ATAR Notes: Forum
VCE Stuff => Victorian Education Discussion => Topic started by: vexx on December 20, 2009, 01:28:22 am
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Hi,
As some of you may know, due to my complaining and such haha, i have been trying to do english language instead of lit/english, but i am not allowed to do two subjects outside of school (had meetings with parents, ect), basically it is impossible.
Just curious as to what you guys think i should do?
Either
English Language + Other subject (possibly further?)
Enhancement Chem + Literature
I love chem, so i really want to do it next year and it'll also help with my chem score which is good too:) and i think lit will be much more interesting then english. i have one of the best teachers my school has ever had for it (quoted by co-ordinators and head of senor school) and will have a tutor. but i have always been quite poor at regular english so there is not much chance of me doing really well (i reckon with extreme studying the highest i could get would be 40 - even that is absolutely amazing)
So i really want to do english langauge, which i have to drop enhancement to do, and i also will have a good tutor for it and study quite hard, i think i have a greater chance of doing well 42-43+ hopefully, which will be awesome and raise my enter heaps better. i will also do possibly furhter which may also increase my enter if i get high 40's (unlikely but if i studied hard for it.. which i don't really think i wont since it seems quite boring but i might who knows.. :P)
So wat should i do?
oh and i will doing EL at CAE.
please tell opinions!! thanks heaps:)
vexxx
edit, and btw, reasons for not normal english, the course i hate, i really dislike the exam setup, the sacs we have to do, we have really bad teachers and the teacher i've got for lit next year has only ever had a few students per class do better in english than lit. she is a very, very good teacher. but even so, i still may do really bad - even with her help cos lit is really tough..
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Don't forget Lit != English. Is there any particular reason you think you would do better in EL over Lit besides having a decent tutor?
If I was in your position I would stick with Uni Chem and Lit as the extra Chemistry studying will help your VCE Chemistry and EL doesn't really seem that much easier than Lit IMO (although I have only done a week of Lit and just read about EL lol).
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If you think you'll score much higher in EL rather than Lit, I'd suggest doing EL, since it'll be in the primary 4. AFAIK, writing essays for Lit is harder than writing essays for english/EL since it's more unstructured.
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ahhh two different opinions.
yeah exactly cipherpol, it's why its so important!!
ZachCharge- the reason doing EL is because it's nothing like normal english/lit it is more about analysing and such, so its prefered for people like me who suck at normal english. besides, its more of a subject where if i studied hard with a tutor there's no reason i can't do well, whereas in english/lit one bad prompt/passage and you are screwd.
hmmmm
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I would study EL this year.
You can always pursue uni-level chemistry later, but you need a good English subject now.
Having only studied lit, I'm guessing it would be pretty different to EL. That's a good thing though, more chance that one of them will click for you.
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I would study EL this year.
You can always pursue uni-level chemistry later, but you need a good English subject now.
Having only studied lit, I'm guessing it would be pretty different to EL. That's a good thing though, more chance that one of them will click for you.
that is very true..hmmm
although i have read a bit of the textbook/past exams, what if i discover that EL is much harder for me (unlikely) and i struggling to achieve 40+. scary - im sure it'd be easier to achieve then lit.. but not sure
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hey vexx,
Can I ask why you don't want to do English? Because as others have said Literature requires you to write essays that are more articulate and structured than regular English. I can see you want to do Lit because you will have a very good teacher, who will really help you out throughout the year. Maybe He/She can help you do regular English as well? I can't stand English and I'm not all that great at it, but I figure the more of it I do, the more it will help and the better I will get at it.
I just don't think you should drop UMEP Chemistry, as it will not only improve your VCE Chemistry, but will contribute 4-5.5 points to your aggregate as long as you put in, which is a big incentive to stick with it IMO.
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hey vexx,
Can I ask why you don't want to do English? Because as others have said Literature requires you to write essays that are more articulate and structured than regular English. I can see you want to do Lit because you will have a very good teacher, who will really help you out throughout the year. Maybe He/She can help you do regular English as well? I can't stand English and I'm not all that great at it, but I figure the more of it I do, the more it will help and the better I will get at it.
I just don't think you should drop UMEP Chemistry, as it will not only improve your VCE Chemistry, but will contribute 4-5.5 points to your aggregate as long as you put in, which is a big incentive to stick with it IMO.
hmm well i don't like normal english because i find it really boring, and hate the exam and sac structures (as i've said before) also we have really bad teachers. i'd still have a tutor but even so, i don't think i'm capable of doing that well due to lack of interest and natural ability.
also, i didn't improve at all last year, infact, i seemed to get worse. so i decided to take my chances with lit.
and with the enter increment, i would most likely get a 5.0 if i did it, but if was to do EL, i'd be doing further. and be aiming for a 45'ish and then get a 4.4'ish anyways, so its only 0.6 better, there's also the chance that i do really well in further and get 47'ish which is quite unlikely but will increase my enter much more then enhancement could. since if i stuffed up bio for example, i'd have further to rely on ehh
plus i could study really hard in english and only get 39-40, which atm if i did english this year i would have gotten below 30. and if i do EL and study hard i'd hope to get 41'ish which scales up too:)
haha such stress
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hey vexx,
Can I ask why you don't want to do English? Because as others have said Literature requires you to write essays that are more articulate and structured than regular English. I can see you want to do Lit because you will have a very good teacher, who will really help you out throughout the year. Maybe He/She can help you do regular English as well? I can't stand English and I'm not all that great at it, but I figure the more of it I do, the more it will help and the better I will get at it.
I just don't think you should drop UMEP Chemistry, as it will not only improve your VCE Chemistry, but will contribute 4-5.5 points to your aggregate as long as you put in, which is a big incentive to stick with it IMO.
hmm well i don't like normal english because i find it really boring, and hate the exam and sac structures (as i've said before) also we have really bad teachers. i'd still have a tutor but even so, i don't think i'm capable of doing that well due to lack of interest and natural ability.
also, i didn't improve at all last year, infact, i seemed to get worse. so i decided to take my chances with lit.
and with the enter increment, i would most likely get a 5.0 if i did it, but if was to do EL, i'd be doing further. and be aiming for a 45'ish and then get a 4.4'ish anyways, so its only 0.6 better, there's also the chance that i do really well in further and get 47'ish which is quite unlikely but will increase my enter much more then enhancement could. since if i stuffed up bio for example, i'd have further to rely on ehh
plus i could study really hard in english and only get 39-40, which atm if i did english this year i would have gotten below 30. and if i do EL and study hard i'd hope to get 41'ish which scales up too:)
haha such stress
I know. :( Remove the English requirement from VCE and it would be a piece of cake!
I like this plan of attack. 45+ in Further is very achievable, and EL will suit you by the sound of it. If you do go ahead with it, PM me if you need any assistance with Further. :)
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^ so you think EL/Furhter instead of the enhancement+lit?
hmm i'm leaning towards this.
ooh thanks:) just curious, & incase anyone wants to read on this thread, what did you do to get 48? did you study heaps? learn the course over summer? how many prac exams did you do? haha
your probably naturally very good at maths since your aiming for 50 in methods but i think even people not as good can do well in further.. just may require lots of work?
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Yeah, I think this will give you the best VCE results. You've got to do whatever it is that will maximize your score.
Sad thing about Further is that it is ridiculously competitive at the top end, and that it also scales down. I was Rank 1 for SACS, and got 39/40 for exam 1 and 59/60 for exam 2 and just managed 48. This having been said though, Further is very easy, and you could easily learn everything in the space of 1-2 weeks if you wanted. I didn't do anything over last summer, I only chose my subjects in mid Jan. I was a little lazy throughout the year, and only spent ~2 hours per week on Further, however this was all that I felt I needed to do. I just skimmed over exercises and did a few questions here and there. I just made sure I knew the concepts very well.
I stepped it up a lot on the holidays before the exams. I made my own reference book (this is a must) and completed the whole of Checkpoints. I also did around 20 practice/past exam papers before the actual exams. This really helped a lot. Best advice I can give is to read the question properly, as they purposely put tricks into questions to screw you up.
VCAA = ASSHOLES!
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Oh wow, so it's pretty much one mark per study score point towards the top?
so a 45, would be only 5 marks across both exams?
you must be so good to only lose that few marks!!
hmm yeah i can imagine you need quite a bit of exam practice. but it seemed to be worth it in your case with a 48:)
thanks for the advice, i will definitely look out for that if i am to do further next year.
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^ It's pretty much the same with Methods, save for the scaling down part.
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If you're looking to maximise your score, then it's EL you should be looking at and not Further. Assuming you can get in the 40s for Methods and Chemistry, then these 2 would count in your top 4. Your raw 44 in Psych and what you get in Further, after scaling may only have a few points difference, unless you get a 45 in which your Psych score will clearly be higher than Further so really it looks like Further won't make much of a difference after scaling. Now if you manage 40 in Lit, yet you could've gotten 42ish in EL, then obviously that would end up being higher than Lit and so will make a small difference to your score. However from the sound of it, there's no guarantee that you really will do better in EL than you would do in Lit. It seems your confident you could get a 40 for Lit which is really good. If you decide to do EL, then it might be worth doing Lit as well instead of Further. That way you have two English subjects competing for the better score which I think is better than having 5 subjects compete for a top 3 position.
The other thing I haven't touched yet is doing UMEP. Though you can always pursue Uni Chemistry once you're in Uni, the thing is think of how awesome it will be to tackle a Uni subject before you get to Uni. That way you end up having a feel for it, plus once you're in Uni, you can skip into 2nd year subjects which is pretty neat. I didn't do uni subjects and I really wish I did, not for the ENTER increment, but for having taken on something more advanced. It's like when you first accelerated in a subject and how awesome you felt. For me I was always accelerating something until year 12, and then it felt kind of dull because I wasn't learning new advanced interesting stuff.
Though VCE is meant to be about maximising your ENTER, I think it's better just to do what you consider to be fun and would really enjoy. By the sound of it you would love MUEP Chemistry and I wouldn't miss out on that opportunity. I did VCE by choosing what I love, it's the reason I chose IT over Physics in year 11 because I really enjoyed IT, not that I was looking to maximise my ENTER
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^ Thanks heaps Jimmy.
Well i want my tops to be Bio, Chem & Methods, so Further, unless i get 47+ will not count for much.
&I've been doing some thinking, there's no way i would ever get 40 in Lit. the amount of studying i'd have to do would literally mean i'd do very poor on my other subjects, the highest more Realistic score would be 38, even that's very very good. EL i reckon if i studied hard with a tutor and whatnot, i could definitely do much better than i would in Lit, 42+ hopefully. And there's no way i'd do both haha, i would definitely not be able to handle that because i'd have to have a tutor for both and study hard for both , and i would put half the effort in that i could have for one.
yeah for those exact reasons i want to do uni chem, it'd be awesome as. so i'm going to try and trick my school into thinking i've quit uni-chem, and pick up further. then never go to further, fail and then be doing EL, MUEP and the other three:)
err hope it works out, i may be able to get into RMIT without school's approval so i'l find out mid jan if i got in.
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I hope my post contributes somewhat lol..
Most Year 12 students have been told that for a more mathematically/scientifically inclined person, English Language would be the most preferred English study in VCE, more so because they would be more interested in it. English Language is completely different from streamline English, and the way you write your essays is somewhat different as well. Lit, on the other hand, requires sophisticated language use and seamless prose to score highly (check out the high-scoring essays for Lit on VCAA Past Papers). Personally, I reckon Lit would be the hardest study, while English Language perhaps would be the easiest. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think EL only requires you to write one essay, while the others are short answer questions (although its 2 hours as opposed to the traditional 3 you get in English).
Plus, on the more technical side of things, EL scales way more than English (and perhaps even Lit), so as jimmy999 said, it would be best in terms of maximising your ENTER.
Also, I don't recommend you drop Uni Chem. If you're good at the subject and you put in the work, Uni subjects are a real boost for your ENTER (and I don't think you'll require as much effort than proper VCE subjects to get a 5.5) - as people have said, Uni subjects is like a half-subject.
Good luck! :)
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Thanks brightsky, i agree with everything you said!
Definitely Lit will be ridiculously hard, even English i will find hard. So yes i will do EL no matter what, even if it means i have to actually quit uni-chem, (which i will try not, unless i'm threatened to be expelled or something from my school, i will do it too ^^) and yeah with uni-chem it'll help so much with vce chem, which will be sweet as.
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Don't try and trick your school into thinking you're doing further and haven't quit uni chem. Just tell them you're doing those subjects. I really don't understand why your school won't let you do 2 subjects outside of school. Those subjects will be in your own time so it's really up to you to spend time outside of school doing other subjects. Plus the free periods in at school is when you'll end up doing your homework instead of afterschool because of your distance subjects. Either way good luck in hoping to do all those subjects. You could always move to a different school and finish vce there :P
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Don't try and trick your school into thinking you're doing further and haven't quit uni chem. Just tell them you're doing those subjects. I really don't understand why your school won't let you do 2 subjects outside of school. Those subjects will be in your own time so it's really up to you to spend time outside of school doing other subjects. Plus the free periods in at school is when you'll end up doing your homework instead of afterschool because of your distance subjects. Either way good luck in hoping to do all those subjects. You could always move to a different school and finish vce there :P
Haha it may be the only way i can do both. I'll try and do further at school as a sixth subject (eventually becoming my 7th). but its difficult cos we aren't allowed to do 6 in year 12 either.
well i can't move schools since enrolments are closed, the only one i could go to is CAE, but i really don't want to be moving schools in my final year.