Tens of thousands of Victorian students will battle their nerves as they put pens to paper for the marathon VCE English exam on Tuesday.
While languages, music, theatre and dance exams have been held over the past fortnight, most VCE students’ exams kick off with English this week.
Caitlyn Trieu-Nguyen, a year 12 student at Canterbury Girls’ Secondary College, will sit her first VCE exam on Tuesday.Credit: Photograph by Chris Hopkins
English subjects are mandatory, and the VCE English exam has the most enrolments. More than 47,000 students will sit the written exam this year.
The largest exam centre in the state is at Bendigo Senior Secondary College, where 1037 students will do their assessments.
The smallest centre is at Cann River P-12 College in East Gippsland, 450 kilometres east of Melbourne, where three students will sit the exams.
Canterbury Girls’ Secondary College student Caitlyn Trieu-Nguyen will be among those sitting the English exam and said it was the subject she was most apprehensive about.
“I’m extremely stressed,” she said. “With all the other subjects, I feel pretty confident with most of them, but English is one of those subjects you can’t tell how you’re travelling.”
Trieu-Nguyen, who turned 18 just days ago, said her focus was on getting through the three-hour assessment on Tuesday.
The first section involves writing an analytical response to one of two questions about a text, film or play students have studied. In the second section, students will need to write a creative text based on a prompt. The last section asks students to analyse an argument.
Trieu-Nguyen has a strategy to help her manage her time and deal with each of the sections. She plans to start with the last section first, so everything from the reading time is still fresh in her mind.
“I’ll be able to retain the information and spill those thoughts out,” said Trieu-Nguyen, who wants to study design and business at Monash.
Melbourne High School captain Oliver Downing won the school’s English prize, but he said he was still anxious heading into the test.
“I naturally was never someone who perceived myself as strong in English … I saw myself as more of a maths person … but then I’ve worked hard over time and in the end, done quite well and have really grown to love English,” he said.
Downing, who hopes to study law at university, said he had looked at previous exams and felt comfortable he would write something he’d be happy with.
Like Trieu-Nguyen, he said he planned to start the exam with the last section.
“Going backwards seems to be the right way to do it because you want to use your reading time really well,” he said.
Dani Cooper, head of English at Strathcona Girls Grammar School, reassured students that the English exam wouldn’t have any surprises.
Cooper recommended using one hour for each section and utilising the 15 minutes of reading time well by thinking about the topics and how to approach them.
“Take some deep breaths,” she said.
She said some students wrote time stamps at the top of their paper to remind them to keep to time.
“They have a lot of writing to do, so the time will fly; they move hour to hour,” she said.
She also recommends students practise their handwriting and ensure they write clearly.
This year, more than 3000 students are sitting the English as an additional language written test at one of the state’s 580 exam centres.
Education Minister Ben Carroll congratulated students for reaching the milestone, as they neared the end of their secondary education.
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