ATAR Notes: Forum
VCE Stuff => VCE English Studies => VCE Subjects + Help => VCE English & EAL => Topic started by: pha0015 on April 28, 2018, 12:26:16 pm
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So I just had a practice sac for language analysis, and it was terrifying.
Let me put this into perspective. Three articles. 8 double sided pages Over five images to analyse, in which they were mainly from just one article. 2 hours to write a language analysis. Annotating the articles alone took over half an hour for me. I barely finished and that's cos I rushed the last paragraph on McDougall's piece and the conclusion in the last 10 min.
What I can tell though, is that this is way past the standard that's expected of an English student by VCAA assessors.Even VCAA only gives us 1 double sided page to analyse at most, in a 1 hour period. What is the purpose of giving us a practice SAC this long? This piece is overly long and therefore unlikely to be finished on time. Therefore there's no way students can express and apply to their full capabilities what they know in regards to language analysis. I get that filtering some of the info in an article is part of the criteria, but this is overdoing it.
It's also almost nigh impossible to use the integrated method to analyse common arguments, so I had to resort to using the block method (a first for me so I don't know how that went also).
Also, the longest article (McDougall) had no contention whatsoever. He was just spewing opinions from various experts from both sides of the argument, which is worth 90% of his piece, the rest were photos). It just got very confusing. Furthermore, most students in the lower year levels are taught that not analysing pictures was practically sacrilegious (same with tone), so I had a hard time applying that to almost 10 pics, due to lack of relevancy and time constraints as well.
Overall, I feel as if this practice sac was poorly thought out. But since I might be biased, could someone skim through the articles (I found them online) and refute/confirm my claims? Also, were you able to determine the contention and main arguments in McDougall's piece?
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-23/stan-grant:-damaging-myth-captain-cook-discovered-australia/8833536
https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/captain-cook-statue-row-agreeing-on-historys-not-simple/news-story/9ade38f3892405f50799f6a080386a34
http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs/hack/statues-and-monuments/8838368
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Three articles indeed seems ridiculous. My school personally did two articles with an image each which I believe is perfect. The very name of argument 'analysis' implies that a deeper exploration of how authors construct arguments is required. 3 articles with multiple images and slabs of writing encourages a superficial overview of arguments instead of a deep analysis. VCAA at the end of the year ordinarily gives a text/speech with a small response. Schools tend to do this sort of stuff and it's difficult to change their views. I would recommend talking to a lead teacher in english about your views.
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Just wanted to give an update on the conditions of the actual sac. We were given 2 double sided A3 pages, so if you put it into perspective, progress is being made.