VCE is biased?

[red bull]

It should be clear by now that the VCE system, unfortunately, is troubled by the problem of inequality between students from differing socio-economic areas of society. The vast gap separating the top and bottom schools ensures that there are able, willing and motivated students who are being left behind, struggling at the bottom.

How true is this statement?

I am currently in a situation where i must do a language outside of school because my school would not permit me to do 6 subjects. Will doing a language outside of school affect the mark which i am capable of getting? I'm really worried because i know an indian girl at my school who got 30 for chinese having only learnt it for 5 years, and my friend who speaks chinese at home ended up getting 28.

By the way i attend a private school

[Akirus]

There may be a difference in the quality of the education you receive at a good school and a bad school, but it's far from an insurmountable obstacle.

Why do you want to do six subjects in year 12 anyway? Are you aware that only your top 6 will make a contribution to your ENTER? I think you'd be better off taking 5, it'll work in your favor, at least as far as time goes (not to mention you have a predicted physics score of 29, why not just drop that..?).

[simonhu81292]

lol....same here..doing 6 subjects in year 12...
but i am think go with interest....
six is six...5 is 5...4 is fine
is just simply interest...
by the way .. i am not from a private or a good school
but i think determination will get you some where 

[kyzoo]

About speaking a language at home - I've spoken Cantonese at home for my whole life, and I don't think my Cantonese has improved very much in the last 6 years. My Canto furthermore is very poor, I find that I struggle to comprehend every 2nd sentence, and I have trouble expressing myself in Canto. In comparison, I started learning Mandarin in Y7, and it's been more than a year already since my Mandarin vocab trumps my Canto vocab.

In a home environment, you are repetitively exposed to the same "language routine," there is very little new input. Thus without formal education, there is a limit to your potential proficiency in a language. Speaking a language at home only helps with fluency and listening; it does nothing for vocab, which is crucial to your ability to express yourself.

[Akirus]

About speaking a language at home - I've spoken Cantonese at home for my whole life, and I don't think my Cantonese has improved very much in the last 6 years. My Canto furthermore is very poor, I find that I don't understand the full meaning of every 2nd sentence, and I have trouble expressing myself in Canto. In comparison, I started learning Mandarin in Y7, and it's been more than a year already since my Mandarin vocab trumps my Canto vocab.

In a home environment, you are repetitively exposed to the same "language routine," there is very little new input. Thus without formal education, there is a limit to your potential proficiency in a language. Speaking a language at home only helps with fluency and listening, it does nothing for vocab.

Agreed. My Cantonese sucks and it's technically my first language. On the other hand, my English is usually praised but I couldn't even speak it until I was 5 or so. To be fair though, I did Mandarin from when I was 6-7 years old until year 9, and that sucks too (seems you don't learn much when you're a negligent student that doesn't care for the subject you're doing).

[humadeee]

About speaking a language at home - I've spoken Cantonese at home for my whole life, and I don't think my Cantonese has improved very much in the last 6 years. My Canto furthermore is very poor, I find that I don't understand the full meaning of every 2nd sentence, and I have trouble expressing myself in Canto. In comparison, I started learning Mandarin in Y7, and it's been more than a year already since my Mandarin vocab trumps my Canto vocab.

In a home environment, you are repetitively exposed to the same "language routine," there is very little new input. Thus without formal education, there is a limit to your potential proficiency in a language. Speaking a language at home only helps with fluency and listening; it does nothing for vocab, which is crucial to your ability to express yourself.

I completely agree with this.

[red bull]

There may be a difference in the quality of the education you receive at a good school and a bad school, but it's far from an insurmountable obstacle.

Why do you want to do six subjects in year 12 anyway? Are you aware that only your top 6 will make a contribution to your ENTER? I think you'd be better off taking 5, it'll work in your favor, at least as far as time goes (not to mention you have a predicted physics score of 29, why not just drop that..?).

I'm doing physics as precautionary move. In the case that i don't get into commerce, i will pursue engineering

[slothpomba]

The education system in Australia is pretty decent. There is a huge gap between the *very* top and the *very* bottom schools i will admit. However, these schools fall within the 2-5% i reckon at each end. There isn't huge gaps between the schools in the middle.

It's just not the school however, i feel like i might be stating the obvious but in life things are rarely simple. There are probably a number of factors you have to take into account:

*School ofcourse

*Wealth of the student (even if you go to a public school if your parents can afford you to buy you every book and guide under the sun and tutor you for everything you will do better, tutoring however can be quiet expensive)

*Determination of the student

* Sometimes it just comes down to pure random luck, maybe that *one* single area you didnt study so hard on, was most of the exam or that one little thing you glossed over, or a couple words in a wrong place.

You're indian friend might of had a lot of determination and studied much harder, because indeed she wasnt a native speaker of the language. You must consider other factors but i think this is a big part of that situation.

Sometimes speakers of the language can take it for granted and maybe not work as hard someone who doesn't natively speak the language. Native language speakers to have an advantage by default but determination may level that out.

VCE and any education system, since it is so complex and huge will always have problems. I'm not sure what the system was like before but im sure it's gotten better or at least not too much worse.

[slothpomba]

VCE is mainly work in - work out i believe.

You get a decent reflection of what you put in for your results.

Private schools and tuition may make this easier but still hard work will get you there no matter what school you go to.

I think VCE is a fair system overall, for almost every uni course.

*Except* the hyper competitive ones like medicine. (which i want to get into)

Medicine isnt just about a very high enter (indeed a better school will give you this), its also about the umat.

Technically, they say you dont need to do any preparation for the umat but there are prep courses that exist out there, that are quiet a lot of money $700+ (i'm not sure if im going to do one yet) and the umat is competitive 1 or 2 more extra percentile might get you in thanks to the course.

So i think there would be a disparity in medicine, youd end up with a lot of kids from richer familys getting in and continuing the tradition (kids of doctors, ect) rather than fresh blood.

Medicine used to be very plutocratic and oligocratic, i think some of these roots still exist till today.

(i go to a catholic school, the fees are higher than a public school but we get less funding than a public school, id say its average on best, a couple of my teachers are just terrible and make me hate turning up to class and hate their own jobs.)

List of every school and the average study score and % of study scores over 40 for that school

[sorry for the double post but i tried to split it up so people wouldnt fall asleep on their keyboard while i was ranting)

[Collin Li]

The discussion about language reminds me of SmRandmAzn's blog post about input vs. output in language learning.

[turley]

don't blame or expect much from your school - (pouring $$ into VCE rarely yields good marks)

[brightsky]

About speaking a language at home - I've spoken Cantonese at home for my whole life, and I don't think my Cantonese has improved very much in the last 6 years. My Canto furthermore is very poor, I find that I struggle to comprehend every 2nd sentence, and I have trouble expressing myself in Canto. In comparison, I started learning Mandarin in Y7, and it's been more than a year already since my Mandarin vocab trumps my Canto vocab.

In a home environment, you are repetitively exposed to the same "language routine," there is very little new input. Thus without formal education, there is a limit to your potential proficiency in a language. Speaking a language at home only helps with fluency and listening; it does nothing for vocab, which is crucial to your ability to express yourself.

About speaking a language at home - I've spoken Cantonese at home for my whole life, and I don't think my Cantonese has improved very much in the last 6 years. My Canto furthermore is very poor, I find that I don't understand the full meaning of every 2nd sentence, and I have trouble expressing myself in Canto. In comparison, I started learning Mandarin in Y7, and it's been more than a year already since my Mandarin vocab trumps my Canto vocab.

In a home environment, you are repetitively exposed to the same "language routine," there is very little new input. Thus without formal education, there is a limit to your potential proficiency in a language. Speaking a language at home only helps with fluency and listening, it does nothing for vocab.

Agreed. My Cantonese sucks and it's technically my first language. On the other hand, my English is usually praised but I couldn't even speak it until I was 5 or so. To be fair though, I did Mandarin from when I was 6-7 years old until year 9, and that sucks too (seems you don't learn much when you're a negligent student that doesn't care for the subject you're doing).

I'm in the EXACT same boat as you guys!! Completely irrelevant to this thread, but any suggestions on improving vocab? I don't find Chinese school ALL that useful for expanding vocab...

[kyzoo]

My mind blanks out in Chinese school -.-.

As for vocab, I used to just read textbook, and whenever I encounter unfamiliar vocab I list it on a blank piece of paper. After an arbitrary amount of time, I would transcribe the list onto a document, ensuring I explored my understanding of the vocab in the process. But after a few months I dreaded doing these textbook sessions, so I altered my method. Besides, this textbook method was flawed - very inefficient, no listening practice, and my pronunciation is screwed because I solely relied on this method for too long. Furthermore just 20-40 mins on the textbook each day is insufficient exposure, and it's too mentally taxing to sustain for very long.

Now I just listen to podcasts and ask my parents when I encounter a phrase I don't know.

You should probably ask SM for how to learn vocab seeing as he got 50 for Jap and he's not a native speaker (I think).

[minilunchbox]

Watch Chinese tv shows/movies, listen to Chinese music, read Chinese books/newspaper.

[kyzoo]

^ I have listened to Chinese music but I cannot make out the lyrics, Chinese newspapers are all in traditional characters, and the Chinese spoken on TV shows and movies goes too fast for me to pick out a single phrase I don't understand, there's just too many. IMO, you need to be sufficiently advanced at the language for you to benefit from Chinese media. At my level, there are just too many phrases that I don't understand, and I become overwhelmed when I am exposed to Chinese intended for first-language speakers. You really can't be bothered picking up a dictionary, or asking someone for help, when you don't understand every 3rd sentence, especially at the speed natives talk at.