English Language: Discussion, Questions & Potential Solutions

[Joseph41]

This thread is for all exam-related discussion. Was it easy? Was it hard? What did you get for each question? Feel free to post any and all of your thoughts below.

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[technodisney]

How did y’all find it?

I didn’t do enough practice essays so I pretty much bullshitted the second essay topic based on the quotes there.

I liked the text for the AC. So many features to bring out.

[Joseph41]

How did y’all find it?

I didn’t do enough practice essays so I pretty much bullshitted the second essay topic based on the quotes there.

I liked the text for the AC. So many features to bring out.

What type of text was it?

[EulerFan102]

Hey all,
Just as a curious EngLang tutor who hasn't seen the exam yet (and probs won't until VCAA releases it in a few months time...), if anyone could give a brief outline of the texts and essay topics I'd be super grateful thanks!!

I didn’t do enough practice essays so I pretty much bullshitted the second essay topic based on the quotes there.

Ha, that's what I did in my exam too. Hope it went okay 

[Lily3005]

Hey all,
Just as a curious EngLang tutor who hasn't seen the exam yet (and probs won't until VCAA releases it in a few months time...), if anyone could give a brief outline of the texts and essay topics I'd be super grateful thanks!!
Ha, that's what I did in my exam too. Hope it went okay 

Ok so although it finished just over an hour ago, I've probably forgotten a lot of details:
Text 1 - written, informal. it was a blog post written in a "stream of consciousness" kinda way. It was a writer who had sat down to write an article (?) and got distracted by everything - the birds outside, the chair he was sitting on etc.
Text 2 - spoken, formal. The Governor General welcoming people to a Citizenship ceremony in Canberra during which they would become Australian citizens. The start was super formal, there was lots of parallelism. As the text went on it got a little less so as he started to (somewhat) address the audience. He used the name of one of the kids in the audience and he also laughed. So it was a super good text to analyse. There was so much to write about!

Essay 1 - Users of Australian English must consider face needs to facilitate successful communication.
Essay 2 - Freedom of speech allows people to say whatever they want (or something like that)
Jeez, this shows how good my short term memory is. I don't really remember essay 3. I'm pretty sure it was kinda peculiar. Def not the classic identity, jargon or technology.

[Joseph41]

Ok so although it finished just over an hour ago, I've probably forgotten a lot of details:
Text 1 - written, informal. it was a blog post written in a "stream of consciousness" kinda way. It was a writer who had sat down to write an article (?) and got distracted by everything - the birds outside, the chair he was sitting on etc.
Text 2 - spoken, formal. The Governor General welcoming people to a Citizenship ceremony in Canberra during which they would become Australian citizens. The start was super formal, there was lots of parallelism. As the text went on it got a little less so as he started to (somewhat) address the audience. He used the name of one of the kids in the audience and he also laughed. So it was a super good text to analyse. There was so much to write about!

Essay 1 - Users of Australian English must consider face needs to facilitate successful communication.
Essay 2 - Freedom of speech allows people to say whatever they want (or something like that)
Jeez, this shows how good my short term memory is. I don't really remember exam 3. I'm pretty sure it was kinda peculiar. Def not the classic identity, jargon or technology.

Awesome first post! Welcome to the forums.

How did you find the exam overall? As expected?

Which essay topic did you choose/write about?

[MissSmiley]

Hey all,
Just as a curious EngLang tutor who hasn't seen the exam yet (and probs won't until VCAA releases it in a few months time...), if anyone could give a brief outline of the texts and essay topics I'd be super grateful thanks!!
Ha, that's what I did in my exam too. Hope it went okay 

What type of text was it?

Hey guys!

The AC text was a speech given by Peter Cosgrove at the Australian Citizenship Ceremony at Parliament house (if I remember the setting well). So it was formal for 3/4s of the way, and then he got a bit informal when he was referring to a migrant in his speech.
There were plenty of prosodic features to talk about which was good, and also lots of things to talk about for the situational and cultural context.

The essay topics were a bit complex imo, but not overly hard if you had good examples. On the top of my head, there are 2 I can remember out of the 3, so if anyone remembers the third one, that'll be great! I've paraphrased these two:
Question 7: In the contemporary Australian society people need to manage face needs when they are communicating
Question 9: Language is a way to reflect dominant groups' attitudes, identity and culture in the Australian society. Do you agree? / Discuss (I did this topic)

Short answer was quite ok I thought, the two features which reflected the blogger's identity was a complex question though, so hopefully my answer was sophisticated!
The first question was funny, just a 1 mark question: "What register is this text?"
There was a 5mark question about what discourse strategies allow coherence in this text, and some people got confused with the words 'discourse strategies.' But it was basically like those that achieved coherence so like formatting, logical ordering, inference, cohesion. I didn't talk about consistency though, which I now regret, but hopefully 4 strategies count? + 1 mark for explanation?
Or maybe I'll get 4/5 I don't know!

Overall, a fun exam for me though! Lots of good things to talk about identity, which I always love to write about!
Also if anyone wants to tell what question 8 of the essay was, that'll be good so that EulerFan can know!

EDIT: Lily3005's post has the three topics for the essay!

[Lily3005]

Awesome first post! Welcome to the forums.

How did you find the exam overall? As expected?

Which essay topic did you choose/write about?

Thanks!
I'm not too sure how I went! I agree with technodisney about the AC - it was super interesting and so much to talk about!
I'm pretty sure I bombed Section A. There was a 5 mark question about discourse features increasing the coherence plus a 3 marker about 2 features reflecting the writer's identity, which kinda threw me off, especially coz the text was kinda weird? I did the AC and essay and then came back to SA thinking I'd have some more ideas but I didn't! AAAG
Essay was okay. I chose the face needs one - I had written a lot about context and politically correct language etc but not specifically jUst face needs in the past, if that makes any sense. So IDK! I used examples such as ABC Comedy's Tonightly calling Kevin Bailey a c*nt and the Volleys 'f*ck off' advertisement campaign. There was more, but honestly as time goes by it's all slipping from my mind haha 

EDIT:

Spoiler

Hey guys!

The AC text was a speech given by Peter Cosgrove at the Australian Citizenship Ceremony at Parliament house (if I remember the setting well). So it was formal for 3/4s of the way, and then he got a bit informal when he was referring to a migrant in his speech.
There were plenty of prosodic features to talk about which was good, and also lots of things to talk about for the situational and cultural context.

The essay topics were a bit complex imo, but not overly hard if you had good examples. On the top of my head, there are 2 I can remember out of the 3, so if anyone remembers the third one, that'll be great! I've paraphrased these two:
Question 7: In the contemporary Australian society people need to manage face needs when they are communicating
Question 9: Language is a way to reflect dominant groups' attitudes, identity and culture in the Australian society. Do you agree? / Discuss (I did this topic)

Short answer was quite ok I thought, the two features which reflected the blogger's identity was a complex question though, so hopefully my answer was sophisticated!
The first question was funny, just a 1 mark question: "What register is this text?"
There was a 5mark question about what discourse strategies allow coherence in this text, and some people got confused with the words 'discourse strategies.' But it was basically like those that achieved coherence so like formatting, logical ordering, inference, cohesion. I didn't talk about consistency though, which I now regret, but hopefully 4 strategies count? + 1 mark for explanation?
Or maybe I'll get 4/5 I don't know!

Overall, a fun exam for me though! Lots of good things to talk about identity, which I always love to write about!
Also if anyone wants to tell what question 8 of the essay was, that'll be good so that EulerFan can know!

EDIT: Lily3005's post has the three topics for the essay!

Ohh okay so by discourse features they just meant factors contributing to coherence!!
I agree the topics were kinda hard?
Also so good to hear another opinion on the exam! 

[EulerFan102]

Ok so although it finished just over an hour ago, I've probably forgotten a lot of details:

Thanks so much!! 

Text 2 - spoken, formal. The Governor General welcoming people to a Citizenship ceremony in Canberra during which they would become Australian citizens. The start was super formal, there was lots of parallelism. As the text went on it got a little less so as he started to (somewhat) address the audience. He used the name of one of the kids in the audience and he also laughed. So it was a super good text to analyse. There was so much to write about!

Yeah, that sounds like a great text: a nice mix of formalities and social purposes. VCAA must like speeches from the Governor General, that's the second one now.

Essay 1 - Users of Australian English must consider face needs to facilitate successful communication.
Essay 2 - Freedom of speech allows people to say whatever they want (or something like that)

Gee, two somewhat out-there essay topics in my view. Only the second ever topic on face needs and the first ever one on freedom of speech (though there have been some sorta related ones in the past). Fairly tough ones to link to the major ideas of EngLang, I reckon: face needs and freedom of speech just tend to come up so infrequently during the year.

[Joseph41]

Yeah, I reckon it'll be really interesting to see the average mark on that face needs essay topic.

[MissSmiley]

Yeah, I reckon it'll be really interesting to see the average mark on that face needs essay topic.

Many people did this one because then you can bring in social distance, power, authority all that.
Now I feel stressed about whether I addressed the dominant groups essay right or not! 

Are essays that are given 14 and 15 like insanely good, have really strong topic sentences, etc? Is there like a specific number of 2018 examples they include or something?
What do you need to get a 14 and 15?!
(since according to last year like 2 and 1 % of the state got a 14 and 15 respectively)

[EulerFan102]

The essay topics were a bit complex imo, but not overly hard if you had good examples. On the top of my head, there are 2 I can remember out of the 3, so if anyone remembers the third one, that'll be great! I've paraphrased these two:
Question 7: In the contemporary Australian society people need to manage face needs when they are communicating
Question 9: Language is a way to reflect dominant groups' attitudes, identity and culture in the Australian society. Do you agree? / Discuss (I did this topic)

Very nice of them to give a fairly normal identity topic. You'd have to think most people would have gone for that one

Short answer was quite ok I thought, the two features which reflected the blogger's identity was a complex question though, so hopefully my answer was sophisticated!

Was this question a bit like the short-answer question on identity from last year? (which was: "Using appropriate metalanguage, identify and explain two specific language features that reflect Tim Minchin’s identity. Refer to line numbers in your response.)

The first question was funny, just a 1 mark question: "What register is this text?"

Huh, yeah a bit of a strange one. They asked the same question on the 2012 exam (the answer they wanted that time was "highly formal").

There was a 5mark question about what discourse strategies allow coherence in this text, and some people got confused with the words 'discourse strategies.' But it was basically like those that achieved coherence so like formatting, logical ordering, inference, cohesion. I didn't talk about consistency though, which I now regret, but hopefully 4 strategies count? + 1 mark for explanation?
Or maybe I'll get 4/5 I don't know!

Nah, you'll definitely be okay with those features. For 5 mark questions on coherence in the past, VCAA's actually required a minimum of two features to get full marks, so four is plenty.
(and yeah, discourse strategies will be exactly what you said: stuff like formatting, inference, etc.)

[EulerFan102]

Are essays that are given 14 and 15 like insanely good, have really strong topic sentences, etc? Is there like a specific number of 2018 examples they include or something? What do you need to get a 14 and 15?!
(since according to last year like 2 and 1 % of the state got a 14 and 15 respectively)

Yeah, 14 and 15 essays are obviously gonna be the best-of-the-best. VCAA lays out some (fairly broad) outlines of what they're looking for here. They're looking for stuff like sophisticated discussion, great use of examples, top-notch metalanguage.
But it's hard to nail down on the specifics of what they're looking for. Take something like the number of 2018 examples they want, they mention in every single assessor's report that examples from that year are crucial, so they obviously value them, but then they've still put up some high-scoring essays without any 

[james4590]

Hey guys,
So im TOTALLY FREAKING OUT because I didn't refer to the stimulus material once in my essay.
It was Q7 about negotiating face needs to ensure successful communication.
I was so busy trying to put in lots of examples that i completely forgot!!!

Is my exam score not looking good now?

[MissSmiley]

Hey guys,
So im TOTALLY FREAKING OUT because I didn't refer to the stimulus material once in my essay.
It was Q7 about negotiating face needs to ensure successful communication.
I was so busy trying to put in lots of examples that i completely forgot!!!

Is my exam score not looking good now?

Look it shouldn't be too detrimental, I think sometimes if you paraphrased the idea behind a certain stimulus item and not necessarily quote it word for word, they'll still think that you've referred to it.
I don't think they're too fussy about writing the stimulus item in brackets - like (stimulus i).
Shouldn't be a problem if you've sort of written the idea behind one of the stimuli in your body paras.
Don't stress about it now! Be happy about the examples that you put in!