in the exam always similar? or different topics that could be about anything :| will we cover all these topics.
ahh so confusing!
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broadly speaking, there are 10 -12 catergories. [my teachers have put all the 01-08 VCAA Exams under 9 catergories but i reckon theres more.
englang essays are similar to persuasive/arguementative english essays [having said done unit 1&2 english @ tutor in year 10. and i didnt even do eng what a waste LOL ==' ]
but yeah ^^. goodluck hope you make the right decision. studying some of the stuff on 1&2 over the holidays would be a good idea since u didnt do 1&2
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what do you mean there are 10-12 catagories? what are these categories :| heh sorry
hmmm i see, thanks. i still have some time to think about this.