should i do 4u english? (1 Viewer)

[Emrock]

I'm in year 11, and we're about to start choosing whether or not we are going to do 4U. I have a fair idea of what it involves, but i have no idea what on earth i would do and whether it is really worth all the hard work....
If any1 could tell me a little about what they did, or people they know did that would so helpful... I know what particular types of works u can do ie. poetry, short stories, speeches etc, but no idea what kind of topics people chose. Can u pick anything at all???
Any sort of help would be appreciated, any comments on what they think of 4U also.
~em~

 

[anti]

What other subjects are you doing? I advise against EEX2 if you're doing Art, Music 2/Ext, SDD, History Ext - anything with major works. I did several this year and they stressed me out beyond all belief. Of course, if you're very organised then you can do anything..

You CAN do practically anything, but whatever you research (called 'independent investigation', for some weird board of studies reason) has to be related to something you're doing in your other English courses. For example, for Telling The Truth you could write a short story about how some guy's life was ruined because the media portrayed him a negative way, or something like that (these ideas are off the top of my head). You have to write a proposal outlining how it relates - at least, we had to, though I'm not sure if it's part of the course.

The best thing to choose is something you're interested in, because it's the thing you're most likely to stick with. What gets good marks? Welllll the standards package from last year has a few works from various media, so if you could get a look at that..

It's very independent, it's all done by you in your time, although there's generally classes and stuff. Different schools do it differently, so check with the english head teacher (we have the 'occasional' after-school class on Monday for an hour. it's disorganised and frustrating.) If you don't have time to put aside just to work on it, it's not really worth doing because it'll just stress you out before the trials.

I enjoy it, although I'm SO disorganised and it took me ages to figure out what I wanted to do. I'm doing 11 units so it COULD be a spare but I'd rather it wasn't - it's something I can get completely out of the way in the next two weeks or so and then that's one unit completely out of the way.

It's a good subject because it doesn't have any exams - it's just a major work - unlike other extension subjects like history. It's also good if you've always wanted to write a story or film something but you've never had the motivation to do so - this time you're getting marks.

To someone who's got 10 units, is considering doing it as their 11th (or 12th), isn't having too much trouble with their other subjects, and has some sort of idea of what they want to do, my advice is to go for it. You can always drop it if you don't get anywhere.

HTH

 

[dissonance]

I'll just put it simply.

4-unit english is my favorite course. I'd advise anyone who likes creating stuff to take it. If you like to create than 4-unit is easy AND reasonbly stress-free marks.

 

[Gus]

I say do it.
I have a bog awful capacity to discipline myself, yet it looks as if I am gonna finish it.
As dissonance said, it is easy stress free marks, the easiest of all the english courses if you ask me

 

[johnson]

yes, i must say i agree with all u guys.

1. you have to be soooo very organised. especially now. believe me, i know, i've only just *barely* started writing my major work.

2. do your research well before hand. get it over and done with. and think of an idea which actually _needs_ research. so don't write about a love story between a man and woman and leave it at that. if you're gonna do a generic idea, think of all the uniqueness and twists you can put into your idea, things which will require RESEARCH. cos although *real* writing isn't like that, board of studies english ext II ain't *real* writing, it's really political and you have to write according to rubrics and stuff...soo....if your journal is empty, saying that your concept doesn't require research isn't a good enough reason.

3. it's true about lots-of-major-works subjects. i've only got art and english, but they're both pretty full on so if you know that you're a complete last minute person (like me) think twice about doing it...though having said that i'm still doing okay because i got my research done quickly, and i know my idea really well...it's just a matter of writing it. (!)

4. experiment with different mediums. although you're not gonna get a bad mark for short story, if you're interesting in something else, say radio play or video or something else, find out more about it and experiment.. who knows, you might actually have fun doing 'english.'

5. gus, i so totally agree with you. 4u is the best english course, and sooo much easier than 2/3u. you don't have to to turn up to class and you get to be really creative and interesting.

6. about the 'relating to other english courses' comment, yeh, that IS true...but think about change, how bloody broad is THAT topic? and most of the 3u modules are fairly broad as well. so don't think you're limiting yourself thinking that you have only a few ideas that you can do, rather, think of your idea first and then make bullshit links to other english courses when you need to, i.e viva voces and stuff. that's what i did.

7. some examples of other mediums are radio play, television script, film, radio script; video, film; critical analysis...argh just look at some BOS syllabus or something, it should tell you. yeh, what anti said is true, you can pretty much do absolutely anything.

8. and yes, DO SOMETHING WHICH YOU'LL FIND INTERESTING!!! it's gonna be something you're sposed to be working on for about nine months, so when it's two weeks before it's due you don't wanna be writing something you absolutely hate...i mean, i have had literally seven or eight different ideas for my scripts, and written the entire script for 2 of them...yet i changed my concept again a few weeks ago. that's another thing, changing your concept is fine. don't think that your limited to what you bullshitted for your proposal (though that may depend on schools, i remember someone sayinf that they weren't allowed to change their idea or something ridiculous like that)

9. just go ahead and do it. i mean, seriously, it's no big deal. if you like it, you like it. if you don't like it, just drop it. it's that easy. we had about 40 people doing it in my grade and now theres about 30 i think.

-jian

oh shit i wrote so much. hope it helps anyway emrock.

 

[anti]

Originally posted by johnson
6. about the 'relating to other english courses' comment, yeh, that IS true...but think about change, how bloody broad is THAT topic?

agreed, i made it all up too
as a teacher puts it: talking about 'change' is like talking about 'life' - EVERYTHING has something to do with it.

umm what else was I going to say...
oh yeah, if you're interested and have the resources for something different, go for a non short story - i think last year most people wrote a short story (there's another thread in this forum with exact numbers). although yes, they have to mark by the rubrics, and yes, they're meant to be objective markers, if you've just read twenty short stories you SO don't want to mark another one

 

[Morgues]

I never realised Ext 2 English was like that.......so it is just a major work? No exams? No theory?

It sounds interesting, the sort of thing I would actually be interested to do as long as the idea was upto the individual.......oh well, my school doesnt even have anyone doing Ext 2 english

 

[johnson]

nup, no theory or exams or anything. i think that most schools just have a proposal, a viva voce (assessed interview) and a research report.

but...

it's not a total bludge as most people seem to think. sure it is at first, cos everyone just piss-farts around, but you really need to get into it by term 2 year 12, if not sooner...i think i was a bit too late...

oh yeh and i also had nfi that 4u scaled so high either, but it also goes both ways, cos if you write a crap major work you're not gonna get scaled up just cos u do 4u...so don't get the wrong impressions and think its just easy marks, cos thats a stupid thing to think, sorry.

 

[Lazarus]

Don't forget that, if you choose to go along with Extension 2 at the beginning of year 12, you can always drop it - however, you can't do the reverse and pick it up.

It's always worth a try. Everything the others have said about the course is also true.

 

[johnson]

Originally posted by Lazarus
Don't forget that, if you choose to go along with Extension 2 at the beginning of year 12, you can always drop it - however, you can't do the reverse and pick it up.

It's always worth a try. Everything the others have said about the course is also true.

yup, you're so right lazarus

 

[Dumbarse]

how many pages does the average major work contain?, the longest story ive written is 4 pages, its really good, do u reckon that would count?

 

[johnson]

umm... Dumbarse (that's your nick), it needs to be at least 6000-7000 words!!! hahah are u in year 11 are u?

well i have nfi exactly about the specs of short story, cos im doing a film script...but short story four pages...is it typed? that would prolly be about 1000 max hey? so that's about 1/7th of a major work...so what you can do if u want is do a collection of short stories, which works too.

oh well have fun

 

[Lazarus]

My major work (short story) was 8,265 words (15 pages, size 12, Times New Roman).

 

[anti]

Don't forget that short stories (or longer short stories) don't have to necessarily follow any traditional structure... a 'traditional' short story written in paragraphs will be shorter than a contemporary short story written with bits of text everywhere, different sized fonts, etc.

Ditto poetry - I'm thinking e.e. cummings here, but I'm sure there's other examples (haven't looked through the standards package yet though).

 

[Lord Ac]

Fantasy

What does this reaserch involve? Im in Yr 11 and I want to do a story based on fantasy - in a world I basically make up; what do I need to reaserch??

Ac

 

[dissonance]

well to be honest the teachers at my school warned us against writing a fantasy piece. Mainly because it can easily become cliched.

but if you really wanted to do it I'd think you just do some research into other fantasy novels, writers etc.

 

[johnson]

yes what dissonance said it's true, it's difficult but it's not impossible. one big problem is that if you're gonna do a short story fantasy piece, you only have 7000-9000 words (correct me if im wrong?), and that's _not_ a lot of time to invent characters, settings, special powers, all those features of fantasy writing etc. fantasy works best as a novel...
BUT....there is a person writing a fantasy short in my class, and its turning out really well because she's kept to only one or two main characters and tried to work with the not so-cliched fantasy stuff...
a really important piece of advice i came across (it may seem obvious but its easy to pass), is that try and write something real but different . so obviously for fantasy pieces, the worlds and characters etc. are not real, this part would come under the 'different' part. but try and make your characters 'real', people who we can relate to, the best fantasy novels are not about characters who will never ever exist and who have every single super-power imaginagble and are perfectly pure, moral characters, etc. look at star wars; luke skywalker, he's a good guy but he's still flawed, which makes him interesting, which makes him 'real', a person we can relate to.

im not trying to be preachy here, just offering the bits of advice ive come across


yeh, as for research, i guess the only thing you can do for fantasy is read lots and lots and lots of other fantasy pieces, and see how those writers did it and what worked and what didn't.

good luck lord ac

 

[Lord Ac]

Thank you dissonance and Johnson .....

I think you have a good point there ... with the characters thing. In my short story (8000 words I have planned) there is only one character and the sotry is his quest to reach a certain destibnation atop a mountain. The whole story basicaly occurs in his head as we see what he thinks and plans and slowly reveal his past. There are no real cliches ... at the end, just before he reaches the top of the mountain, he is confornted by the gods who oppose him in his quest and they destory him ... thats the basica end. One chatcter, no real magic/fantasy until the end ...

Ac

 

[Sari]

research-wise, if you get stuck email me hey . . . i didnt do that, im crap with fiction but i did a critical response on the archetypal hero and the quest story, it was focused on harry potter but it made its way into LOTR a bit too, just because its so perfect . . .

but if u like there's some really good quest stuff for research i managed to get a hold of.
God bless

 

[anti]

One chatcter, no real magic/fantasy until the end ...

Be careful with the fantasy element, then. It's easy to use it as a sort of deus ex machina device where it appears as though you ran out of ideas (or time). It sounds like you're well on your way, though - I didn't have my idea until a few weeks into term 1, which effectively meant I wasted a term and a half.