Choosing standard versus advanced English (1 Viewer)

[davebergie]

What's the advantage of advanced English over standard? According to HSC Ninja they seem to scale pretty much the same.

If the game is the highest ATAR possible -- and in this case it is, for medicine -- why choose advanced?

 

[eyeseeyou]

What's the advantage of advanced English over standard? According to HSC Ninja they seem to scale pretty much the same.

If the game is the highest ATAR possible -- and in this case it is, for medicine -- why choose advanced?

Firstly, never do english standard if you want to maximise your ATAR. Only like 100-150 students (on average) out of 30,000 students get a b6 in the subject which equated to like 0.33% of the state. Also the aligning process in english standard is super shit, the marks get dragged down

Secondly english Advanced, is not that hard. It is the same thing as standard besides a little harder and there's shakespeare and the texts in advanced are longer than the ones in standard

Thirdly, in English Standard, you need to write well to do well (if not much better than advanced kids). A misconception between a lot of standard students is that if they pick up standard (or if they struggled with advanced and dropped to standard) they will guarantee themselves better marks because they think that english standard is easier. This is not always true as the texts in standard require a lot of depth and analysis like advanced (probably not as much) and you still need to write really well in order to do well (if not better than the advanced kids but your marks will get dragged down due to the aligning process so keep that in mind)

So imo, if you wanna maximise your ATAR never do english standard. It is one of the dumbest moves in the HSC in my opinion

Also you might here all this "there's dropkicks in standard", "the whole state does english", "blah blah" stuff in regards to why in english standard there is a 0.33% b6 percentage rate. Imo it's all BS

If you read a lot of old threads in this forum, you'll see heaps of BOSers saying that it's the aligning that makes the B6 percentage rate for english standard very low

 

[davebergie]

That's a really helpful response, thanks. I had heard that before, but just wanted to see what others thought. Seems to be quite different to general vs advanced maths.

 

[D94]

What's the advantage of advanced English over standard? According to HSC Ninja they seem to scale pretty much the same.

If the game is the highest ATAR possible -- and in this case it is, for medicine -- why choose advanced?

They do scale the same, but they are marked against each other. If your Standard essays aren't at the same level as an Advanced essay, you will be marked down. But because the texts are easier in Standard, you need to produce really good work so you're on the same level as an average Advanced student.

 

[eyeseeyou]

That's a really helpful response, thanks. I had heard that before, but just wanted to see what others thought. Seems to be quite different to general vs advanced maths.

Nws

Also I have completely no idea what sort of essay questions they'll ask for english standard but I know for a fact, in Module A, the essay questions are usually text based and I know for a fact that the 2016 Advanced paper for Module A asked about talking about an extract. In this case it's asking whether or not you really know your texts well

For Module B, they usually have text based questions as well as opposed to generic ones where they can ask you a critical response, closing stanza/scene (i.e. extract) and a theme based question

Module C is just a generic essay question on either landscapes or politics (depending on which elective your teacher picks)

So for Module A and B in the advanced course, it is crucial that you know your texts really well and how to manipulate the ideas in the correct manner. If you want to do well in advanced, it is essential (imo) that you read your texts, however there are students out there who have scraped band 6's in english without reading their texts

And a lot of kids who are in standard, abhor Shakespeare and they can't handle even one Shakespearean text a year

 

[Green Yoda]

There were people in my school who chose standard because they didn't want to do Shakespeare..but they changed our year's AOS text from Motorcycle diaries to The Tempest so both the Advanced and Standard had to do the Shakespeare text and when reading it..it wasn't the easiest text to analyse.

 

[eyeseeyou]

There were people in my school who chose standard because they didn't want to do Shakespeare..but they changed our year's AOS text from Motorcycle diaries to The Tempest so both the Advanced and Standard had to do the Shakespeare text and when reading it..it wasn't the easiest text to analyse.

Yea I know for a fact that English Standard classifies the Tempest as a Drama/play as opposed to a Shakespearean play/drama (since standard doesnt do Shakespeare)