Please, Board of Studies, take notice of this thread. The entire original article by the English teacher describes exactly what we are all feeling. English, right now, is terrible. It needs a complete workover. Also, some more points raised which I completely agree with:
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Originally Posted by Lothy  Is it just possible, just maybe, that the author didn't fill every second word with a special meaning |
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Originally Posted by jiratic and on the theme of incidental techniques:
Shakespeare in his infinite wisdom did not have a thought process of 'Oh i'll insert some metonymy here, and I'll reinforce that with some antilabe in that next line or two. Hmm thats not complicated enough to be cool. lets add some assonance and pleonasm. Now my work is sufficiently witty and technique ridden so it will last 500 years and become part of hsc English |
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Originally Posted by Clifford To be honest, I think the best part of english advanced is the creative writing because it's the only part where you needn't regurgitate techniques. |
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Originally Posted by Clifford TO THE BOARD OF STUDIES - Throw out techniques, get us to respond to themes/ideas and actual thought! |
Over analysis of techniques destroys English. This is not what texts are about, but this coincidental by-product of quality writing has somehow found its way into HSC English so that now what truly makes texts great has lost focus, and now takes a back seat to techniques in our essays.
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Originally Posted by Clifford What I meant by my original post, is that memorisation wouldn't be such an issue, and english would become much less mechanical, if there wasnt such an emphasis on quoting directly from the text and needing to analyse it in that way.
It would give free reign to the Board of Studies to ask more specific questions, as students wouldn't need in depth, copious references to access top marks, as they could respond more sincerly and thoughtfully, unhindered by the need to constantly refer to specific passages. This would also increase the capacity of intelligent students, those with a natural aptitude/appreciation of english to respond in a more varied way to a question. They wouldn't be confined by the 15 quotes they've got branded on their brain. A deeper knowledge of the texts would be required, but the memory, and thus regurgitation aspect, would be reduced. |
Absolutely what English should be about. HSC English has developed to the point where we need to memorise essays to get good marks, and in doing so we have only a limited capacity to remember the quotes and techniques (which shouldn't be necessary anyway) which relate to the ideas in our pre-prepared essays. We can only remember so many quotes, and thus if we are asked anything else, we panic, and hope that we can adapt our essays well enough to scrape a decent mark.
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Originally Posted by murphyad I actually wrote a letter in to the SMH about this (not sure if they'll publish it though). I completely agree that writing decent responses 'off the cuff' is more or less impossible due to the time constraints involved. |
Exactly how I feel, however, due to the "tutors write students' essays" mentality, there isnt much that can be done on this.
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Originally Posted by jiratic "Hsc English is tying english to a chair and beating the meaning out of it" |
Board of Studies, can you fix this?