50 in English, available for queries :)

[literally lauren]

[literally lauren]

Also, yang_dong,
That interpretation might be alright for a couple of lines, but you don't want a major argument in your essay hinging on the fact that gossiping is 'girly' :p
A good tip for Ransom: consider what happens in the absence of women --> violence, carnage, war etc.
There's a helpful sheet here

[bts]

Hey lauren do you have any advice for me: a 2015 vce graduate thank you  youre a real inspiration! Helping everyone

[kandinsky]

Also, yang_dong,
That interpretation might be alright for a couple of lines, but you don't want a major argument in your essay hinging on the fact that gossiping is 'girly' :p
A good tip for Ransom: consider what happens in the absence of women --> violence, carnage, war etc.
There's a helpful sheet here

Can't believe Malouf got away with that book...

I have enough troubles with translations of the Iliad...but Ransom is just an unoriginal and BAD/unpoetic retelling of Homer.

Why not just put the Iliad on the VCE English curriculum? That would be AWESOME!

[literally lauren]

bts:
There's some general stuff in previous pages about studying in year 11 and things to know before year 12. Check the first post in this thread for links.
Other than that, just having a good understanding of the format of exams and SACs should save you a lot of stress next year. And of course, reading your texts as early as possible can be very beneficial. If you're already familiar with Context then it might even be worth developing some examples and ideas for you to use next year, but don't panic if you're not at this stage yet; I certainly wasn't. Each school goes about Year 11 in a different way, so just be aware of your abilities and weaknesses and you should be in for a cruisey year

[literally lauren]

Can't believe Malouf got away with that book...

I have enough troubles with translations of the Iliad...but Ransom is just an unoriginal and BAD/unpoetic retelling of Homer.

Why not just put the Iliad on the VCE English curriculum? That would be AWESOME!

Better yet, just make everyone write essays in Ancient Greek!
inb4 VCAA actually issues that as a challenge

I have seen some rather cruel Ransom prompts about the interpretive choices and creative licence Malouf took with his retelling which, whilst prompting some strongly-worded responses from the lit. nerds, would actually be near impossible for the majority of the state who haven't read The Iliad.

But I agree, if I were in charge the whole text list would be nothing but classics, and generations of year 12s would be furiously burning me in effigy for years 

[kandinsky]

Better yet, just make everyone write essays in Ancient Greek!
inb4 VCAA actually issues that as a challenge

I have seen some rather cruel Ransom prompts about the interpretive choices and creative licence Malouf took with his retelling which, whilst prompting some strongly-worded responses from the lit. nerds, would actually be near impossible for the majority of the state who haven't read The Iliad.

But I agree, if I were in charge the whole text list would be nothing but classics, and generations of year 12s would be furiously burning me in effigy for years 

  Bring on the cruel prompts!

Other texts  I want to see on the curriculum: War and Peace (lol have fun reading all 1200 pages!), The Good Soldier (dat unreliable narrator...), and...Narnia? (I don't know, judging from some of the present texts Narnia would be a step up in terms of intellectual level!)

[literally lauren]

Here's hoping the 2016 onwards Study Design will have some better texts, especially for the new comparative section.
It'd be great to write about the similarities and differences in Harry Potter and Narnia, or Sherlock Holmes and Edwin Drood.
So many opportunities!

Why don't we just write our own syllabus?
Alterna-VCE: Twice the fun with none of the valid, tertiary-recognised qualifications!

[DJA]

Bring on the cruel prompts!

Other texts  I want to see on the curriculum: War and Peace (lol have fun reading all 1200 pages!), The Good Soldier (dat unreliable narrator...), and...Narnia? (I don't know, judging from some of the present texts Narnia would be a step up in terms of intellectual level!)

Seconded!! It would be death but fun.

lol is that even possible

Narnia would also be awesome

[kandinsky]

Narnia...it would actually have enough 'profound' themes for discussion too. Like all the semi-Manicheistic imagery, the idea of virtue, the internal religious 'quest', the metaphysical vs physical world. Then there's all the historical context of War back in England. Omg! It would a great text.

And Aslan of course, the christ-like-resurrected-entity. And the symbolism of the lion-like soul.

[DJA]

Narnia...it would actually have enough 'profound' themes for discussion too. Like all the semi-Manicheistic imagery, the idea of virtue, the internal religious 'quest', the metaphysical vs physical world. Then there's all the historical context of War back in England. Omg! It would a great text.

And Aslan of course, the christ-like-resurrected-entity. And the symbolism of the lion-like soul.

So much love

[24bauer12]

Hi Lauren,
If a text response prompt  has a quote as part of the question, is it compulsory to mention it in the essay?

[literally lauren]

Hi Lauren,
If a text response prompt  has a quote as part of the question, is it compulsory to mention it in the essay?

Yes, definitely.
Often it makes up a third, or even half of the prompt. You don't have to keep refering back to it in the same way as you would a regular question/statement based prompt, but the assessors have chosen that excerpt for a reason; try to use it to inform your discussion.
In terms of direct analysis, mentioning it in the first paragraph or two would be ideal, so that it doesn't feel tacked on at the end.

[mnewin]

Hi lauren,
i took a look at your sample 2014 exam,for the prompt "Owen's message of loss and absence are more confronting than his gory imagery. Do you agree?" i was stuck at the message of absence, im not too sure about this and am struggling to link it to the poems or themes i learnt. I can't see much connection between absence and Owen's poems... any help is appreciated. 

[literally lauren]

It's not so much about the absence in the poems, it's more about the message of absence. (Minor shift, but consider absence as a theme/V&V and not just as a structure of the poems.) I'll only list a couple of things here to get you started, but the primary concern would be the absence of a generation (ie. the fact that so many went to war) which most of his work explores in some way. You also have the absence within a person; the absence of emotions and sanity seen in his later PTSD-centric poems. At a stretch you might even consider the absence of morality in sending young men to war, though this is more abstract.
If you can find evidence of loss, you should be able to find absence. After all, once you've lost something, you're left with an absence, right? So how does this come across in the poems; what is lost, exactly?

As I've said a couple of times, this is how VCAA will often try and trick you. By throwing out a word like 'absence' that you haven't seen, dealt with, or even considered before, they're hoping to separate the people who can only deal with a few themes from those who are capable of using what they've learned and reformulating it to suit a different discussion