Should I change into standard English?

[EmilyRoseLamb]

I've taken Literature 1/2 this year in year 11 and am beginning to feel very disheartened. I have been a straight A+ English student for my entire life, and in Literature this year I've been averaging B-B+...I'm contemplating moving into English as I feel I could do much better, however I'm seeking opinions. Should I work at improving my grades in Literature or go ahead and change? I'm also taking Global Politics, Psychology, Legal Studies, Further Maths and Uni extension Law...in all other subjects I average A+. I'm aiming to get an ATAR of 90 or hopefully a little above. What is the downside of changing? Thank you.

[brenden]

My general advice for students who are strong at English but not excessively, ridiculously strong, is to just do normal English (or at least take both). I think the Literature cohort is too strong at Literature (even if they aren't as strong in other subjects to warrant higher scaling) for it to only be worth a 1-2 point scaling compensation, whereas, a good English student is pretty much guaranteed a 35+ after scaling with a decent amount of work. If you put a tonne of work into mainstream English (probably more than you're expecting, because you've likely never done THAT much work to be good at it), you can score super highly, but I think it's a different scenario come Lit.

(Although, I think there have been some people on here getting Bs in Year 11 Lit to go on and get 45+)

[EmilyRoseLamb]

Global Politics and Legal Studies both require extensive use of abilities attained in English, and I've been told that I'm heading for above 40 in both if I maintain my current work ethic. Believe me, I'm committed to put hours upon hours of study in. I got an A+ on my Lit exam mid year and I'm feeling the grading is so highly subjective. Thank you for the advice re-scaling. That is something I was concerned about.

[literally lauren]

Defs agree that English will help you more in glopol and legal, and you may even find some of the stuff you cover in those two subjects can aid you in English (context, specifically) essays too. And you're right about Lit's subjectivity; whilst it is possible to work hard to a point where you can be certain of a 40+ score, often what separates high-end essays is the assessors' bias, unfortunately. English isn't quite so bad, and it's much more easy to grasp, so don't worry about not having done 1/2.

Technically re: scaling, English does down by one, Lit goes up by one or two depending on the year, but it's a really minor effect either way.

Generally if you don't enjoy Literature as a subject, I'd say drop it. It was my favourite in Year 12, but even then I got so frustrated with the vague marking scheme and the way my grades would vacillates with no explanation. I guess teaching plays a role (since my teacher basically gave me two ticks and a 'good' on every essay I wrote - nothing more -.-) so if you know who the Literature teacher(s) will be next year, then you can factor that into your decision.

With regards to your Lit. score, do you tend to do better in Passage/Close Analysis, or the additional (eg. Adaption essays, Views & Values, Creatives) because the course is structured rather strangely. There are five SACs in Year 12, only one of which is what you'll be dealing with in the exam, so it's a deceptively difficult workload because what you do for the SACs doesn't realistically prepare you for the exam until late Term 3. A good teacher will keep up the Passage Analysis on the side, but it does involve a lot of effort on your part.

For English meanwhile:
1 Persuasive Oral SAC; worth very little & not on the exam, usually in the first few weeks of Semester 1
1 Language Analysis SAC in Semester 1
2 Text Response SACs; one in each Semester
2 Context Pieces; one in each Semester

And your exam:
1 Language Analysis
1 Text Response
1 Context

...so it's much more geared towards the end of year assessment.

Only downside I can think of for switching would be the temporary disorientation if you haven't done English since Year 10 (and in my experience, a lot of schools teach things badly from Year 10 and below, so there can be a steep learning curve for everyone once they get to the upper year levels) but you'll find a lot of your Lit skills to be transferable - particularly for the Language Analysis and Text Response essays - so that shouldn't be too much of a problem.

Let us know if you've got any questions about either course!
And there's a post here that gives a general overview of both the 3/4s if you're interested.

[spectroscopy]

i did all 3 englishes at one point and i think in your case its pretty much 51/49 (leaning in english's favour). everyones points are valid that you will probably do better in english with an equal amount of work but literature is so darn fun (if you disagree then just drop it now LOL). but the psychological aspect of feeling better in mainstream definitely puts the decision in mainstream english's favour

i would say switch but just make sure you write lots of practice essays next year and learn how to write vce english style essays. when i first moved from lit to english i did poorly in text response because i was writing them like a lit style passage analysis and that sort of thing. in general though i think its an awesome idea to go from 1/2 lit/eng lang -> mainstream english if you are naturally a strong english student, and youll most likely get a higher score in english than lit

[EmilyRoseLamb]

First of all, thank you so much to absolutely everyone! Your advice has been so helpful. I started to have a nervous breakdown today after my teacher said my practice essay was yet again 'B worthy' without really giving me more detail on where I need to improve. "Your expression and use of vocabulary is excellent, but you need to go into more depth with your analysis." -thank you, I just talked about the symbolism of Gatsby knocking a clock off of the mantel for a page long paragraph, dissecting every word, phrase and technique... but alright.
I do like literature but I've put in so much work and the disheartening blow of every grade under an A making my report less pretty is just getting too frustrating. Does anyone have any advice re preparing to transfer into standard English? (Aside from practice essays).    And Lauren, just out of curiosity, what sort of study score did you get with what grades? The Lit cohort is so strong (not in my school mind you) that I understand how difficult it is to get even into the low 30's... 

[literally lauren]

First of all, thank you so much to absolutely everyone! Your advice has been so helpful. I started to have a nervous breakdown today after my teacher said my practice essay was yet again 'B worthy' without really giving me more detail on where I need to improve. "Your expression and use of vocabulary is excellent, but you need to go into more depth with your analysis." -thank you, I just talked about the symbolism of Gatsby knocking a clock off of the mantel for a page long paragraph, dissecting every word, phrase and technique... but alright.
I do like literature but I've put in so much work and the disheartening blow of every grade under an A making my report less pretty is just getting too frustrating. Does anyone have any advice re preparing to transfer into standard English? (Aside from practice essays).    And Lauren, just out of curiosity, what sort of study score did you get with what grades? The Lit cohort is so strong (not in my school mind you) that I understand how difficult it is to get even into the low 30's... 

I have a sneaking suspicion "needs more depth" is just a generic bit of feedback for when teachers don't know what else to say but need to justify not giving you full marks 

Re: preparing to transfer, don't even worry about practice essays; just familiarise yourself with the course. Maybe read over other people's pieces (there's a tonne of stuff here) and definitely read all your books over the summer.  By that point, you'll be better prepared than half the state anyway
At most, perhaps focus on Language Analysis for awhile since that's an easy one to nail down before school starts, especially with your Passage Analysis skills. Try to get a hold of some practice material that your school uses for SACs, if possible, or just go through some past/practice exams.
(Incidentally, going through some past papers would be a good idea too, if you haven't already done so.)

Grade-wise, I'm a bad example because I'm a lit-nerd so I got 46 which I still feel was an injustice but whatevs. My school wasn't very forthcoming with actual numerical grades so I just got a general bandwidth of 'Very Good' coupled with useful feedback like 'develop more' or 'not enough pizzazz here' but I've since found out that my teacher gave me one mark less than the total for every single SAC, so 19/20, 49/50 etc. That didn't matter much since ranking (explanation here) meant I did fine in the end, but dropped a couple of marks on the exam due to an assessor not liking the cut of my jib
_{do I sound bitter? I'm not bitter -.-}

Obviously the difficulty is subjective, but I'd say English is easy to get a 30 in if you're competent, and pretty easy to get a 40 in if you're prepared to put in the effort. Getting a 30 in Lit means you need a pretty good understanding of the subject, and getting a 40 means you can pull it off well. Everything above that is really dependent on your teacher/assessor unfortunately. Anyone could do well in both with some smart study, but I'd say Lit has that extra kick of being rather badly coordinated and assessed that makes it just that little bit trickier.

[EmilyRoseLamb]

What a brilliant achievement! 46 - although I do understand if you felt you deserved higher, it would have taken so much effort and time  

Thank you so much for the advice. If I was to stick with Literature, what do you think are the main tricks and techniques that help you to achieve in it? I'm feeling very lost, as when I compare my response to a short film which received a grade of A+ and my Pride and Prejudice essay which received an A and my Metamorphosis essay that got a B+...I just struggle to see what the difference is between them all.

[literally lauren]

It's really tough to say without having read your work, but I guess the most common problem people have in Lit (myself included, in hindsight) is not spelling out their working when analysing. It's easy to write a piece and think, 'yep, I've substantiated my arguments,' but it's quite another to be able to write something logical that the assessor can follow without missing a beat. Ironically this becomes harder the more you study a text, as you get so used to certain interpretations that you'll end up reusing some without the necessary justification you did in other essays, and it gets to a point where you start writing composite pieces based on everything that's come before, and it makes perfect sense to you because you've written it half a dozen times already, but the assessors are just like     

If you're teacher's more forthcoming with verbal feedback than written, it might be worth going to talk to him/her and see if they can spell out where you need more work. It might just be a silly 'the class needs to be on a bell curve so someone has to get a B+' scenario, but consulting with them should, at the very least, give you something to work on.

Is there anything in particular you think you could've done better in those essays? Either the A+ one or the B+ one?

[EmilyRoseLamb]

A big part of the issue is that my teachers just aren't generous with feedback, I've had to beg for the feedback that I've received  I feel as though I've gone into the same detail in every essay and with that particular essay (B+) I had received the highest grade in the class...! Most had received C-, D's...then others had failed completely. It feels unfair, as I know they're not poor writers. They wouldn't have chosen the subject if they were.

[literally lauren]

In that case, you could always drop an essay into the Submissions Board and myself and/or someone else can give you some feedback. I know it can be hard to work out where you're going wrong without qualitative feedback, so perhaps look through any 'good'/A+ examples your school has provided, or samples from the Assessor's Reports and see if you can work backwards from there (ie. 'what are these essays doing that I'm not yet doing?')

[KEAEducation]

There's no reason as to why you can't do both! But if you don't want to then I would suggest switching into English. I would say Literature is a more time-intensive subject, rewarding it may be. And the extra time you spent into studying for Lit could easily be spent in English.

[EmilyRoseLamb]

Guess what guys...I got an A on my end of year exam...my teacher has told me she feels I'm well suitable for Lit if I love it...and to be honest, I've come to the decision that I really do. The texts we study next year are wonderful, more so than what I would be studying in English. I just think I'll stick with it, now. My average is A+ in all other subjects and, now that I know wha they expect from me in Lit I'm quite confident that I can replicate it. Thank you all for your feedback