Is it possible to do well in English without reading the text-response book?

[iwanta90sobad]

I know this may be stupid, but I legitimately have never read a book for english, I've always relied on Spark notes. This year I'm in year 12, and for text-response we're reading Year Of Wonders. I tried my best to read it, but it just bores me so much, I pretty much can't go for more than 10 pages without placing the book down. I've only read 4 chapters so far, and in class we're assumed to have read the book fully by now. Is it possible for me to do well (40+) with just reading the chapter summaries, and following along in class?

[Professor Polonsky]

Year of Wonders for context? It's only on the text response list...

[iwanta90sobad]

Year of Wonders for context? It's only on the text response list...

sorry i meant text response, my bad.

[alondouek]

In short, no. As unpleasant as it may be, you're just going to have to knuckle down and read the book to get the most of its themes and conceptual quotations. Everyone has that one book that is the absolute worst during VCE English *cough* Member of the Wedding *cough*, but unless you read it and analyse it, it's unlikely that you'll be able to write a good piece on it.

The upside is, after your SAC on it, you can opt to avoid it for the rest of the course - just write on another text for the exam.

[VivaTequila]

Yes it is, but it is harder. I didn't read all my books in Year 12, but I certainly researched enough information to be able to talk about all the stuff that happens in the book that's relevant to the ideas I know I can put into essays.

[MJRomeo81]

Depends on how good you are at writing essays. I always recommend reading the book (for obvious reasons).

I guarantee that your text isn't as painful as Bypass: Story of a road. Now that is a brutal text. But in the long run it's worth it If you stuff up the exam you're gonna be looking at your post saying WTF was I thinking.

[fridge]

Although it's possible to write great essays simply by reading notes and learning key examples, I think it makes it easier to understand and remember elements of the text when you are more familiar with it - i.e. having read it. When I start writing essays, I usually find myself continually using the same examples and I feel like I only analyse a small proportion of text. But reading the book gives me a better "feel" for the text, if that makes sense. 

On a side note, VivaTequila I noticed you got full marks for the exam but a 48 SS -- I of course could only dream of getting anything close to that amazing  , but just curious as to what sort of SAC marks led to that loss of 2 SS marks. This is probably the wrong section or whatever, but just wondering.

[brenden]

He was ranked something like fourth in his cohort and the other people didn't do as well as he.

[VivaTequila]

Although it's possible to write great essays simply by reading notes and learning key examples, I think it makes it easier to understand and remember elements of the text when you are more familiar with it - i.e. having read it. When I start writing essays, I usually find myself continually using the same examples and I feel like I only analyse a small proportion of text. But reading the book gives me a better "feel" for the text, if that makes sense. 

On a side note, VivaTequila I noticed you got full marks for the exam but a 48 SS -- I of course could only dream of getting anything close to that amazing  , but just curious as to what sort of SAC marks led to that loss of 2 SS marks. This is probably the wrong section or whatever, but just wondering.

No, it's fine. I got a 91% SAC average at a moderately competitive school.

He was ranked something like fourth in his cohort and the other people didn't do as well as he.

I was ranked #3. Rank #1 got 49 and did well on the exam, but didnt get full marks, and rank #2 dropped back and got a 44 because he didn't ace the exam.

[Dayman]

Doing well in English no, but doing well in this particular sac yes.


As reading the book will lead to understanding of complexities and an original interpretation of text response topics which is like really awesome in English. But with sacs teacher are more lenient...

[fridge]

So was your 48 because you were rank 3 or because rank 2 didn't do as well on the exam. Just scares me a little that somewhat could be rank 3 with full exam marks and not get a 50 

[cookiemonster95]

I'd say yes, it's possible. If you consider yourself a good writer than it shouldn't be too hard, although I wouldn't recommend it. At most, it'd take you a couple of days to read your required text, and by doing so you will have a better understanding of the key ideas and themes.

[Dayman]

So was your 48 because you were rank 3 or because rank 2 didn't do as well on the exam. Just scares me a little that somewhat could be rank 3 with full exam marks and not get a 50 

No it doesn't work like that the whole cohort must do well. Then the toughness of the cohort scales the sac scores. 48 is absolutely extraordinary but his sac were slightly less 50 worthy and that was because he had to have the 4th ranked external score(vcaa uses statistical data to do this) as his moderated sac score.


However if he was rank 1 he would receive the highest external score as his moderated exam score and it would receive full marks for his moderated sac and thus a 50.anyways off topic

[VivaTequila]

Well for what it's worth, two other people in my cohort got 49s. None of us scraped the 50, but we had a good year for English.

(the average was still relatively bad)

[Truck]

of course it's possible, it's just slightly less probable. Emphasis on the slightly.