English exam : "Deceptively simple"

[taiga]

VCE exam a simple test in complexity
Jewel Topsfield
October 29, 2010

SOME of the questions in this year's VCE English exam were deceptively simple.

Who suffers the most in the Charles Dickens novel Hard Times? What role does music play in Peter Goldworthy's novel Maestro?
 
But these questions work on a number of levels, according to Chris Millgate-Smith, an English teacher at Tintern Schools.

''They can be answered at a simple and direct level but they can also be taken to quite sophisticated levels,'' Ms Millgate-Smith said.

''I thought it was a well-balanced paper in that questions were generally accessible, but also that they allowed for more complexity of interpretation.''


A cohort of Tintern students, who were among the 43,752 students who sat the exam yesterday, were pleasantly surprised. ''It was easier than I thought it was going to be. I was more prepared than I thought I was,'' said Meg Wilson, 18.

''Maths exams are easier because you are right or wrong, with English exams you have to come to your own conclusion, which makes it harder.''

The Tintern students were taught examiners would be marking their expression, their ability to sum up their argument in the first sentence and their use of interesting, in-depth quotes from the English texts they studied.

To this end, Stephanie Kluz, 18, redecorated her whole house with posters of quotes from Maestro. ''I don't think the family appreciated it, but it worked well,'' she said. By her desk she hung the quote: ''To search too long for perfection is to paralyse.'' ''I used to like that one because I decided if I had done too much study that day I was going to get paralysed.''

It also came in handy when students were asked: Is there any suggestion in Maestro that the quest for perfection paralyses the characters?

The 3¼-hour exam was divided into three sections, with the first asking students to complete an analytical piece of writing in response to a question on a selected text.

The second section required students to draw on a text they had studied to respond to a statement, such as Having a sense of being different makes it difficult to belong.

The third section asked students to analyse the way in which language was used to present a point of view in a speech given at an international biodiversity conference.

Margaret Saltau, a member of the executive of the Victorian Association for the Teaching of English, said the exam was straightforward and very do-able for well-prepared students.

''There were no surprises and it was a good, solid test of students' knowledge and skills,'' Ms Saltau said.

English was the first of 111 written exams, which will run until November 18.


Exam results will be available on December 13.

http://www.theage.com.au/national/education/vce-exam-a-simple-test-in-complexity-20101028-175q9.html

I thought it was a cute article, discuss

[werdna]

The first time I've disagreed completely with a newspaper article.

[n.f]

This looks like an advertisement for Tintern. I've nothing to add.

[iNerd]

The first time I've disagreed completely with a newspaper article.

...a newspaper article from "TheAge". Sif you wouldn't have disagreed with HeraldSun trash before?

[shinny]

The first time I've disagreed completely with a newspaper article.

...a newspaper article from "TheAge". Sif you wouldn't have disagreed with HeraldSun trash before?

I consider the Herald to be more of a gossip mag

The first time I've disagreed completely with a newspaper article.

What do you actually disagree with though?

[burbs]

This is the first time you've disagreed with a newspaper article?

[werdna]

It was a bit of exaggeration, guys! But I disagree with the fact that it was "deceptively simple" and "well balanced".

I found the Look Both Ways topics to be crap.. and the context prompt didn't really work for me.

But maybe that's only because I didn't finish the exam and instead endured some seriously bad mind blanks.

(I definitely wouldn't be complaining if I finished it! )

[bomb]

It was a bit of exaggeration, guys! But I disagree with the fact that it was "deceptively simple" and "well balanced".

I found the Look Both Ways topics to be crap.. and the context prompt didn't really work for me.

But maybe that's only because I didn't finish the exam and instead endured some seriously bad mind blanks.

(I definitely wouldn't be complaining if I finished it! )

Could have just been your teacher who had prepared you wrong.

Or you didn't prepare well yourself..

[shinny]

It was a bit of exaggeration, guys! But I disagree with the fact that it was "deceptively simple" and "well balanced".

I found the Look Both Ways topics to be crap.. and the context prompt didn't really work for me.

But maybe that's only because I didn't finish the exam and instead endured some seriously bad mind blanks.

(I definitely wouldn't be complaining if I finished it! )

Well I guess they can only speak for the texts they personally did. They did qualify it by saying 'some' of this year's questions. I've always found these articles to be pretty stupid to read though. They come out with the same article every year saying that the English exam was yesterday and then just give some topics from the exam.

[7132]

talking to lots of ppl.... most found it pretty easy. I screwed it though.... most ppl at my school finished with close to half hour to go

[Souljette_93]

But even if the whole cohort found it easy,it wouldn't matter, because it would come down to how well you wrote the piece. So nothing really makes english "hard" or "easy".

[monicapham93]

made me nervous now
i wrote on maestro and already wasnt feeling that confident... didnt feel it was my essay on the day...
but now i just feel my essay is more contrived than ever!

[taiga]

I think to say a english exam is "easy" is to misinterpret the point of it

That said, I am going to assume Hard Times and Maestro are the two texts Tintern do; hence that's why they might think the topics did not explore enough depth.

Though it should be a slight concern if you've done a topic which seems very character and plot based, but have not gone into much depth.

[Kotza]

i dont see how the difficulty can change each year.

1. text response: If you know your text well enough and have prepared yourself = no question should be hard. Even if it is retarded and what not, if other people can and did do them, then so can you. Also, if it really was that bad (as people have suggested for LBW) then everybody will do badly, causing the system to still be as equal if everyone did well.

2. Creating and presenting: This just comes down to preparation. I wrote 2 practice pieces, and that was it. Fortunately for me it was identical to the one on the exam.

3. Language: No matter what subject the article was written in regards to, it is simply words on a page. And VCAA always chooses articles with many things to analyse... only issue i can think of was the amount of unnecessary detail in the background info... it has never been so detailed which wasted time for me.

So i think its a bullshit article, how can you say OH HEY THIS YEARS WAS EASY, no dickhead, you were prepared/just smart. Every year its the same thing (basically.)

[kyzoo]

IMO the last three year's language analysis articles are all really weird, and so different from the standard articles we analyze in class.

2008 - Very limited scope of issue. I usually use "impassioned and widespread debate" in my first sentence, and I had to use something else for this article because "widespread debate" is not quite accurate. Also the bold subheadings that were placed throughout the piece. No publication date. Very rich image though.

2009 - SOOOOO LONG =.= Took me 3 minutes to read the whole thing when it usually takes 1-2 minutes at most. When I did it, I had to skip so much of the stuff in the 2nd half of the article. And the bare photograph devoid of content doesn't help either. Genderless author too =/ Stupid podcast extract that makes no sense at all. Heaps of stuff to analyze though.

2010 - It's a speaker instead of a writer. Specifically targeted at the people in the conference who are leaders in biodiversity rather than a general audience. Two slides that you need to analyze rather than one image. The first quarter of his speech doesn't even have a that much persuasive impact =.= Normally I'm really in depth for the first few paragraphs, whereas there was almost nothing to analyze in the start for this one.