Skyline,
You can incorporate tweets like you do every other form of evidence. I'd probably try and make it clear that's what you're doing though; you never know, you might get an assessor who has no idea why you're referencing bird sounds.
Alternatively you could do a creative/expository hybrid where it's a normal essay interpolated with commentary from social media.
I don't know, it'll depend on what sort of tweets you're using, but I think there's a lot of potential there.
Billion,
Rest assured, you'll never get something like this from VCAA, there'll always be a clear, persuasive contention on the end of year exam. For these informative pieces, you can state that the article's intention is to present a balanced argument, and then provide examples of the language it uses to do this. Alternatively, some articles set out to "inform" but end up presenting an imbalance of views, thus attempting to seem impartial is actually a persuasive device.
Or you could look at the way the author constructs certain arguments
E.g; "A recent spate of vicious dog attacks has left at least one expert calling for a ban on dog breeds known to be aggressive or dangerous".
^This immediately sounds like it's pro-banning certain breeds, but maybe it goes on to counter this- I don't know?
If the material is fairly even, just talk about the author allowing the public to make an informed decision based on the evidence. And in terms of paragraph structure, you can still go by key players and use the mini-contentions of all the different views within the article to talk about the overall portrayal of dogs/the proposal/victims/the govt. etc.
With regards to remembering semester one work: everyone has their own strategy. Simple things like L.A. devices or T.R. quotes can just be written or printed out around the house, stuck on the walls in your bedroom, and/or kept at the back of your book for revision. For context, it's more about the general ideas, so having practice paragraphs or essays and rereading them occasionally should help. More importantly though, external examples will be the strongest part of most context essays, so try and collect stuff throughout the year and keep a running list of all the things you could discuss. After awhile you can start grouping these into all the different prompt types (eg. the nature, causes, responses, consequences, and resolutions of conflict) so that when you get into the exam you can just quickly identify the focus and fit your examples in accordingly.
Language Analysis is more formulaic, and once you're comfortable with the format there's not a whole lot you need to rote learn. Do keep up the practice throughout the year though; there's only one L.A. SAC for year 12, and most schools get this out of the way early in Unit 3, so you don't want to lay off for too long and then panic in swot-vac.
For Text Response: I tend to advocate choosing which text you're going to write on in the exam as soon as possible. If you really can't decide then by all means study both, just be aware that's a pretty big workload. Ideally by the September break you'll be able to narrow it down and just focus your study. Read as much as you can about your texts (depending on what you're studying, there's a lot of resources out there) and then just write as many practice essays as it takes to fully flesh out your ideas and ensure you're comfortable with and 'surprise' prompts
smile+energy,
No, there's no VCAA requirement for quotes in the exam, but some teachers do prefer it (especially quoting from your set text) in SACs so check with them.