In our experience, teens who struggle with expressing and expanding their ideas are often working with a less-than-ideal vocabulary. They lack the words to articulate the nuance, depth and breadth of their ideas, and so they write in clumsy, ineffective and inaccurate ways. But there is help!
Author: Shirlaine
How to improve your teen’s argument analysis
Argument analysis has been part of the VCE English/EAL study design for many, many, MANY years, in one form or another. And it will continue to be a part of the new study design! So how can we help our teens lift improve their analysis?
Essay prompts for the most popular text response texts
We know the best way to help our students prepare for the dreaded VCE English exam is to plan (and write) as many essays as possible, but what if you don't have enough prompts to give them? Well, you're in luck! Here are...
Sentence starters for the comparative essay
Sentence starters (or stems) can be a great way to help give our teens the momentum they need to write those comparative sentences. Here are some for you to try with your teen!
Helpful vocabulary for the comparative essay
Here are some handy vocabulary for you to practice with your teen when writing those comparative essays!
Comparative essay structures: block or integrated?
If I had a penny every time students asked me which structure is better... When structuring a comparative essay, there are 2 main kinds of structures available to our teens: a Block approach or an Integrated approach.
VCE Comparative essay pairs – 2022 & 2023
Do you have a teen is studying Year 12 English in 2022 or 2023? Do you know what pairs of texts they're studying? The comparative essay is one of the more important pieces...
How to get your teen to do more analysis in their essays
If your student is stuck on 'summarising' or 'storytelling' in their essays, you know they must increase the amount and level of their analysis, but HOW do we do this?
Summarising vs Analysing
How can our teens avoid summarising, or that dreaded comment, 'storytelling!', in their essays? What's the difference between summarising and analysing?
TEEL – everything you need to know
TEEL! What is this acronym your teen is so frustrated about? This is the most common acronym teachers across Victoria use to teach their students...