Questions from a year 10 student

[da_coolest1]

1. What English subject are you doing/completed?
2. Why did you pick it?
3. Do you like it? Why/why not?
4. What is/are the best thing/s about it?
5. What is/are the worst things about it?

I hope this isn't too much trouble. All my school has is mainstream English and I want to know if the other ones are worth doing virtual school for or if mainstream English is interesting. Thanks.

[whys]

1. Mainstream
2. Because eng lang didn't appeal to me and lit seemed like a subject I had to put more effort into than mainstream. I was also fairly confident in my English abilities in mainstream.
3. Yeah, I do. I enjoy writing essays and I love analysing novels and poetry, so I naturally enjoyed the subject. It can get boring though, however there are a billion ways to spice it up if you aren't finding it interesting.
4. Analysing. I know this is a key element in all of the English subjects, however in mainstream you analyse articles, novels and poetry, which if you look into deep enough, you will find it very interesting. You also have a sac in year 12 that involves writing a creative piece (pretty sure this is in lit as well though). Another good thing about mainstream is that you don't need to learn anything new to do it. It's basically a harder version of year 10 English, with a few new things (analysing argument) but apart from that you won't find any surprises.
5. It can be quite confining for those who would rather not stick to contemporary essay writing and it can feel quite limiting in how you can structure your essays. It may also bet boring at some points because you already know how to do certain things but you have to do it again anyway (e.g. text response). It's also very hard to figure out if your essay is a 9/10 or a 3/10 if you have a teacher who marks very harshly or very leniently, however, this is probably true for lit as well. You must be familiar with the way VCAA marks essays and tailor your essays to a 10/10 standard (if you are aiming high).

[colline]

1. What English subject are you doing/completed?

Literature (completed 2018)

2. Why did you pick it?

I did an elective in year 10 which mimics VCE Lit and I loved how much creative freedom Lit has compared to normal English. There was also the thought of a 3hr English exam vs 2hr literature exam.

3. Do you like it? Why/why not?

Absolutely one hundred percent yes!
Going off what I said above, in Lit you have so much freedom when it comes to writing essays. Unlike English where you must strictly adhere to the structure of ‘intro, body paragraphs, conclusion’, in literature you could essentially write however you wish as long as your writing flows logically and you can effectively get your point across.

4. What is/are the best thing/s about it?

Aside from the lack of a restricting criteria, I also loved the texts. In lit, you won’t have to do boring language analysis or oral presentations. Of course this is a subjective opinion. If you like doing argument analysis and things like that English might be better.

5. What is/are the worst things about it?

I found literature to be an awful lot of work, particularly for Literary Perspectives (section A). You have to not only read and know your text, but also critiques written by others, so the workload can triple or even quadruple.

But I don’t think it’s too much of a problem that Lit has a higher workload. After all your study score is a ranking and everybody is being subjected to the same amount of work.