EAL is harder than I thought it would be....

[Mellyboo]

What sort of grades do I need to be achieving for a 35 in EAL? It's absolutely imperative that I achieve this SS as it's a prerequisite. Sorry, I know this question had been asked many many times in the past! I couldnt find anything on EAL study scores. I went into the EAL class thinking it would be easy, but boy oh boy was I WRONG. My marks currently are 33/35 for oral presentation 25/30 for context and I just sat an evil text response SAC this morning. I'm predicting around the 20-25 out of 35 range for this one, I knew my text through and through but made the foolish mistake of memorising an unalterable essay and had great difficulty modifying my essay to the prompt. I will never ever do that again and with my newfound determination to do well(thanks atarnotes for the motivation and giving me that glimmer of hope) I will persevere! Now, the question is, assuming I just recieved a 25/35, which is an A overall for unit 3 (83/100), is it still possible to achieve a study score of 35? Lets say I began working my butt off, achieve an A+ for unit 4 and the exam, what are my chances? Thanks !

If you have time to read my rant: how do you reduce the amount of anxiety that stems from writing an essay? I think this may or may not be the reason why I've scored so poorly on my essays yet so well on my oral presentation. I get so stressed(today, only one hour of sleep before my SAC) the week or two leading into the sac and really try to avoid writing practice essays. Writing an essay takes me at least a day due to the fact that I absolutely CAN'T write drafts, every word, every sentence must be perfected before I continue onto the next. This takes up huge chunks of my time, not only at home but also the valuable time during a SAC. I find myself dedicating an unnecessary amount of time to thinking of the perfect synonym of a word and this has stayed with me throughout highschool, even back to primary school. I have never considered myself to be lazy, despite what my English teachers thinks of me. I truly don't know where this anxiety began... Thanks again

[literally lauren]

What sort of grades do I need to be achieving for a 35 in EAL? It's absolutely imperative that I achieve this SS as it's a prerequisite. Sorry, I know this question had been asked many many times in the past! I couldnt find anything on EAL study scores. I went into the EAL class thinking it would be easy, but boy oh boy was I WRONG. My marks currently are 33/35 for oral presentation 25/30 for context and I just sat an evil text response SAC this morning. I'm predicting around the 20-25 out of 35 range for this one, I knew my text through and through but made the foolish mistake of memorising an unalterable essay and had great difficulty modifying my essay to the prompt. I will never ever do that again and with my newfound determination to do well(thanks atarnotes for the motivation and giving me that glimmer of hope) I will persevere! Now, the question is, assuming I just recieved a 25/35, which is an A overall for unit 3 (83/100), is it still possible to achieve a study score of 35? Lets say I began working my butt off, achieve an A+ for unit 4 and the exam, what are my chances? Thanks !

Long story short: yes you can absolutely still get a 35.
30 is the average, and 35 is still within that big main standard deviation or w/e
paging people who know maths

The exam is worth 50% and VCAA don't care about your actual SAC marks, just your rankings, and your exam score. So long as you're learning from the mistakes you've made so far, little slip-ups won't hurt your chances at all.
Heaps of posts on the Technical Score Discussion Board explain this process, esp. this thread: {SAC RANKINGS} -All you need to know about it-

If you have time to read my rant: how do you reduce the amount of anxiety that stems from writing an essay? I think this may or may not be the reason why I've scored so poorly on my essays yet so well on my oral presentation. I get so stressed(today, only one hour of sleep before my SAC) the week or two leading into the sac and really try to avoid writing practice essays.

The way I see it, there's a difference between pre-assessment stress and stress while you're actually in assessment conditions. The pre- stuff is what you want to combat most, because that's the easiest to quell; it's mostly a matter of perception as well - if you keep telling yourself you're at risk of failing or not meeting your aims, then that's exactly how you're going to continue to feel. Understanding how the system works can be a massive advantage here; VCE is designed to be fair to students who just have bad days sometimes, and 'bombing out' on a SAC or two won't significantly penalise you in the long run provided you know how to pick yourself up, learn from what went wrong, and move on.
When you're in the exam though, the stress tends to be more concentrated, and potentially more damaging. A strategy I often recommend is actually keeping track of your stress as you go. Several of my students last year would use a number system (or emojis, but that can look weird) and as they moved down the page, they'd just make a little note about how they were feeling at that point in their essay. So every few lines, the margins would just have '4... 7... 5... 8' or '          ' all the way along - even in practice essays. That way, you start to rationalise what you're feeling. If you find yourself wanting to write down a 10 for stress, or  ' ' or something, you at least have to put some thought in as to why! For instance:
Brain: "omg what do I do, what do I do??? 10/10 I'm so panicked - I have no clue what my Topic Sentence should be!!" <-- and right there, we've found our problem. Then (if you're in timed conditions and it's a quick fix) you can just do what you need to do for that issue, or you may just want to leave a section and revisit it later (ideally for practice essays rather than actual SACs.) This'll give you more direction in your study too, because rather than sitting at home that evening thinking 'I was so stressed in that SAC, I've gotta stop being stressed!' you'll instead get to say 'Wow, I had no clue about which quotes to use. I really need to revise my knowledge of the text.'

Writing an essay takes me at least a day due to the fact that I absolutely CAN'T write drafts, every word, every sentence must be perfected before I continue onto the next. This takes up huge chunks of my time, not only at home but also the valuable time during a SAC. I find myself dedicating an unnecessary amount of time to thinking of the perfect synonym of a word and this has stayed with me throughout highschool, even back to primary school.

Man, I feel your pain
My solution: allow yourself 20 seconds or so, then just move on. Leave a gap where the word or phrase needs to be, or just write whatever word comes to mind first (eg. you're trying to think of something like 'vindictive,' but it's not coming to you, so you can just write 'vengeful' or 'mean' or 'bad' - doesn't matter, it's just a placeholder) and put an asterisk in the margins. If you have time at the end, you can come back to it with fresh eyes and (hopefully) a clearer head. Maybe the word will come to you, or maybe you'll think of a better/different one instead. But, worst case scenario, you run out of time and you barely finish your essay as it is, at least you don't have a big gaping hole where a word should be, and you'll know that you only spend 20 seconds on the problem rather than wasting time unnecessarily.

It can feel wrong to just abandon a section, but trust me, it's better than spending way to long on something that probably doesn't even matter that much in the grand scheme of things. Your mark will never come down to a single word choice, so it's best to keep your mind occupied with the task at hand, then let yourself revisit trouble-spots if the time allows it.

This is also something that you can work on outside of assessment though. Going over word lists, developing lists of synonyms for the most common words you use (eg. things like 'suggests' or 'portrays' which everyone uses) and even going back over essays and taking note of the kinds of words that you spend ages trying to remember - all this can help your brain make connections faster in the heat of the moment.

Hope that helps

[brenden]

Man, you could still get 45+ 

[heids]

That's about the average I had in English (though obviously SAC rankings, cohorts etc. etc.), and I got a 43 - but with those marks you could defs get higher than that.  And always remember, at the last extremity if somehow everything went wrong and you collapsed with a 34... you have another year you could repeat it in.

I will say though that reading your rant, in every sentence I see an exact mirror image of myself in year 12 English.  Every line in my essays were written with gnashing of teeth and tearing of hair, and I tended to give up midway in every single essay because they weren't good enough.  Even though I was the only person reading them and they would count for nothing.  Do you find that you are - by FAR - your own worst critic?  And you can't bear to write something substandard, because you'll feel that you're hopeless at it?  It's generally just a case of saying - I will write this next sentence, no matter how bad.  And repeat that every single sentence.  And get someone to keep you to scratch - they don't have to read the essay, they just have to check that you've actually written something finished.

(Between the mid-Sept trial and the exam, I didn't write one essay - that is, I attempted about three, gave up midway, and figured I got much less stressed by hoping I could wing it than by proving that I couldn't do it by trying and failing.  I had no Lauren to encourage me.  Actually the exam had a positive impact on me because I knew that I HAD to write the essay... I couldn't just give up halfway). 

My moral: I struggled just the same, however didn't ask for help and didn't figure out how to get over it, yet I still got a score you'd be really happy with.  I think I could cope now if I did it again, purely from AN's awesome tips, esp. Lauren's - and you have the advantage of them, so you should definitely be able to kill it!

OK, what on earth am I telling my life story for?  Sorry, tired and just waffling.  I'm getting out and going to bed.  Bye.

[Mellyboo]

........Oh my god this is so horrible I wrote about 1000 words as a reply but my computer shut down damnit! Lets see if i can remember what i wrote.

Thanks lauren for going to the trouble of writing all that, it definitely helped. I just sat a 3 hour prac exam at school and my preconceptions were totally quashed it was not that bad at all!

Some questions ( i'll try to make it short since this is the second time i have to write this  )

**-the lang analysis asks for 3 points to comment on. Is it okay to do more?
-should i do an intro for lang analysis as eal just asks for a paragraph (300 or so words)?
-is it too late to experiment with context?
**-what is bookending?
**-how do i integrate my creative into my expository ( or vise versa)?
-how long should i spend on planning for each of the three sections?
-how do i plan PROPERLY? Step by step what should i do during planning?
-should i do full 3 hour practice exams?
**-i read in this forum that you can just write and memorise an essay with quotes that you can alter to ANY prompt, any prompt at all no matter how obscure . (Find scenes and quotes that can be interpreted in many ways etc) Is this a viable option? I would feel a lot more confident if i had 4 more months to work on a 10/10 essay.
**-my next sac is in a couple of weeks and we havent started to discuss or even read the book yet. I have read it so should I start reading it again , annotating, grouping themes, writing essays etc? If not what should I do in order to prepare because I really can't afford to lose this many marks again.
-how should i prepare for my next context sac? Should i find as many topics about identity and write one paragraph for each?Honestly, I am lost in this class, our teacher is hardly ever present and we are left to fend for ourselves.
-In addition to that i miss 1/3 of all english classes because of a vet priority. How do i even begin to compensate for all that time lost??
**-teacher says I lost marks in my context essay for being too 'verbose' a total of 5 marks were deducted. How do i minimise this?
-And above all, how do you find time to study for english on top of all your other subjects?? I find that english is stealing every spare minute I have left.. If thats the way it is, thats the way it is....
**-also, how do I memorise quotes? Ahh..

Note: going on from one of my previous questions, is spectroscopy's guide a way to go for my next sac's? He says only if you're desperate, well, I'm pretty desperate. He also says he didnt do year 11 english, well I didnt do year 10, 9 or 8 english either for that matter(I homeschooled with only theory english work... What is a noun etc). I don't care if this requires 'no lifing' because frankly, this year would have been a waste anyway if i get <35

The ones with the  **'s i'd appreicate the most to be answered thank youu!

----

Bangali, i wish i could, but no, this is the last year i'm eligible, 7th year on the dot in australia. If this goes to hell i need to do mainstream english and a 35 in mainstream is too far fetched for me. And tbh, I really, really just wanted english out of the way hence why I am doing it a year early. I will have to attempt english language if this doesnt work out. This is why I am stressing 24/7 about english, because i know that this is my only chance to do well in an english based subject. I don't know how i will feel if i receive a SS of 34... It means i was one point off and have to do an entire year of english over because of one point, mainstream at that. * SIGH*

[Mellyboo]

Man, you could still get 45+

Yeah, right.

[Mellyboo]

That's about the average I had in English (though obviously SAC rankings, cohorts etc. etc.), and I got a 43 - but with those marks you could defs get higher than that.  And always remember, at the last extremity if somehow everything went wrong and you collapsed with a 34... you have another year you could repeat it in.

I will say though that reading your rant, in every sentence I see an exact mirror image of myself in year 12 English.  Every line in my essays were written with gnashing of teeth and tearing of hair, and I tended to give up midway in every single essay because they weren't good enough.  Even though I was the only person reading them and they would count for nothing.  Do you find that you are - by FAR - your own worst critic?  And you can't bear to write something substandard, because you'll feel that you're hopeless at it?  It's generally just a case of saying - I will write this next sentence, no matter how bad.  And repeat that every single sentence.  And get someone to keep you to scratch - they don't have to read the essay, they just have to check that you've actually written something finished.

(Between the mid-Sept trial and the exam, I didn't write one essay - that is, I attempted about three, gave up midway, and figured I got much less stressed by hoping I could wing it than by proving that I couldn't do it by trying and failing.  I had no Lauren to encourage me.  Actually the exam had a positive impact on me because I knew that I HAD to write the essay... I couldn't just give up halfway). 

My moral: I struggled just the same, however didn't ask for help and didn't figure out how to get over it, yet I still got a score you'd be really happy with.  I think I could cope now if I did it again, purely from AN's awesome tips, esp. Lauren's - and you have the advantage of them, so you should definitely be able to kill it!

OK, what on earth am I telling my life story for?  Sorry, tired and just waffling.  I'm getting out and going to bed.  Bye.

Oh just read everything you wrote... No that wasn't just waffling.... That was actually really really comforting Yeah I get that all the time, I don't know how many unfinished prac essays i have on my computer

The reason why I am so skeptical of myself is because of my GAT score last year. I was confident with my writing, in english, in everything. But then the GAT came around and ruined it, a 27. I could not believe i was in the bottom 70%. I had always been such a strong writer. It just completely crushed my confidence. I know people said GAT doesn't mean anything, but it must right? The kids who get a 50 in english had the 50(or close) on their GAT report too... So it must have some sort of accuracy... I think?

[Alter]

First up, I wouldn't worry at all about your GAT score from last year. It's not a true measurement of how well you can perform in a VCE English subject, and is a task hated by many. My brother got a 46 in mainstream with a 99 ATAR while doing garbage in his GAT and most general aptitude tests because he simply wasn't naturally gifted. Your GAT score only means your 'innate' ability at the given time at a particular task. In the GAT, you're also competing against the best English kids in the state.

Secondly, I can tell just by reading all the messages you've posted in this thread that you have a strong understanding of the English language. Heck, I'd say you're better than every single EAL student at my school based on your posts here alone. This may sound like I'm just trying to be nice, but I legitimately would have thought you did regular English instead of EAL if you had not pointed it out. I wouldn't stress about it at all; you're in good hands if you keep putting in the time to study.

[heids]

I'm attempting to answer some of these questions - NOT ALL - I'm hoping Lauren will come to the rescue and answer all these questions better!  This is just in case she doesn't (substandard = better than nothing).  Try reading Re: English Guides, Sample Pieces, Tips and Resources, I think it possibly answers some of your questions.

The reason why I am so skeptical of myself is because of my GAT score last year. I was confident with my writing, in english, in everything. But then the GAT came around and ruined it, a 27. I could not believe i was in the bottom 70%. I had always been such a strong writer. It just completely crushed my confidence. I know people said GAT doesn't mean anything, but it must right? The kids who get a 50 in english had the 50(or close) on their GAT report too... So it must have some sort of accuracy... I think?

I got 32 in the GAT (i.e. 22/40) compared with 43 SS, in year 12 not year 11, AND I wasn't EAL...

Yeah, right.

Yes.  Right.

No, honestly - if I managed a 43, feeling exactly the way you did and expecting 34-36 but without anyone to encourage me - you can achieve that and more!

well I didnt do year 10, 9 or 8 english either for that matter(I homeschooled with only theory english work... What is a noun etc).

If this goes to hell i need to do mainstream english and a 35 in mainstream is too far fetched for me.

About years 8-10, I didn't do year 10 at all, and our yr 9 Eng teacher was h-o-p-e-l-e-s-s - I might as well have never gone to class.  About the EAL vs mainstream - surely you'll only need 30 as a pre-req for mainstream anyway? and no, I don't see that you couldn't get a 35 anyway!

-is it too late to experiment with context?
**-what is bookending?
**-how do i integrate my creative into my expository ( or vise versa)?

Too late: no.  Go for it.
Bookending: something that frames your piece - something you put at the start and the end - could be a quote, an idea, an external example or event, a brief piece of monologue or narrative.
How to integrate creative into expository: countless possibilities. Re: English Q&A  Plus then smaller things, like putting metaphors or really interesting examples in your writing throughout.

-how long should i spend on planning for each of the three sections?
-how do i plan PROPERLY? Step by step what should i do during planning?
-should i do full 3 hour practice exams?

Planning is totally up to you, there's no 'right' way - some people write about 4 words, others write dot-pointed essays.  For TR and context, try questioning the prompts from as many angles as possible (see here.  It's honestly about figuring out what works for you - can you cope with just a few words, or do you need to rely on something deeper so you don't get lost? 

So, I'd question the prompts to come up with different ideas (making sure you cover every aspect/word of the prompt, and don't leave bits out), then figure out a contention and 3-4 overall paragraph ideas.  Then it's up to you whether you put in any details of supporting evidence, etc.

**-my next sac is in a couple of weeks and we havent started to discuss or even read the book yet. I have read it so should I start reading it again , annotating, grouping themes, writing essays etc? If not what should I do in order to prepare because I really can't afford to lose this many marks again.

Definitely - reread, annotate, compile a quote bank, research it on the internet, group themes and just think about it, try to 'invent' prompts and break down how you'd answer them, write an essay or two.  Don't wait for your teacher.

-how should i prepare for my next context sac? Should i find as many topics about identity and write one paragraph for each?Honestly, I am lost in this class, our teacher is hardly ever present and we are left to fend for ourselves.

I'd recommend researching your text and external examples, till you have a broad range of ideas/examples in reasonable depth.  Then get prompts from Re: Prompts and Sample Language Analysis Articles and try brainstorming them by just keeping asking questions about the prompt, from different angles

After you've done this with a number of prompts, try experimenting with writing pieces in different styles.

Incidentally, a good way I found of writing essays when I was really really stressed and struggling was to write a dot-pointed plan.  Keep making it more and more detailed (but since it's a plan, don't stress about formulating full, proper sentences), until you have 1 dot point per sentence you would write in the essay.  Then, when all your ideas and structure are in place, you can think about expression and vocab as you turn your dot-pointed essay into a piece of flowing prose.  This way, you only have to deal with one thing at a time.

**-teacher says I lost marks in my context essay for being too 'verbose' a total of 5 marks were deducted. How do i minimise this?

Try writing a couple of typed essays - or, since that's a horribly hard task, try getting a couple of other essays you've written - and record the word count.  Then play a game of trying to get the word count down as low as absolutely possible - change your sentences round, cut out anything that repeats itself, change passive sentences to active sentences, etc.  With practice, you'll quickly pick up good ways of saying things more concisely.  Google 'how to write concisely' or something - you'll hit pages like this or this.
Obviously you don't always want to write in the most concise way possible, as it can ruin your flow and become repetitive, but it's good to practise and be aware of.

-And above all, how do you find time to study for english on top of all your other subjects?? I find that english is stealing every spare minute I have left.. If thats the way it is, thats the way it is....
-In addition to that i miss 1/3 of all english classes because of a vet priority. How do i even begin to compensate for all that time lost??

How do you study for English?  What takes up so much time? <== spend a while thinking about this, because you really want to cut out anything that's ineffective and implement more effective methods.

**-also, how do I memorise quotes? Ahh..

Firstly decide what quotes to memorise - make a quote bank, grouped by character and/or theme.  Don't learn long full-sentence quotes normally, pick out the few words that are the 'core' of the quote to memorise.

Then stick them up everywhere (post-its) so you'll keep subconsciously reading them.  Or try flashcards (side note, have you seen the app Anki?) - on one side you might have a theme, e.g. 'greed', or, 'Scrooge is greedy', and on the back have a few quotes to prove it - you have to try to think of these quotes.  Also write some essays open-book, referring to your quotes; go through any closed-book essays afterwards with your quote bank, figuring out what quotes you should have ideally put in.


Sorry, zis is crazy long.  And I've shamelessly pinched a lot of this from my memories of what I've read Lauren saying - but my second-hand regurgitation isn't half as good, sorry!

Feel free to PM me at any time if you ever want support/encouragement (not the technical side, but coping with it).

[Mellyboo]

Ahh, taking screenshots screenshots and more screenshots ! I've skimmed over it, but I will read it in more detail before i head off to bed. One question that I did want answered was if I should write that modifiable essay that spectroscopy wrote about in his 'guide'?

[Gentoo]

The GAT tests how good you are at the GAT (and even then, if you were to hypothetically take it multiple times under different conditions or take different GATs, you'd almost certainly get different scores each time, so it's not even a perfect measure of that). Unlike what somebody said before, I wouldn't even consider the GAT to be too indicative of your "natural" ability to communicate effectively in English (for reasons I'll expound upon), let alone do well in a very specific, prescriptive VCE subject that's *sort of* like the GAT. Also keep in mind you would have been competing against people older than you when you did it.

For starters, the criteria for what they want you to write in the GAT is vague and to mark it would be very subjective. How much stock do they put into your level of written expression vs. being succint? How detailed do they want you to be? etc.

Basically, the GAT doesn't even reflect how talented a writer/how good you are at English you are in the first place. And even if it did, so much of doing well in English subjects is about knowing your texts, putting in hard work to improve at very specific-to-VCE styles of pieces etc. that you could do well even if you weren't the best (although as others have mentioned, your english looks good... and you're doing EAL). I'm positive I saw someone on this forum who said they got less than a 40 for Written Communication and a 50 in English (regular), for instance.

[mikehepro]

Judging from the quality of OP's post, 35 raw shouldn't be a problem at all. Esp
GAT is a waste of time, I got 22 in written response yet my EAL SS was 40. (A+,A,A+ in a below average EAL cohort)
(Since it is EAL, make sure you master Note taking in Section C. Free marks in the exam pretty much)
Bookending is a very good strategy for context, I used it in my imaginative pieces last year.
spectroscopy's tactic can definitely work;however, it is pretty risky. You need to mold your essay accordingly.
I think this quote is the essence of his post "99% of memorised essays are either bad or average, most good and great essays are not memorised at all, but sometimes memorised essays can get full marks, if you know what you're memorising"
Credit to the amazing Spectroscopy.

[literally lauren]

Just tyin' up loose ends:

**-the lang analysis asks for 3 points to comment on. Is it okay to do more?
-should i do an intro for lang analysis as eal just asks for a paragraph (300 or so words)?

Yes, but it's better to do three points well than to do five just for the sake of doing more. At the end of the year (for EAL) they ask you to find three main points to structure both your summary and your analysis around, so it's best to conform to that structure. However, your points don't have to be something as narrow as 'the author uses inclusive language;' if you have a fairly broad focus, it means you're able to incorporate many little sub-ideas under those three umbrella ideas.

-is it too late to experiment with context?

It's only too late on the morning of the exam. {I actually read a few books the night before the Eng. exam in '13 to calm my nerves, and I ended up using one as my opening example :p} If you want to try a totally different style, you're not even at a disadvantage - a lot of people write differently in the exam than they do in SACs - especially the Semester 1 SAC where at least half the state is still at a loss as to what they're meant to be doing.
So long as you're making a note of your experimenting, and you're doing it because you think it gives you greater opportunity to explore the prompt and showcase your skills, not because someone told you 'write a creative story, it'll get you a 10 easy' or anything like that.

**-what is bookending?
**-how do i integrate my creative into my expository ( or vise versa)

http://www.atarnotes.com/forum/index.php?topic=158781.msg823145#msg823145

-how long should i spend on planning for each of the three sections?
-how do i plan PROPERLY? Step by step what should i do during planning?

Answer to both is - whatever you need! Some people take ten minutes out of each essay's writing time, and they'll draw up a really extensive plans where they break down the prompts and work out what evidence they'll use in each paragraph, or annotate the L.A. piece in great detail. Others will just use a few minutes to scribble down a contention, or the focus of each of their paragraphs, and they'll be able to write an essay without referring to a plan. So long as you're being efficient, there's no inherent advantage either way.
The assessors will never look at your plan, so there is no 'proper' way; just work out what the bare minimum is for you to be able to feel confident enough to start writing. I suppose the stardard approach for T.R./Context would involve a brief bit of prompt unpacking (eg. underlining words, listing synonyms or questions, etc.) and then writing a few key words to be dealt with in each body paragraph.
Ultimately it depends whether you're a person who just  writes a plan to get the ideas out of your head, and then can just write an essay as you go, or someone who actually refers to and refines their plan as they go, and need more details so that you have the structure you need.

-should i do full 3 hour practice exams?

No real reason to aim for that right now. It's more important that you know what to write than just being able to write fast. If you're worried about time, perhaps aim for one essay in 90 or 100 minutes; that's probably an okay restriction at this point.

**-i read in this forum that you can just write and memorise an essay with quotes that you can alter to ANY prompt, any prompt at all no matter how obscure . (Find scenes and quotes that can be interpreted in many ways etc) Is this a viable option? I would feel a lot more confident if i had 4 more months to work on a 10/10 essay.

You could. But there is no earthly way that you could prepare for any prompt.

Here's the problem. The main criteria in both Text Response and Context is 'relevance' = 'how well you've answered the question/dealt with the prompt.' So whilst you may have awesome ideas and really solid vocab and quote usage, it's all for nothing if you're not addressing the task itself. A 10/10 essay isn't just an automatic 10/10 regardless of which prompt it's for - it'd score highly because it's answering the question as well as doing a lot of other things right.
A way better use of your time would be spending these next few months working on your skills so that you were capable of writing 10/10 essays, not just "perfecting" one and resting all your hopes on VCAA being nice with their prompt selection.

Yeah, right.

No, really. You were asking if it was mathematically possible for you to get a good score, and we all said yes.
Whether that's actually going to happen is dependent on your attitude and approach.

Note: going on from one of my previous questions, is spectroscopy's guide a way to go for my next sac's? He says only if you're desperate, well, I'm pretty desperate. He also says he didnt do year 11 english, well I didnt do year 10, 9 or 8 english either for that matter(I homeschooled with only theory english work... What is a noun etc). I don't care if this requires 'no lifing' because frankly, this year would have been a waste anyway if i get <35

See above. Also, reading spectroscopy's post thouroughly, he's not just saying 'if you're struggling, here's an option.' He also outlined some very important factors to consider; namely (as mikehepro noted) that it's more about moulding than memorising. You still have to understand what you're writing, and why it works! And if you manage to get to grips with what the English course requires and how best to cater your skills and earn marks, then it doesn't matter if you're relying solely on memorised content, or improvising as you go.
Re: previous years, so long as you can communicate well (which judging by your posts, you definitely can,) then there's no reason why this should put you at a disadvantage. (I am actually currently testing a theory whereby someone who knows absolutely nothing about the VCE English course can actually master it within a few months of fairly non-intensive work.)
All you need to do now is focus on where you're at not in terms of marks, but in terms of qualitative ability - and then work out what you need to do to improve. The forums or your teacher can help with either of these, but you've gotta pull yourself out of your stress bubble first
Don't think about the end result. In fact, look at it from a micro-managing perspective - focus on tiny little details at a time, and don't pay attention to the bigger picture of study scores and whatnot. Just go through one of the essays you've written and find a weakness of some sort. Maybe you've used a quote in T.R. but you haven't integrated it properly so it doesn't fit with the sentence. Okay, that's our starting point; now if you don't know how to fix it, ask someone here or at school if your teacher is helpful, then see how you go. Get feedback. If good, move on to next little problem. If bad, then repeat until good.

You don't want to spend so long worrying about how much you want to get a 35+ only to end up wasting time and compromising your chances at getting that 35+

The only time your score will be set in stone is after the exam is done. Everything you do up until that point can change your possible score for the better.

[Mellyboo]

Thanks for clarifying all that.

Do the three points for lang analysis include or exclude the visuals?

[Mellyboo]

Bumpp