Estelle said:
Everyone is trying to say i'm wrong but i think theyre just bitter cause they wont believe that standard people just cant get good!
Actually, you just can't accept the fact that you are wrong in some aspects of your argument. You have no solid proof other than comments from teachers which are sometimes inaccurate. You are making a dangerous assumption that anyone who chooses English (Standard) is academically incompetent.
There are definitely more than 2 people who scored band 5 in English Standard and if you check the Board of Studies website, you'll have all the facts you'll need. I'm sure that is a more reliable source than the words of a teacher. I think that your teacher only marked 2 papers herself which totalled to a band 5 or two people scored band 5 in RAW MARKS which are aligned upwards possibly to a band 6. If you check the UAC Scaling Report, in the FAQ, (
http://www.uac.edu.au/pubs/pdf/tsc-report-2004.pdf) there is a constant repetition every year that ENGLISH STANDARD AND ENGLISH ADVANCED ARE PLACED ON A COMMON SCALE.
No large candidature course would be scaled as negatively as you described it.
It is apprently clear that you have not gone through the following thread:
http://community.boredofstudies.org/showthread.php?t=54082
Choosing between Standard and Advanced is not necessarily a question of ability in English. Unfortunately, that is what everyone perceives it to be thanks to the connotations in the name of the courses. It is rather the interests that a student possesses in different areas of English which determine which is best for them.
A student may favour certain texts studied in English (Standard) and choose that course because of the interests in the texts. He or she may still be excellent in English and his or her marks will be better because the particular texts are within his or her area of interest.
Also, if a person prefers to study the context of a text and how this shapes meaning of a text, rather than the aspect of language, then he or she would be suited to English (Advanced) because it emphasises this concept more than English (Standard). It does not matter whether this person is academically competent or not, it is simply on the basis of personal interest.
There are certainly many people out there who have a high academic ability in English, but choose to take English Standard. However, this does not mean that their abilities will go to waste; not at all. High marks above 90 are ceratinly attainable, but has yet to achieved. You seem to think that everyone who chooses English (Standard) is downright stupid if they want to get band 5 or band 6. What if they do not like the texts studied in English (Advanced)? Their lack of interest in the course will be more detrimental for their marks.
Also, I would like to note that those who scored band 6 in English Standard are approximately in the top 1% of the state candidature for both 2 unit English courses. In other words the people who scored band 6 in English Standard scored scaled marks that are higher than about
99% of those who did English (Advanced). Observe the following table:
http://www.uac.edu.au/pubs/pdf/2004-Table-A3.pdf
Look at the top HSC mark in English Standard. The person who scored 90 in English Standard last year received a scaled mark of 46.5/50. Now look at the 99th percentile (top 1%) of English Advanced which scored a scaled mark of 46.6/50. In terms of scaled marks they are very close and the top person in English Standard beat nearly 99% of the English Advanced students in terms of scaled marks. Even look at the 75th percentile (top 25%) for English (Advanced) and the 99th percentile (top 1%) of English (Standard). The scaled marks are roughly the same and getting hence a low band 5 in English Standard places you in the mid-band 5 equivalent in English Advanced as the top 25% of the English (Advanced) candidature.
This shows that there are students that are much more academically talented than you think doing English Standard.
I have more evidence to show that there is no disadvantage in doing English (Standard) as opposed to English (Advanced). But for the sake of explaining them in detail, I hope you see my point and stop implying offence to some people in this thread. If you still disagree, then you are disagreeing with facts and actual statistics published by the Board of Studies and the Unviersity Admissions Centre.
