New English Texts for 2013, what should I do?

[KevinooBz]

There are some new English texts in 2013 replacing the Life of Pi and Sometimes Gladness which are the novels my school studies I want to study the books very early this year but since they changed the novels I have a problem. Do you think they would have chosen the two new novels yet (I don't want to ask too early in case they think I am insane for trying to study Year 12 English in my spare time). Man, I hope they choose the old novels because some of the essays and materials on ATARNOTES give me examples I can look at to see what a great essay looks like. If they choose the new novels, there isn't going to much information I can salvage from AN.

[TKayy]

Hey, cant you and all of your year level persuade your year 12 English teachers/ english coordinator to choose different books that other schools are already doing. Popular books like 'On the Waterfront', 'Cosi', 'Crucible'. etc.

If not, you can always study for Language Analysis and maybe also for Creating and Presenting this year. These are also important as they contribute 2/3 to your study score.

[KevinooBz]

Yeah, most of the Year 11's don't even know the VCE texts. I'll try and persuade the English coordinator to use the classic VCE texts. Yeah I'll just study the language analysis and prepare a couple of oral presentations. The school is still doing Cosi and Skins unless they change everything.

[pi]

I actually think new texts are good, apparently they get marked a bit easier just because the examiners don't know what to expect. I did "Ransom" in its first year last year, and my friends who did it in the exam got pretty good scores (those who ordered their SoM) for it even though their essays were admittedly not that deep.

[MJRomeo81]

I actually think new texts are good, apparently they get marked a bit easier just because the examiners don't know what to expect. I did "Ransom" in its first year last year, and my friends who did it in the exam got pretty good scores (those who ordered their SoM) for it even though their essays were admittedly not that deep.

+1
Not only are they marked easier, the essay questions are REALLY easy (in comparison to the older texts).

Also keep an eye out for the unpopular texts (I think the VCAA assessment report has the percentages). Yes there is a significant lack of content for these texts (such as Bypass: Story of a road) but the essay topics in the exam seem to be straightforward.

My school chose Cosi and Bypass last year. Bypass is boring as FUCK to read and there's hardly any good sample essays in comparison to Cosi. As a result, the majority of the cohort selected Cosi in the exam. I talked to my friends and we decided that the examiners would amazed if we developed the courage to even consider writing about Bypass. Of course we were joking around but it seemed legit after seeing how easy last years exam was for Bypass R&R. Once I saw the essay questions I almost started laughing out loud in the exam room. Cosi's questions were absolutely fucked and Bypass was a nice stroll in the park.

[dilks]

+3, Ransom, as far as I can tell, was marked ridiculously easy (I kind of consider it to be pretty easy to analyse compared to say,    Richard III) last year owing to its being a new text. I think part of this is also to do with the fact the examiners' are to a certain extent marking you relative to everyone else who does that text, and most of the state has no idea what to write on a book if there aren't a whole heap of study guides and sample essays for them to prescriptively regurgitate in an exam situation. So doing a new text tends to be doubly rewarding for kids who actually have the brains and diligence to form their own personal opinion about a text. Also as MJRomeo mentioned, they tend to pick the easier prompts first, so that they can eliminate them from the list of possible prompts, before the study guides have time to write a whole heap of sample essays on the obvious prompts.

Contrariwise, when a text has been in circulation for a long time often they purposely choose hard prompts that are designed to negate the advantage provided by stacking up on study guides and sample essays, in order to discriminate between the kids who are simply regurgitating something they read, and the kids who genuinely have an insightful understanding of the text.

I should perhaps add the disclaimer that most of this is more of a theory I have than absolute fact. I obviously don't know VCAA's exact method for picking prompts, but this seems pretty logical to me: aiming to pick prompts which aren't covered by study guides, and doing the easy prompts before the study guides manage to write on them.

[KevinooBz]

I asked one of the Year 12 English teachers, they said they would choose the new texts and from reading your posts I think this would be better. Yeah, less study guides and essay examples which rewards people being able to think independently and build their own essay. I think many people might struggle with little to no resources so this could be a huge advantage for me.