English: Discussion, Questions & Potential Solutions

[joshgoundar]

For section C
Did anyone not talk about the logo?

[Yertle the Turtle]

I felt like the Medea prompts were easy but I stuffed it up. I was really happy with the Ransom/Invictus prompts and I'm pretty sure I did well on section B (4+ pages) and I thought Section C was easy, but there didn't appear to be any real contention imo. On the whole it was ok, and I'm over the moon that English is done forever.

[literally lauren]

Umm so lets say i didnt finish the exam. Finished section C, wrote about three pages on section A and an intro and body par for section B. How stuffed am I?

Don't stress! Each essay is marked separately, so your pieces for Sections A and C won't be negatively impacted by Section B. If you only wrote an intro and one body para, you'd probably struggle to get about a ~5/10 for that section, but your results from the other two sections can boost you up. It's really common that students don't finish one or more of their essays, so don't let it affect your mindset negatively! Just try to be cautious of timing for the next couple of exams so you can pace yourself and show the assessors everything you know

For section C
Did anyone not talk about the logo?

Assuming you mean the title and rather rubbish drawing at the top of the page? That's not super important - you would have HAD to talk about the cartoon, but the logo and that box summary at the end were just optional extras. For example, you could have talked about how the hand-drawn, calligraphic style of that writing reflected the author's emphasis on tradition in the face of corporate 'soullessness,' or the fact that he was 'about town' gives him credibility as someone well versed in cafe culture. But not at all essential, so don't stress if you didn't refer to it!

[jimwalker7]

BURIAL RITES!!
the questions were so hard imo uhhhhh. *(anyone else)
Why couldn't it be something broad, my other classmates who did Island had such easy questions

[Google123]

Is it REALLY detrimental if you go slightly off topic with one of your paragraphs for section A?
Kinda thought I did that for Medea. But will that form a negative first impression if they do think it is off topic?

[ardria]

Got absolutely blessed with the first White Tiger question: "why is Balram called the white tiger?".

Ransom/Invictus had shocking topics. My teachers were mad at VCAA for the second topic (social and culture differences? wtf), and didn't think the first one (knowing your enemy) was great either. Definitely worried I bombed massively on Sec B. Chose the knowing your enemy topic, spat out an intro, an entire paragraph throwing together highly questionable points for Invictus, then one more paragraph that briefly mentioned Ransom's relevance to the topic then just went straight into a really short "but they differ in...", and then the most basic conclusion ever. About 3 pages but my handwriting is huge. I wanted to produce a "finished" essay rather than be stopped halfway through. Any thoughts on if I should be expecting 5/10 MAX?

Sec C was a bit weird, I focused on portrayals (portrayal of himself, incl. his self-portrait + portrayal of the cafe vs. the other stores ). I also chucked in for the cartoon that it implied this new chain cafe would threaten business of the other ones, evidenced by the gathering of children around the new cafe but no the other ones. I chose not to talk about the frowning granny cus it seemed silly to me at the time to analyse it, not sure why. I have no idea how on the mark I was for all of Sec C. Also, I am pretty sure I forgot to say "cartoon" and called it Jenkins' "drawing" instead. Is this unfavourable?

[crawlingvines]

Any Measure for Measure folks on here? I was so surprised a character-centric prompt wasn't included (not to my detriment though — I hate character prompts )

[pha0015]

for the cartoon in section c, the cafe's storefront had had two instant coffee tin can thingys that split the word coffee into two, except one said coff, while the other said fee (3 fs total). could you infer that to mean there are high costs associated with cafe, *cough cough* stay away, although I had more of a focus on the former than the latter

also had problem where i spelled coffee as coffer every single time. can anyone relate?

i personally found the review to be difficult, as there was no clear contention, and so my paragraphs were all weird: one was focus on how he made himself seem credible and built rapport with community, second was pretentious nature of cafe, and third was incongruity with community atmosphere. i feel like i'm going off topic since paragraphs are supposed to be based on arguments, but those were barely touched upon (decor, service and taste)

for medea, i conned myself into doing the dishonesty prompt and also had trouble with the paragraphs. i kind of went off topic in linking truth to success of one's plans and had one paragraph for how it was affected by truth, lack thereof and how euripides mediates necessity for moderation, although this was don't more holistically in all aspects and encompassed other thematic examples as well (which i think was really off topic). rip

apparently section b for tracks vs itw had prompt that was exactly like in practice exams, but i was one of the only people who'd chosen the other prompt (for prac exam).

[juicethelemon]

Got absolutely blessed with the first White Tiger question: "why is Balram called the white tiger?". I actually fist pumped in relief.

Ransom/Invictus had shocking topics. My teachers were mad at VCAA for the second topic (social and culture differences??? wtf), and didn't think the first one (knowing your enemy) was great either. Definitely worried I bombed massively on Sec B. Chose the knowing your enemy topic, spat out an intro, an entire paragraph throwing together questionable evidence for Invictus then one more paragraph that briefly mentioned Ransom's relevance to the topic and did a really short "but they differ in...", and then the most basic conclusion ever. About 3 pages but my handwriting is huge. I wanted to produce a "finished" essay rather than be stopped halfway through. Any thoughts on if I should be expecting 5/10 MAX?

Sec C was a bit weird, I focused on portrayals (portrayal of himself, incl. his self-portrait + portrayal of the cafe vs. the other stores ). I also chucked in for the cartoon that it implied this new chain cafe would threaten business of the other ones. I have no idea how on the mark I was for this.

The funny thing about this is that about 3 months ago when we were learning comparative, I asked my teacher about the social and cultural differences but suddenly I had been called into to my VTAC meeting. After I came back, she explained it to the class but I was like that little thing will never come into the exams, so I ignored it... :/ (oh how karma works!) The minute I saw social and cultural differences, I knew i stuffed up lmao ran towards the first prompt and tried to at least fluff around and make an essay out of it

[ardria]

i personally found the review to be difficult, as there was no clear contention, and so my paragraphs were all weird: one was focus on how he made himself seem credible and built rapport with community, second was pretentious nature of cafe, and third was incongruity with community atmosphere. i feel like i'm going off topic since paragraphs are supposed to be based on arguments, but those were barely touched upon (decor, service and taste)

This sounds great in my opinion. Portrayals were more far more relevant than arguments, and you can definitely organise by portrayals, even better that these portrayals were chronological. What you said sounds just like what flow I went with, but I was technically analysing it chronologically rather than using topic sentences like you seemed to have, which seems way clearer and neater than whatever I did haha. I tried to emphasise that the portrayals built up, that in portraying himself as trustworthy (I avoided "credible" because he has no actual qualifications so I said "trustworthy" I think), he primes residents to side with his overwhelmingly negative opinion of the cafe, then he could assert that it doesn't belong in their quiet community.

I threw in "quiet" a bunch of times because I was really scared to say "small-town values" or "parochial values" since nothing indicated it was a small suburb, just that it was quiet.

[joshgoundar]

Assuming you mean the title and rather rubbish drawing at the top of the page? That's not super important - you would have HAD to talk about the cartoon, but the logo and that box summary at the end were just optional extras. For example, you could have talked about how the hand-drawn, calligraphic style of that writing reflected the author's emphasis on tradition in the face of corporate 'soullessness,' or the fact that he was 'about town' gives him credibility as someone well versed in cafe culture. But not at all essential, so don't stress if you didn't refer to it!

phew, yeh I completely ingored it but talked about the comic ahhaa

[Lear]

It’s really interesting to see VCAA move away from some of the conventions they’ve had over the past few years. There were no character based prompts for Medea and no second text for section c, only a single one.

Interesting stuff, wonder if this will be the trend going on. Maybe they realised having multiple texts led to a lot of kids comparing whereas this was not the heart of the task?

[ardria]

From here

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Victorian Association for the Teaching of English president Emily Frawley said Section C did not offer students scope for much more than a tokenistic engagement with the world around them.

While it was accessible to all students, it offered little depth for sophisticated, high level responses, she said.

“Stronger students may have picked up on the attack on consumerism and the hipster dig about the tablet-wielding employee with a man bun, as well as the cranes in the background of the cartoon signalling the author’s fear about development,” she said.

They might have also picked up the fountain pen that the old-fashioned author used, the dates above the heritage buildings in the shopping strip and the frowning elderly woman using the walker who perhaps symbolised a generation alienated by the flash new cafe.

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If this is the case, I wonder how they would be able to give out 9s and 10s?

[fionathebean]

Would anyone be able to post a copy of the language analysis? I would like to see if my contention strays too far from the article.

[ChissOner]

Ok so, i did the english exam today and in section C i referred to the Calmer Coffee employee as Marcel when in fact it was the guy with the man bun, however i did only mention his name once. Will i lose marks from doing this? Pls help i am currently stressing over it. TYIA