Double-spacing recommended for the English exam?

[Limista]

Hi,

So according to the title, is it?

I know that for language exams (e.g. German) double-spacing is best, but I was not too sure about English.

Thanks 

[brenden]

Yeah, do it. All advantages, no disadvantages.

[Limista]

Okay thanks for the opinions. 

[meganrobyn]

Don't do it! It's soo annoying to mark. The lines VCAA gives you are fatter than normal lined paper anyway, and they scan your English essays so they come up big on the computer monitor (and can be enlarged up to font size 96 roughly, from memory!). It's harder to get into a reading flow with marking when it's very spaced out, I think; and I personally hate how annoying it is to keep having to flick through pages (because you double your page number).

[werdna]

I agree with Megan. The number of pages does affect readability to some extent. Sometimes I find myself checking how many pages are left if I'm marking an essay that is TOO long.

And you can imagine marking a lot of pages for one essay would be fairly draining for an examiner... no matter how good an essay is, marking in bulk is draining lol. So definitely stick to the normal lines and don't go double spacing - unless you have horrendous handwriting

[brenden]

Oh, wow, I thought examiners would prefer it! It's pretty sick just having an examiner on the forums- good insight.

[pi]

I wouldn't do it, just adds another thing to focus on during an exam.

[alondouek]

Don't bother double-spacing, it just takes up valuable, valuable space.

Just make sure your handwriting is legible, though - because if an examiner has a tough time reading your piece they'll likely view it more critically than otherwise

[Limista]

Oh okay then! Yeah I was suspecting that double-spacing would be a bit awkward in an English exam. My typical 3-4 page text response would become an unreasonable 6-8 page length.

It's pretty sick just having an examiner on the forums- good insight.

Curious ~ who is the examiner? I'm guessing it's either meganrobyn or werdna...?

[pi]

meganrobyn is the examiner

[Limista]

Also, for the language analysis in the exam, is there one text and one visual, or is it two texts and one visual?

I haven't actually looked at a VCAA exam yet, since I'm saving them for a little later.

[alondouek]

Theoretically, for Language Analysis, VCAA could set anything. It could be purely visual (though this is pretty unlikely), or it could be in the format of a website, a series of comments; anything really. A couple of years ago it was a speech on biodiversity with a couple of slides interspersed.

Best to prepare for any eventuality!

[Charmz]

Unless you have huge handwriting, I don't suggest you do it because there is plenty of space in the lines to edit. Also waste of space and new paragraphs look weird.

[meganrobyn]

meganrobyn is the examiner

Just to clarify! Experience Legal (paper marking) assessing and GAT essay (online marking) assessing, but not English VCAA assessing!