Pre VCE English

Subject Overview

This subject acts as a skill building and honing class for the typical assessment you will find in the VCE English pathway. Pre-VCE English is a year long unit that will give you the opportunity for similar versions of assessment with offered in the VCE English pathway, however, presented in a format that allows you to focus on skill acquisition. Developing your textual understanding through written and verbal responses the Pre-VCE program aims to help increase your comfortability with metalanguage around topic questions, time-management for planning as well as instilling and focusing habits required for successful transition to VCE English.

Content and ideas:

In Semester One you will focus around set written texts and the being able to develop your understanding of comparative questions in an articulate and comparative manner. This semester will also look specifically at creative writing and differing styles and forms in your developed responses.

The focus in Semester Two will have you analysing language features and persuasive techniques from a variety of backgrounds and influences. This collection of different texts will require you to show a firm understanding of the form and techniques as you apply these to written responses, oral presentations and a formalised text response essay.

Typical class activities:

• Working in small teams to provide summaries for whole class referencing

• Small group research and discussion with presenting findings

• Timed and test condition writing practice

• Reading/reviewing set texts with emphasis on analytical skills and developing robust discussion

• Using collaborative spaces online to formulate student documents for referral

• Dissecting rubrics and tasks to understand specific requirements

• Appraising and evaluating example work against rubrics

Skills focus:

• Comparative writing

• Language analysis

• Understanding of complex metalanguage

• Time management and working in research teams

• Planning responses, creative writing and persuasive (oral/written) to task outline

Assessment Tasks:

• Comparative paragraph responses to set text

• Creative writing (stemming from set text)

• Language Analysis & Persuasive writing task (end of semester exam)

• Oral presentation

• Essay- Language analysis

• Essay-Text response

Do this subject if:

• You are ready for a rigorous subject in preparation for your VCE pathway

• You are ready to commit to regular homestudy and developing your study skills 

• You feel you need more practice under a variety of conditions and want strategies to apply to specific assessment tasks

• You like the idea of responding to different texts and viewpoints in a variety of formal and informal ways

• You’d like to hone your time management and application skills to texts

• You find you’d like a more developed way of expressing how you relate to texts

• You want work in collaborative groups around text studies

• You want to improve your vocabulary and form when responding to questions

• You enjoy sharing, listening and contributing to small and class discussions around key focus

Content Warning: This subject contains in-depth study of films with an M15+ rating. It is recommended that students are aged fifteen or over when undertaking this subject.