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July 22, 2025, 02:19:24 am

Author Topic: Year 12s--- how much english work have you done this year??  (Read 4666 times)  Share 

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molllz

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Year 12s--- how much english work have you done this year??
« on: April 23, 2012, 04:28:31 pm »
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I really have ignored english this year!!
How much do you guys work on it???

mitchb93

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Re: Year 12s--- how much english work have you done this year??
« Reply #1 on: April 23, 2012, 09:00:44 pm »
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I've done nothing really, I find it a horrible subject to study and I usually just 'wing' the assessments. I think at this level most of your grades depend on your actual abilities accumulated throughout your whole schooling, provided you can improve grades to some extent by ensuring you know all the relevant texts and issues in the media. But I am struggling myself to get any motivation to put in even the slightest of effort into my english studies and it's really starting to worry me  :-\
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m.arcus

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Re: Year 12s--- how much english work have you done this year??
« Reply #2 on: April 23, 2012, 09:02:20 pm »
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I haven't done as much as I think I need to considering I didn't do English last year :S I am trying to do a practice essay for my language analysis SAC next week but I don't have enough motivation to continue :(

Reckoner

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Re: Year 12s--- how much english work have you done this year??
« Reply #3 on: April 23, 2012, 09:46:24 pm »
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I've been doing 1-2 essays a week. Ideally I'd be doing 3 a week, but when I try to write one a sit at my desk and stare out the window for ages.

ktrah

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Re: Year 12s--- how much english work have you done this year??
« Reply #4 on: April 23, 2012, 10:11:29 pm »
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I've probably written around four essays this year. Planning to try to do one a week from now on, but they're so time consuming :-\

soccerboi

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Re: Year 12s--- how much english work have you done this year??
« Reply #5 on: April 23, 2012, 11:00:45 pm »
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Ive been having essay Fridays, where i write an essay as soon as i get home on every Friday afternoon. Dono if its helping though cause i've been getting 8/10 for every piece and see no improvement  :(
But they're written without time constraint. As i get more comfortable, i'll begin to write under timed conditions and hopefully do more pieces each week, probably about 3 a week nearing exam time.
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Re: Year 12s--- how much english work have you done this year??
« Reply #6 on: April 24, 2012, 02:35:05 pm »
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I've done nothing really, I find it a horrible subject to study and I usually just 'wing' the assessments. I think at this level most of your grades depend on your actual abilities accumulated throughout your whole schooling, provided you can improve grades to some extent by ensuring you know all the relevant texts and issues in the media. But I am struggling myself to get any motivation to put in even the slightest of effort into my english studies and it's really starting to worry me  :-\

I can't agree more with this. I didn't really work in English much throughout the year... I mean - sure, I wrote practice essays, but I definitely did less work on it than I did for Methods, Chem, and Physics. And look at the end score difference! 48 in English, 36/36/37 in Chem/Phys/Methods. I wholeheartedly believe this is true -  trying to save your English score in year 12 can work well for some, but for many others I think the subject can be a breeze simply because they somehow progressed more rapidly in English in their earlier education....

Bill Ding

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Re: Year 12s--- how much english work have you done this year??
« Reply #7 on: April 26, 2012, 07:09:49 pm »
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Read the book required at the start of the year then forgetting it on the first weeks and now in regret that i wasted all that time.

pi

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Re: English workload and studying?
« Reply #8 on: April 26, 2012, 07:46:29 pm »
+10
My experience...

In terms of writing essays, I tried to write an essay a week (unfortunately didn't get around to achieving this goal) and about 2-3 three essays in total in the days before SACs (try different types of topics though). Try to get good teacher (or other) feedback on all essays and ask them to mark you harshly in the practice ones (don't be an idiot and ask your SACs to be marked harshly too!) I'd also advise posting essays up on ATARNotes! I posted up a few LAs, a couple of Ransom text responses and a context piece and the feedback was absolutely amazing, it's always good to get as many different perspectives on a piece of writing as possible, as it shows you the many ways that it can be improved. Even though I later found out that there are people in med who were using my essays to study (leechers...), I think that it was still worth it :)

Timing is everything in English, so time from the start. That means that every essay I did was timed. If I didn't finish it within the time, I went on to finish it to a standard that I was happy with and then reflected on how much time I had gone over. Eventually, you'll be writing 4+ pages in a hour with considerable ease, so don't give it up! Initially writing essays "open-book" is fine too (to get the quotes down), as long as you don't always do this.

Don't neglect any type of essay. Last year, I think I had a period of 3-4 months without writing or thinking about a language analysis. This probably cost me in the end (exam-wise) and you guys don't want to be in a position where you don't feel too confident going into the exam room, especially when you're worried about screwing up the fundamentals such as structure and getting contentions.

Furthermore, decide on your preferred text for the text response component of the exam ASAP. I spent the entire year with my tutoring group studying Ransom and then two weeks or so before the exam, I decided to write on Richard III instead1, further adding to my stress :( The advantage of what I did was that I was fairly prepared for both texts (but not "fully prepared for either), and I was lucky that the Ransom prompts sucked, so my risk payed off in the end (kinda).

On the side, for those of you that have not read all of your texts yet, do that as soon as possible too. In general, you'd want to have:
- Read the texts in the summer break for "enjoyment" and story-line
- Re-read when studying in class, take notes and read study guides (I like to take notes in my actual book so I don't have to carry around too much)
- Re-read by yourself before the relevant SAC, also re-read your notes and annotations to get they key quotes memorised, make more notes if necessary (you might see some new points)
- Re-read once or twice before the exam, re-reading all YOUR notes/annotation (don't read the study guides, you don't want to mix your unique ideas with the general drab present in most guides - York Notes are an exception imo)
Obviously you don't need to make plentiful notes for Context (unless you're into that sort of thing), but for text response, I'd advise it very much.

Overall, I'd say English was the subject I studied the second most for (I didn't have much natural talent and my yr11 teacher was crappy2) after spesh and that probably meant a good 6 hours per normal non-SAC week (usually on weekends) and up to 12 hours on SAC weeks. But studying is highly individualistic, so don't take this to be a bench-mark or anything, which is why I kinda find the title of this thread a bit pointless in a way because how much English study one person does should not dictate your own study (which is why I changed it for this post) :) Do more or less until you think you're doing alright ;)

DON'T make those amateur mistakes like I did, because it will cost you big-time come the exam! Although I ended up with a score I was happy with (44 -and I am happy with it!), I still get the feeling I didn't do my SAC scores the justice they probably deserved. I don't have many regrets in VCE (choosing physics was the main one btw - don't pick it), but I really do wish I had the motivation to not make these errors in my study, because I really do think it would have helped me a lot and reduced a lot of stress I had for the exam (this was the only exam I was properly stressed for I think, I'm generally pretty easy-going with these things). The last thing you want is to be disappointed with yourself (don't blame anyone else, it's your fault in yr12), it sucks.

tl;dr:
- Aim to write an essay a week of different types
- Get them checked from many sources, the more the merrier
- Spamming essays of different types of topics before SACs is fine
- Time your essays from the start
- Don't neglect any type of essay
- Decide on your text response text ASAP
- Make sure you've read your texts by now
- Don't study for hours, study for self-satisfaction
- Don't make the same mistakes as I did, as it will hurt you come exam day
- Never choose VCE physics3

Good luck :)


edit: shit, how did this post get so long haha :D




1http://i.qkme.me/35sbad.jpg
2Quote from her: "You may quote from the novel, but in your own words" =.='
3If you gain nothing from this post, at least heed this warning
« Last Edit: April 26, 2012, 08:18:53 pm by VegemitePi »

Reckoner

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Re: English workload and studying?
« Reply #9 on: April 26, 2012, 08:01:22 pm »
+1

- Never choose VCE physics


If only I knew this sooner...

Ravit

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Re: Year 12s--- how much english work have you done this year??
« Reply #10 on: April 26, 2012, 08:15:57 pm »
+1
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Re: Year 12s--- how much english work have you done this year??
« Reply #11 on: April 27, 2012, 11:36:50 am »
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I don't do much work at all for English which I want to work on. I only really want around a B for English anyway but I need to pick up my game a bit.

I also regret choosing year 12 physics to be honest :P I wish I had done lit instead so I had an alternative to English and a chance for the better to go in the top 4.
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VivaTequila

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Re: Year 12s--- how much english work have you done this year??
« Reply #12 on: April 27, 2012, 05:48:03 pm »
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I don't do much work at all for English which I want to work on. I only really want around a B for English anyway but I need to pick up my game a bit.

I also regret choosing year 12 physics to be honest :P I wish I had done lit instead so I had an alternative to English and a chance for the better to go in the top 4.

I regretfully inform you that I actually did something similar - I dropped Bio and did English instead (was only going to be doing lit).

And I didn't regret it - increased my English based score by a good 10pts

jaydee

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Re: Year 12s--- how much english work have you done this year??
« Reply #13 on: April 27, 2012, 06:59:41 pm »
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im studying ransom and on the waterfront and I want to do ransom on the exam. The trouble is I study it in term 3. What should I do? Do I spend time on it outside of class now or just wait? One of my friends said I should be aiming for 40 essays for each AOS leading into the exam so... :/ (im definitely not gifted at english unfortunately :( )
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dilks

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Re: Year 12s--- how much english work have you done this year??
« Reply #14 on: April 27, 2012, 07:49:51 pm »
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im studying ransom and on the waterfront and I want to do ransom on the exam. The trouble is I study it in term 3. What should I do? Do I spend time on it outside of class now or just wait? One of my friends said I should be aiming for 40 essays for each AOS leading into the exam so... :/ (im definitely not gifted at english unfortunately :( )

I'm a bit confused about why this is an issue, isn't this a good thing since you won't have to be scrambling your brains trying to remember all the Ransom stuff after having done On The Waterfront for a term?
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