What is English Language like in Year 12?

[horizon]

Coming out of Year 11, I feeling that English Language is a bit all over the place right now.
I've heard how Year 12 English language is hard.  How so?
What are the assessments and SACs like? Seriously, what do they assess us on? Is it basically just essay writing on a prompt or do we have to analyse a transcript or something?
What stuff do we need to memorise, 'learn', read (since there are not set texts like in English)?

I've also heard how we should be keeping an eye out for articles about the English language.  But how exactly will these articles be used?

Would really appreciate anyone who could shed some light on this subject in Year 12!

[golden]

The articles are usually used for ideas and examples during your essay writing.

The SACs etc. usually involve essays and tests with relation to the material eg. analyse this text and write information about how the language is used for example, reflects the context or speaker etc.

Metalanguage and knowledge derived in year 11 is quite useful for year 12, so brush up on the content.

Analysing transcripts is quite common, especially in Unit 4. In Unit 3 it's more about how people vary in terms of their language use depending on a variety of different factors etc. The study design should cover this nicely.

[Starlight]

English Language yr 12 is great, although you'll have a different study design for 2012, however they won't give you 99% of things that weren't relevant from last year, because past vcaa exams for englang need to be relevant for some topics. Collection of Articles aid to provide evidence for your essays, perhaps providing 2/3 points for analysis in your essays. For example, swearing relates to the topic of dysphemisms, often you'll find high profile people swearing on perhaps 'delicate' matters and in your essay you sort of describe the consequence of their actions etc.

Sac-wise, this is how my school did it:

1st sac- scrapbook sac. We were given complulsory articles and had to find our own articles to which we were given questions on both e.g. action of euphemisms/ dysphemisms etc.

2nd sac- Some kind of spoken analysis, part attained to the Unit 3 structure, e.g. about slang, euphemisms, dysphemisms

3rd sac- Spoken analysis unit 4, about maxims of cooperation, conversational strategies e.g. tag qs, holding/ handing over the floor, maintaining a topic/ topic changes. We describe the 'actions' of these conversational strategies, analysing a piece of spoken text, e.g. was it cooperative- can talk about the maxims, or handing over the floor etc. This was a spoken language analysis in the form of an essay.

4th sac- Written sac analysis, things like onomatopeia, punctuation, things like semantic stylistic features/ syntactic stylistic features etc. Was a q/a sac.

Generally you follow transcripts/ passages they'll provide a key of various prosodic features, which you often have to analyse e.g. pace of speech, emphasis on certain words- the influences of these.

Essays are for persuasive purposes normally, and q/a things are like a discussion.

[thushan]

To answer your question, fun! Enjoy the damn subject.

[greenbeans]

hoooooyeah it's great! my school did the SACs quite differently from the sounds of  El2012 but that doesn't matter, they will prep you up fine, i'm sure!

definitely try to have some sort of organisation system so you can put examples of current things like euphemisms, tags, conversational strategies, abbreviations, etc. and memorise really good ones..

time and time again the examiners will say we are sick of the typical, over-used examples of things, they know every second essay people will bring up lol and lmao as teen speak, urban dictionary will be your new best friend!!

these examples will DEFINITELY come in handy for writing the essay at the end of year and especially when you do practice ones. when you have no current examples in practice ones it doesn't make you feel great about the end of year one.. i know i regretted not having spent more time on keeping a scrapbook throughout the whole year, but if you add to your list of examples constantly and continuously  then you won't be as stressed, keep your eye out for all things language-y and you will be great and show the examiners you really are keen about language change!

[Starlight]

Yes, on the topic of overused examples, for ethnolects don't mention 'footaballa', there are other lexical examples but for italian examples, I always thought the incorporation of stressing the last syllable of italian words into english was a decent example

[schnappy]

It's not easy, but neither is English. I think a fair bit of it is luck, analysis is a hard thing to learn - you just have to hope your exam has texts and questions you can answer. You'll find it's not difficult to bullshit. The essay questions are hard, however, you only have to do one and they're quite limited in what they can ask. You can break them down into basic categories: Identity related (usually Australia), jargon/taboo, written vs spoken English. You just need to prepare examples for these things, which you'll do throughout the year, and then you'll find it easy. It's all about taking a contention, supporting it with a recent example (That's original/new, see El2012's comment) and write fluently to some degree. Do this and you should do well.

[greenbeans]

It's not easy, but neither is English. I think a fair bit of it is luck, analysis is a hard thing to learn - you just have to hope your exam has texts and questions you can answer.

^^ this is a fair point to consider... i did both eng & englang in year 12 and found that both are completely different, but if you've done any english then the best way of putting english lang is that you do a lot of 'language analyses' ....basically if you like analysing words and "chunks of words" (discourse) then this is definitely a subject for you! if you've done any LOTE you are also at an advantage when talking about word classes, tenses, stems, infinitives etc.

but not to stress about the analysis - UNLIKE english where you feel they can throw any sort of question in your face, bring up any sort of article, blog, picture and you have to handle it and be 'creative' and blah blah blah.. english language you can pretty much learn straight from the study design! there is only a certain amount of things that they can ask you in both written and spoken sections of the exam (and all the SACs) and the essay you choose will come from a category that schnappy has already broken down for you, plus you will build up a bank of current, awesome examples to wow your examiners!

[Starlight]

Yeah the great thing about english language is that all the spoken/ written analysis questions get really repetitive, so there is only a limited amount of things they can give you, and it doesn't make you feel like they're drifting away from the study design, which sometimes you feel can be the case for things like biology. Although, with the introduction of the new study design, i'm not completely sure about how the new 2012 exam will be comparable to the previous exams.