Secondary I question the legitimacy of the VCE English Exam.

[TigerGlory]

Today our school sat a trial paper for English. Whilst its all well and good, it definatley got me thinking about us poor souls who have to go through the real thing.

I am very much against the prospect of writing 3 essay's in only 3 hours. I cant speak for everybody here, but I've gone through the year, having a minimum of 2 hours for a single essay, this includes knowing the topics beforehand and having adequate time to prepare. Thats all good, no arguments there.

But the end of year examination is ridiculous, what today revealed was who can write the most in 3 hours. English essay's should be able substance, not the length, and although markers swear blindly that this isnt the case, the reality is, that a person who writes 4 pages for an essay, is going to get better marks than a person who writes 2.

Not only that, but I believe that writing for 3 hours straight is simply unrealistic, looking around the room today while I massaged my aching wrist, I saw most people doing the exact same thing. Unfortunately this was a common occurance, as I often took a break from writing to try and figure out what in the world I was going to write next. The fact is that there is simply not enough time to write 3 essays, whilst clearly demonstrating your knowledge of a specific text or piece. Yet, you cant simply increase the writing time, because it is already at a ridiculous level.

Personally I think there are two possible solutions to this. Firstly, I believe the best option would be to split the English Exam into three exams. 2 x 120 minute exams for the essays, and a 90 minute exam for the Language Analysis. This would ensure that the student would have adequate planning time in the examination period to plan an essay. Ultimatley this ensures that what your testing is the person's ability to construct an essay, as well as integrete key aspects of the text in it, and not rushing through a few pages of writing without any basic plan whatsoever, which is so often the case. We've seen the Maths Exam's broken up into parts and I think its a great way to go with English.

The second solution is a little more unrealistic. Release the prompts prior to the exam to give students time to prepare essays. Although this could be likened to cheating, you still would not be able to take this into the exam. However you would be able to prepare your answer so that you arent writing an exam cold turkey.

 

[BomberGal]

I finished year 12 in 2003, and back then we had to write four pieces. I finished with time to spare - as you'd hope, at any rate. I think if you know your texts well enough and you've done enough practice, writing three essays in that time should be no issue. Also, two handwritten pages does not constitute an essay, I'd certainly hope someone who wrote that as a text response would get a worse mark! (Depending on the content of a four page essay, of course - that could just be waffle.)

If you knew what to study beforehand, I think it would make much of your year studying kind of redundant.

Just do lots of practice, really. It might take you a while to write an essay now but you have almost another two months. Use it wisely and you'll easily be able to whip out an essay in 30 or 40 minutes.

 

[smiddaz123]

All students are one a level playing field at the end of the day. Extra preparation gives you no advantage, since everyone else gets that extra preparation as well.

And it is always going to be able quality rather than quantity. I know people who always walk out of exams bragging about writing a shit load of pages, but they generally go poorly.

I think the exam tests people's composure and ability to write under some pressure, which is always a good thing.

I also think an hour for each essay is plenty of time to display your knowledge.

 

[mdc]

The second solution is a little more unrealistic. Release the prompts prior to the exam to give students time to prepare essays. Although this could be likened to cheating, you still would not be able to take this into the exam. However you would be able to prepare your answer so that you arent writing an exam cold turkey.

A few of my classmates back in the day prepared and memorized entire essays. There's really only 4-5 possible topics for any given text, and if you know what you're doing, you can get away with just memorizing a bunch of paragraphs and arranging/tweaking as needed.

As a slow writer though, I sort of agree with what you're saying. 3 hrs ain't enough to do anything but regurgitate, and even then I struggled.

Got my 2 essays done (about 800-900 words each), just finished my media analysis and got 1 sentence into my editorial/opinion piece.

 

[mdc]

Use it wisely and you'll easily be able to whip out an essay in 30

Reckon you're being a bit presumptuous here. I can't even copy out an essay in 30 mins. Simply can't write that fast.

 

[BomberGal]

Reckon you're being a bit presumptuous here. I can't even copy out an essay in 30 mins. Simply can't write that fast.

OK maybe the longer side of it then (thanks for clipping that off in your quote ). 40-45 minutes is pretty reasonable. Then again I don't give much thought to how fast one writes - taking more than 15 minutes to write a page is a bit odd to me. Do you write in cursive? Maybe you should

 

[mdc]

OK maybe the longer side of it then (thanks for clipping that off in your quote ). 40-45 minutes is pretty reasonable. Then again I don't give much thought to how fast one writes - taking more than 15 minutes to write a page is a bit odd to me. Do you write in cursive? Maybe you should

I had to copy out an essay in year 11, which was somewhere in the range of 800-1000 words. Took me exactly 42 minutes. So roughly 10-12 mins/page, without stopping to think or re-word or whatever.

 

[Team Mo']

What does increasing the time limit do? That still makes it easier for everyone else. Our SACS are all 65 minutes on the dot so it's a bit easier to adapt to writing 3 essays in 3 hours. Practice does help but knowing your topics will help a hell of a lot more where you can just write straight away and know how your essay will be structured and what goes where in every sentence.

And your point on substance not length. Although yes length does help it's a lot easier to put more into a longer essay and expand the topic rather then writing some really broad and smaller supposedly "better one." Having a time length that puts pressure on a person is the ultimate test otherwise they'd just put you in a room and let you write for as long as you wanted. That's very unrealistic but then again I guess the whole topic of writing essay's on book's you'll never touch again is a bit fake.

 

[beatlesmith]

Ancient History TEE exam has 4 essays in 3 hours. And you think YOU have it tough!

 

[BomberGal]

Ancient History TEE exam has 4 essays in 3 hours. And you think YOU have it tough!

IIRC the Year 12 History I did (Revolutions) had three essays and multiple short answer questions in...2 hours?

 

[Stubz]

You know something is wrong with the VCE system when your sitting in the library on your own doing a YR12 Identity and Belonging Context SAC, with no supervision whatsoever.

Not to mention the teachers gave you the essay questions before hand, so there was nothing stopping any student from getting their tutors to write an A+ essay and for them to just go into the SAC with their essays memorised.

Anyway I had already memorised my very own (not tutors) essay before the SAC so there wasn't really much point cheating, but I just found it comical how easy it would have been for me to get away with it. The funniest part is my English teacher is actually our YR12 co-ordinator as well.

SACs contributing 50% to your study score is a load of BS, for very reasons like this. Luckily VCAA have a massive weighting on the exams to prevent these kinds of shenanigans from occurring.

 

[Inferno]

As a slow writer I totally agree, however I get to wait until next week for the pain that is practice exams. Not only that but I've got small writing as well, and I'm lucky to write more than 3 pages in an 1.5 hour exam for English.

I know it's not English but in International Studies I didn't finish a single SAC this year because they were so bloody long (whereas most people in the class were only just finishing it on time), and it shits me that I'm averaging B+'s when I know most of the answers and should be getting at least half a grade higher and be near the top of the class but I just can't finish the thing in 55 minutes. I'm worried that this is whats going to happen in the end of year exams as well.

You know something is wrong with the VCE system when your sitting in the library on your own doing a YR12 Identity and Belonging Context SAC, with no supervision whatsoever.

Not to mention the teachers gave you the essay questions before hand, so there was nothing stopping any student from getting their tutors to write an A+ essay and for them to just go into the SAC with their essays memorised.

Anyway I had already memorised my very own (not tutors) essay before the SAC so there wasn't really much point cheating, but I just found it comical how easy it would have been for me to get away with it. The funniest part is my English teacher is actually our YR12 co-ordinator as well.

SACs contributing 50% to your study score is a load of BS, for very reasons like this. Luckily VCAA have a massive weighting on the exams to prevent these kinds of shenanigans from occurring.

That's not something wrong with the VCE system, that's something wrong with your school. Kinda like you said, the SAC marks mean shitall if you do badly on the exam, and if teachers are giving you the questions before the SACs it just means that an A in your class might be the equivilant of a C or something in a different class which doesn't help you get a better ENTER score at all, and makes you less prepared for the exams.

 

[hawkz]

Not long now till the english exam!!

Im doing encountering conflict, what context are other people doing?

 

[Armitage2Riewoldt]

Good luck guys.

I think I got 12 pages down. Probably closer to 11 though cos I didn't reach the bottom of all the 4th pages.

Probably the most stressful time of my life. Just take it easy and write. You'd be surprised how much time it is. I think I had time to go back and proof read all 3 of mine before time was up.

3 pages should be good enough for the essays. Thats 1 page in 20 minutes. Probably easier for Media Response and harder for context (oh god just thinking about it pains me) so yeah... 20 minutes is a long time to write a whole page.

The kid that got dux at ours wrote 21 pages :|

I guess thats why he got dux...

Just realised who made the thread...agreed, we got too much time for our SAC's. Pretty stupid to give people 2-3 periods for SAC's when they pretty much have to write 3 essays in that time in the exam...

 

[flight23]

good luck to all you bastards

 

[ssfc0203]

You have 3 essays in 3 hours?!

I would love that.

We have 3 essays in 2 hours for English Paper 2. One major essay, one major creative and a mini essay with short response questions in 2 hours as well.

The only thing I get 1 hour to an essay/creative is for English Extension, and I'm expected to write 7+ A4 pages.

For Modern History we do effectively 4 essays in 3 hours.

Seriously Vic kids, rejoice.

 

[Dylz48]

A few of my classmates back in the day prepared and memorized entire essays. There's really only 4-5 possible topics for any given text, and if you know what you're doing, you can get away with just memorizing a bunch of paragraphs and arranging/tweaking as needed.

As a slow writer though, I sort of agree with what you're saying. 3 hrs ain't enough to do anything but regurgitate, and even then I struggled.

Got my 2 essays done (about 800-900 words each), just finished my media analysis and got 1 sentence into my editorial/opinion piece.

As another slow writer I would be very interested in what sort of mark you got in english.

I would also appreciate any tips from anyone how to improve writing speed I find my content is usually very good but speed is my Achilles heel

 

[mdc]

As another slow writer I would be very interested in what sort of mark you got in english.

44.

I would also appreciate any tips from anyone how to improve writing speed I find my content is usually very good but speed is my Achilles heel

Practise, memorise central themes, and practise some more. There's no trick to be found here, unfortunately.

 

[mushda]

Argh, just did my year 11 exam today (same format as year 12) and didn't really get close to finishing in the 2.5 hours we had. Frustrates the hell out of me as I get very good grades for all the pieces we can do at home, but just can't manage the pace required for the in-school assessments.

Admittedly I put in a bit of a half-arsed study effort after my 3/4, but worrying nonetheless.

 

[deeman12]

As another slow writer I would be very interested in what sort of mark you got in english.

I would also appreciate any tips from anyone how to improve writing speed I find my content is usually very good but speed is my Achilles heel

Which pen brand are you using? My handwriting was incomprehensible throughout the early part of the year, so I shifted to Bic ReAction Gel 0.7. tip pens.. The cost was $4 for two pens at Big W and I went through about 30 pens which was about $60 spent all up. Definitely worth the money though because they helped me speed up my writing and make it semi-legible. Buy a pair and see how you go.

 

[Damon_3388]

All I can say is that thankfully they're more realistic in terms of what's expected of you at university. I had two 2-hour English exams recently, and both were requiring around 2,000 in total in two hours. I finished both with time to spare, and wrote enough, and felt it was good enough and my points made clearly without rushing through, to be thoroughly satisfied upon walking out afterwards.

I didn't do badly in Year 12 exams (on the contrary, I did quite well, even after barely studying compared to most people), and did fairly well with my final result (considering the effort I put in during the year) but the amount of writing that was (unspokenly) expected of you in exams and tests throughout the year (not just English, but other subjects like History too) was often excessive in relation to the time limit IMO. I remember some guys (I went to an all-boys private school) could churn out about 4-5 pages of writing an hour it seemed, and I just couldn't do that. Not only the actual writing pace required, but I found that I simply wrote too concisely and was too much 'to the point' with a lot of what I wrote to have such a high volume of writing at the end. They should give an expected word limit (like they often do in uni exams) as well as the time limit/expectations on the question paper.

As an aside, I think uni seems more focussed on whether you can actually express your knowledge of a subject, rather than lauding volume of writing and workrate during study periods, which (as much as it makes me sound like someone who doesn't want to work hard and is lazy with academics) I much prefer. Without bragging, I think I just coasted on natural ability (which a lot of people probably can't afford to do, without putting in extra work), but I found that I barely studied/did homework during Year 12, and I didn't have any tutoring, and I still did well and finished above people who almost killed themselves with stress and the school and self-imposed workload. I didn't score high enough to get into medicine or law or anything like that, but I was able to very easily get into the area I wanted to (I'm doing a BA, majoring in English), and could have gotten into other areas requiring higher marks if I'd chosen to, so I was relatively pleased with my end results.

 

[TigerGlory]

I changed my tune big time after having done the English exam.

Whilst I basically winged the trial exam and struggled to come up with key themes and such, because I'd studied big time for the actual English Exam, 3 essays in 3 hours didnt seem that big a deal.

I ended up with 12 pages overall, 4 on each section. Considering I got 83% on the trial exam, im expecting to hopefully at least breakeven in the real exam.

 

[ssfc0203]

It's not about quantity unless you waffle on to getbtobyour point, which doesn't allow you to gain any marks and is just 'padding'.

I wrote an essay on a topic that went for 3 pages in an exam booklet, about 1.5 A4 in 20 minutes or so, expecting a C because of the length. I got 18/20, compared to my friend who did 9 pages and got 19.

If you develop a concise thesis and get straight to the point, it is to your advantage.

To give more time in the exams would just show a wider gap between the higher and lower bands than there already is. I know if I had the extra 20 minutes I'd check and refine, making it a 2nd draft rather than a first littered with errors.