ATAR Notes: Forum

VCE Stuff => VCE English Studies => VCE Subjects + Help => VCE English Language => Topic started by: cara.mel on September 11, 2008, 09:23:40 am

Title: What were your experiences with learning unit 4
Post by: cara.mel on September 11, 2008, 09:23:40 am
I have been thinking about it.
To me the written part was easy as, I felt most of it was just a rehash of unit 1 or things you would have picked up in previous years of English, or was fairly obvious and didn't need learning
But the spoken section was a real killer.
Did you guys feel that you learnt new things in spoken english (such as how the various prosodic features are useful, adjaceny pairs, backchanneling/positive feedback [especially this one! so useful to use in RL now I know about it!!!]) or that they were all dead obvious and you were now just shoving labels on them. or was it mainly dead obvious with 1-2 new things.
I also found it hard within the transcripts to identify the purpose of the discourse and what the participants were thinking/feeling at certain parts when tempo increased etc, so I just guessed those.

thank you :)

i have been trying to connect if formally learning how spoken english works is actually useful to anyone else and if not, if other things would work for me like formally learning face expressions etc. I know it has been incredibly helpful to me.
Title: Re: What were your experiences with learning unit 4
Post by: Mao on September 11, 2008, 10:55:10 am
i feel the opposite.... features of spoken language are so obvious in everyday conversation, and they are quite easy to pick up. however, analysing written language is quite new to me (I didn't do unit 1), and it seems i can never understand what the question really want...
Title: Re: What were your experiences with learning unit 4
Post by: jfaure on September 11, 2008, 04:27:28 pm
im wif mao on this one .... i found spoken texts really easy. Written language on the other hand  :buck2:
Title: Re: What were your experiences with learning unit 4
Post by: ElephantStew on September 11, 2008, 05:40:07 pm
yeah i agree with mao and jfaure...i found spoken texts much easier....however, latin did help with some written text stuff
Title: Re: What were your experiences with learning unit 4
Post by: cara.mel on September 11, 2008, 08:26:24 pm
thank you all <3
as well as being easy, did you feel that you intuitively knew it all already?
Title: Re: What were your experiences with learning unit 4
Post by: Mao on September 11, 2008, 09:41:01 pm
yes and no
i can identify them, but sometimes really obvious things are skipped (such as contractions which I always miss)
and after you identify them, trying to use proper metalanguage is another challenge :P
Title: Re: What were your experiences with learning unit 4
Post by: jfaure on September 11, 2008, 09:43:25 pm
yerr i knew what all the features were and everything ... but tryin 2 use the metalanguage 2 describe them is the challenge lol
Title: Re: What were your experiences with learning unit 4
Post by: sailor! on October 26, 2008, 02:36:19 pm
im actually very jealous of you all,
our teacher was our sick for 5 months
and we where given a replacement teacher who didnt teach english language.
i found unit 4 speaking/written both around the same.
Title: Re: What were your experiences with learning unit 4
Post by: florallover on October 26, 2008, 03:54:37 pm
i agree with you caramel/elephantstew. spoken really opened up a lot of the fascinating 'rules' of interaction that i'd never noticed before (and i found it a bit harder than the essay/written sections), whereas a lot of the written stuff is the same as unit 4 latin and unit 1 english language
Title: Re: What were your experiences with learning unit 4
Post by: JL_91 on October 26, 2008, 06:02:50 pm
Studying Unit 4, added to studying UMEP Linguistics, has given me Linguisticitis. These days I can't seem to listen to or participate in a conversation without subconsciously beginning to analyse it lol!!! :S
I'm still struggling with time management on my essays...and the exam's so close now. Eek!
Title: Re: What were your experiences with learning unit 4
Post by: florallover on October 26, 2008, 08:08:36 pm
hey i do umep linguistics too... are you joyce (sp? - the one who goes to lectures at a different time) or someone else i cant figure out? there are only like 10 of us. i didnt think uni really emphasised the close analysis of say the use of language in our day to day interactions, unless you engage daily in cross-cultural communication
Title: Re: What were your experiences with learning unit 4
Post by: JL_91 on October 26, 2008, 09:34:04 pm
Yes, I'm Joice (don't worry everyone makes that mistake :p)! I can't work out who you are from your username though!
I'm actually really enjoying our Semester 2 subject, however I have a terrible tutor >_< which makes it really tough trying to figure out how to do the assignments properly.