VCE English

Continuing our study guide into VCE English. This week we focus "the context", a potentially confusing but creative component of the year 12 curriculum.

Libbi Gorr and Chief VCE English assessor Bob Hillman of Trinity Grammar discuss the 2012 VCE English curriculum.

On my own website, you can learn about how students chose topics and you can download the worksheet that I used to guide them towards their choice.

The first thing I did was get the students familiar with the Persuasive/Memoir speech patterns that so many of the TED speeches possess. Many of the presentations, regardless of the length, whether they are 3 minutes or 23 minutes, tend to some share key common traits like: Hook Background Information Narrative Evidence Commentary Theme Call to Action Visuals

1. Metasearching using dogpile What I like about this is that on the page where your results are listed, it categorizes your results in ways that might behoove better research. If the student types in "global warming," then it asks if you would also like results that only focus on "causes of global warming," "effects of global warming," and so on. 2. Google Advanced Search Obviously, the more specific you search, the less work you have to do. Let Google do the work by spending just a little time creating parameters for your results. 3. Google Scholar This can be a little heady, but it has also led to some really interesting results. 4. Reading URLs What does a .org mean? .gov? .edu? What symbols may indicate personal sites? Reading the sentences of the URL is the first step in reliable searching online.