Why Is English the Only Compulsory Subject in Years 11 and 12 in Australia?

[dansydney]

As a student who does well in Science and Maths I come across the question all the time of why English is taught as a compuslory subject in yr 11 and 12 (In Australia). This is the only subject that is compulsory with maths not being compuslory anymore. Now I can understand the teaching of English if it involved things such as formal writing, proper resume writing, debating, spelling, grammer, punctuation etc. The teaching of these things stops after year 8 and is never taught again during the following high school years, the teaching is shifted towards the study of books such as "The Catcher In the Rye" or "Fahrenheit 451". We are taught to analyse texts and what they mean to us. We are made to do lenghty essays on a weekly basis explaining things such as "How does a postmodern view compare with the modernist view, include samples and quotes from at least 5 different texts". Students are marked on how well they analyse a text and are generally not marked down because of things such as spelling and punctuation. I put this question on a physics and maths forum as many people (me included) I know find English a useless subject to be taught in yrs 11 and 12 and should not be compulsory. I do not do to badly in English gaining 13th out of 50 but I feel that it is not necessary at all for the future career I wish to pursue. I am making an assumption that many people on this forum would have not excelled in English (not trying to say no-one did) and correct me if I am wrong. My question is during school how did many of you get through doing English while still trying to focus on the subjects that you enjoyed such as Maths and Science. Also replies as to a purpose behind the compulsory teaching of the current English syllabus in yrs 11 and 12 in Australian schools or worldwide if this is the case elsewhere. Cheers

 

[Office_Shredder]

In America, you have to take biology, english, history, foreign language, and a whole host of mandatory classes, so don't expect to feel sympathy from any of us

 

[Rach3]

You don't think you'll ever need to communicate clearly in writing? Eh, don't worry, you've still got 4-10 years of school ahead of you to change your mind about that.

On a related topic, your post here is much too long to be in a single paragraph, to the point that most people wouldn't attempt to read it in its present form.

 

[dansydney]

What did you mean by 4-10 years? I've only got one year left and as for communicating clearly in writing as you can see I can not do that so well as it is and this is after years of schooling where I have gained well in English throughout. This is what I was aiming to say in my post, you can get very high marks in English talking about nothin when your not communicating efficiently. I was not requiring sympathy I was asking if anyone could answer me why it is compulsory in Australia. Cheers

 

[ShawnD]

I agree entirely when you say it's useless. Here in Canada you stop learning actual english at grade 8. Grades 9-12 are "how do you feel about...", which is clearly not the same as the study of a language. Rather than remove the course, I think it should be changed from an artsy waste of time to an actual english class. It should be based on extensive grammar rules you will only find in books. For example, are you aware "bring" and "take" differ based on the point of reference? Not many people do since it is not tought in any school.
http://www3.telus.net/linguisticsissues/commonerrorsinenglish.html

 

[Mickey]

No education should be compulsory. Well, no, that's not accurate...

No education can be compulsory. It's an impossibility. People only understand something when they choose to study, practice, and work with it.

Only because learning is so valuable do people put up with compulsory systems.

 

[Soilwork]

There is absolutely no purpose for teaching English anymore as the syllabus stands right now. To pick out symbolic meaning that is speculative and might not have even been intended by the author himself/herself is irrelevant and plain rubbish. There is absolutely no penalty for bad spelling and grammatical shortcomings. I managed to barely scrape through in English, but there were people who were getting 80% and higher for having utterly disgusting writing.

They would include as many polysyllabic words as possible in all their reports/speeches and these were often incorrectly used or pronounced incorrectly. Some examples of mispronounced words and misspelled words that I remember from the Dux of our year are:

omnipotent: Pronounced as omni - potent
compliment: Used when complement was the appropriate word (he did this all the time...in fact he wasn't aware that there was a word complement).
Conscienscious: Don't know why he spelled conscientious like that, but he never got marked down for this.
There: Used in place of they're or their. I've never seen it used in place of they're, but he managed that on numerous occasions. The most basic of mistakes...

Those are just a couple of weird examples of how incredible the Dux of English was. English is in a serious need of an overhaul because what they are doing now is ridiculous. People are coming out of school with atrocious writing skills and they don't care to learn either. That's why the standards of editing have dropped now as well. So chances are, when you try and get your work improved, you might just as well have it returned with just as many errors.

I also think that it is quite amazing that people believe it to be upper class to pronounce 'issue' as iss-u instead of ish-u and 'negotiate' as negociate instead of its proper pronunciation. I particularly don't like the sudden change in pronunciation of controversy because I see no reason for it. I also don't like that some people are pushing to drop the 'u' in words like favour, colour, etc...
The common argument I hear for this is that it makes the spelling simpler, which isn't a valid argument in my opinion.

Please don't mistake my comments for me trying to say that my English is great because I am well aware that I am a part of the group that has come out of school with atrocious writing skills. However, I am at least trying to fix this. So to answer your question I didn't really get through English...I struggled big time to do English on top of my other subjects. I also live in Australia though!

 

[loseyourname]

I have no clue what is going on in Australia, but it sounds to me like the English courses you are taking are not very rewarding and teach you little. That was not the case with my own high school experience. Years 11 and 12 were terrific in what I got out of my English classes. Constantly being made to analyze texts and write essays taught me to think critically, read carefully and closely, and to communicate clearly and effectively in writing, as well as how to simply construct a good argument.

The reason these are compulsory and math and science are not (in the US, three years of math and two of science are compulsory for graduation, but you better take more if you plan on getting into a good university) is that these are skills that are vital regardless of what you go on to do in life, whereas the more specialized skills you would learn in a higher math class aren't exactly necessary. They can come in handy, sure, but heck, I remember a complaint from an MIT grad working at the CIA who claimed he had met two people in the entire White House that knew how to find the roots of a quadratic equation. Sad as it may be for the math buffs here, the reality is that you can get very far in life while knowing very little about anything beyond basic arithmetic. You cannot get very far, however, if you cannot put together a proper paragraph and understand the meaning of rhetorical and figurative speech. How are you ever going to write a grant proposal or lab report?

 

[Knavish]

Actually, the scenario there is an insult to our math teachers. Had we been less concerned about rote memorization, our society might not be as ignorant. Deriving a solution to the quadratic formula doesn't require much skill. Any and every man should be able to do it. Take note: I am not talking about mathematics per se. I am talking about the ability to think.

English is something you need to know, but must not know too well. Let’s leave it at that.

 

[Hawknc]

What state? The English syllabi (I THINK that's the plural of syllabus...not particularly motivated to look it up) vary depending on the system you're under. For most of them, though, there's certainly a blurring of the lines betwen English and Literature as subjects. I can see why it's thought to be compulsory - good communications skills are essential for succeeding in life - but the focus needs to shift a little, away from studying texts and to practical skills such as formal writing and oral skills, which are pretty much left for dead under the VCE system. Mind you, I did enjoy the argumentative/persuasive writing part of it so you're not going to see me arguing for the removal of that part.

Ideally I'd like to see two compulsory categories - one for maths, one for english - with a number of subjects in each category and students are required to complete at least one from each. If you're doing English Lit, why do English as well? You might not need to know calculus if you're planning a glamorous life on the dole, but a maths subject that concentrates on practical maths applications (yes, it's mostly covered in earlier years, but I tutor plenty of people who simply miss it completely the first time around and things such as geometry, interest and probability can be covered in more depth over a two-year period than over two weeks) will equip you better than graduating having forgotten everything you did before Year 11.

 

[Chi Meson]

What did you mean by 4-10 years?

I think he was referring to the requisite courses in English you will face in university!

I did a Physics/English double major, and then I got an MFA in English-Creative Writing. I decided early on that I would "enjoy the books" that were given to us, and then enjoy writing my opinion on them. The trick was to keep it "valid." When I got too clever-clever, the teachers didn't like it, but if I stayed within the boundaries of plausibility, and injected humor, the teacher usually appreciated it. I can't tell you how many papers I got back with remarks like: "this is the only paper with a unique point of view" etc. That remark became my initial goal, and then when I found a skewed way to look at a work, the papers usually wrote themselves.

By now, most people on this forum have done "Lord of the Flies" right? And most of you know that they could not have started a fire with Piggies eyeglasses because he was short-sighted, right? I decided to use that error as the leaping point to rip apart the author's entire premise; since the structure and perimeters of his world were physically flawed, who's to say he was not manufacturing the structure and perimeters of his society? Teacher HATED it, but I still got an A.

Feel free to use that premise, anyone, it was suggested to me by my own HS physics teacher anyway.

 

[Hawknc]

I think he was referring to the requisite courses in English you will face in university!

Not here, mate. The core subjects in a degree here are only those that are actually relevant. You won't find many, if any, engineers/scientists doing English or arts students doing algebra if it isn't required by their specific course.

 

[Chi Meson]

Not here, mate. The core subjects in a degree here are only those that are actually relevant. You won't find many, if any, engineers/scientists doing English or arts students doing algebra if it isn't required by their specific course.

Imagine!

 

[matt.o]

Not here, mate. The core subjects in a degree here are only those that are actually relevant. You won't find many, if any, engineers/scientists doing English or arts students doing algebra if it isn't required by their specific course.

That really depends on the University you attend. For example, at the University of New South Wales, you are required to do "gen-ed" subjects which are generally quite different from the core subjects within your chosen degree.

 

[Hawknc]

O rly? That's the first I've heard of that. No courses I know of down here require you to take general subjects outside of your faculty. From looking at the UNSW website, it appears that the GE program is different to the US model in that they're still part of and related to your faculty, just not necessarily your major. Would that be accurate? (e.g. Engineering's general subjects are units like "solar cars", "computer game design", etc., and science has units such as astronomy, aviation and cosmology.)

 

[Moonbear]

Not here, mate. The core subjects in a degree here are only those that are actually relevant. You won't find many, if any, engineers/scientists doing English or arts students doing algebra if it isn't required by their specific course.

How is English not relevant to science? Have you ever opened up a scientific journal? While the topic about which you are writing may not be thrilling to you, the lesson in communicating your thoughts clearly, logically and concisely, along with properly supporting your claims, is essential for later communicating your scientific findings. Further, as a large number of journals are written in the English language, even non-English speakers embarking on a scientific career find they need to learn English.

The opening post here is an excellent example of why formal English coursework remains necessary. It was disorganized, rambling, redundant, and full of grammatical errors that made it difficult to understand the point in the first read-through. Upper-level English courses and the assigned essays in them help to hone those writing skills. I cannot think of any field in which strong writing skills and critical reading for content are not important. I was extremely pleased when informed that the department I've recently joined even has a required writing class for graduate students. I hope it helps remediate those who previously thought English courses were unimportant for science majors.

As for why an English major would not be required to learn algebra, I can only suggest it is a disservice to those students to not require proficiency to at least that level, unless the expectation is they will never earn enough to need to balance a checkbook. From your description, I do not find fault in making English (or generally, language, whatever that language is) composition a compulsory subject, but rather that the math and science subjects are not compulsory. In the U.S., courses in all three areas are required in high school.

 

[Moonbear]

O rly? That's the first I've heard of that. No courses I know of down here require you to take general subjects outside of your faculty. From looking at the UNSW website, it appears that the GE program is different to the US model in that they're still part of and related to your faculty, just not necessarily your major. Would that be accurate? (e.g. Engineering's general subjects are units like "solar cars", "computer game design", etc., and science has units such as astronomy, aviation and cosmology.)

Did you read the page on their site that's titled "General Education?" Each faculty offers Gen Ed courses, but the idea of Gen Ed is to get breadth of knowledge outside your area of specialization. You could contact the school to be certain, but it sounds to me like there would be restrictions preventing you from using courses in your own specialization (major) to satisfy Gen Ed requirements.

They have a very good explanation of why they are required as well:

UNSW requires that undergraduate students undertake a structured program in General Education as an integral part of studies for their degree.

The University believes that a general education complements the more specialised learning undertaken in a student's chosen field of study and contributes to the flexibility which graduates are increasingly required to demonstrate.

Employers also repeatedly point to the complex nature of the modern work environment and advise that they highly value graduates with the skills provided by a broad general education, as well as the specialised knowledge provided in more narrowly defined degree programs.

The General Education Program at UNSW intends to broaden students' understanding of the environment in which they live and work and to enhance their skills of critical analysis.

http://www.handbook.unsw.edu.au/generaleducation/2006/generaleducation.html?StudyLevel=Undergraduate

 

[wolram]

One thing that should be weaned out of english, is terms like,( i have got),I
i guess HRW would say different but to me the term is nonsense.

 

[Moonbear]

One thing that should be weaned out of english, is terms like,( i have got),I
i guess HRW would say different but to me the term is nonsense.

Unless you're using "got" as a noun (coining a new term perhaps), then that's not correct English at all. It's just "I have..."

 

[Chi Meson]

One thing that should be weaned out of english, is terms like,( i have got),I
i guess HRW would say different but to me the term is nonsense.

I've got other examples of that kind of thing (note irony):
can we all stop using the word "usage"? It's "use."
And don't every say "thusly" in front of me, you'll lose your teeth. Say "thus."
And I hope no one here has ever said "the thing of it is, is..."
I'll stop now [/RANT]

 

[Soilwork]

I think that you (Moonbear) slightly misinterpreted what the original poster was saying. He knows that his English isn't great and that was his complaint. In most schools in Australia you are taught crappy analytical writing of texts and Australian soapies without any emphasis on how to write well. Nevermind the fact that very few teachers care for the correct use of English words or punctuation in your writing. I see this analytical writing as useful if you are wanting to pursue the arts, but it shouldn't take up the whole syllabus as a result. They should incorporate some teaching of the English language in there as well.

I agree that English is an essential subject to learn, but as it stands now, I think that it should no longer be compulsory since it <b>only</b> focuses on symbolic analysis of texts and things like that. As the syllabus is now, it has nothing to do with teaching the English language.

To have people called illiterate just because they can't analyse the text in the way the teacher wanted is gross misuse of the term. I'm the only one in my family with considerably bad English skills and I was the only one <b>not</b> to get the notice "Your son is illiterate". Their writing skills are far superior to mine yet they were told they were illiterate??

 

[Gokul43201]

I like 'thusly'. It's 'thus' with elan. 'Thus' is a common opener, 'thusly', a nice finish - nicer even than Michelob.

What really gets me though, is when people use double quotation marks when they should be using single quotation marks.

 

[dansydney]

I agree with moonbear that my writing skills aren't too great. This is what I'm talking about though because nothing we learn from year 8 onwards has anything to do with correct writing and as I said punctuation and spelling are not necessary to gain top marks. I agree English should be compulsory if the syllabus is changed dramatically.

 

[Hawknc]

Moonbear - English is absolutely essential to science. I said as much earlier and I think we're on the same wavelength in that respect. But these are quite basic skills we're talking about and they need to be taught in high school, not university. Many courses simply won't accept you unless you have a reasonable score in English, but - as is the topic of the thread - that's not really useful if high school English isn't teaching you the right material.

As for UNSW's GE program...well, astronomy ain't English, if you get my meaning. I see the benefit of doing subjects that broaden your degree outside of your specialisation, and though I don't think it should be compulsory I do encourage it, but that's a far cry from having to do non-science units within a science degree.

 

[Schrodinger's Dog]

You don't think you'll ever need to communicate clearly in writing? Eh, don't worry, you've still got 4-10 years of school ahead of you to change your mind about that.

On a related topic, your post here is much too long to be in a single paragraph, to the point that most people wouldn't attempt to read it in its present form.

I get people say this to me, but a paragraph is only warranted for a change of subject so in this singular case he has used the correct English, but of course it's easier to read(by people who are critical of such things) So technically it should be broken into sperate paragraphs even though it would in fact be bad English. Who cares about grammar though

Personally I did badly at English because they focused on punctuation and spelling, so although my work was good, they couldn't understand some of it so I got marked down. Thus I never did well at English until I learned to write literately which took about I would say 30 years. I am now 34

I hated English, I never got it and consequently never did very well at it, but I can see that it is a foundation for every other subject, if you can't communicate effectively in science then no one will read your papers, let alone understand them

Most people moan about maths, after all when will anyone need that calculus crap Oh shazbat! I need it now

 

[ek]

At my high school, English was the only subject that was mandatory in all five years. And unlike some of the other experiences expressed here, a lot of my english in high school was fundamental english. I remember my grade 9 english class, grammar was absolutely hammered into our brains. Even in grade 12 we would have separate weekly grammar, spelling and vocabulary tests at the start of class, in addition to the regular curriculum (books, essays, short stories etc).

And at the university I attend (Victoria), first year english is (the only course that is) required for everybody, regardless of department/faculty, unless the student has scored above 90% on the Provincial Exam in grade 12. Only about 5% of the students achieve this mark. Fortunately, I was one of these students, the only one in my class. That meant no more english for me!

For the record, I really enjoyed high school english and some of the books we had to read had a positive impact on my life. If I wasn't so dead-set on getting a degree in Astronomy, I would have definitely considered a degree in english.

 

[scorpa]

From high school onwards I have always found English to be fairly useless. We were taught essentially no grammar, punctuation...ect but instead analyzed a variety of stories, poems and plays and were asked to write essays on a certain topic related to these stores. In high school we could at least attain a good mark as long as we had valid proof for our opinions, however in University I found that unless our analysis agreed with that of the professor you were not likely to get a good mark. I have made it through every English class I have taken with very good marks but feel I have not learned anything useful, and thus did not enjoy the classes at all. I feel that I would have benefited much more from a technical writing class more suited to science/engineering students that had more emphasis on writing proper lab reports, journal articles, and of course proper grammar and punctuation.

 

[J77]

A career in science and being able to write well, come hand-in-hand. My first, and longest lasting, impression when reviewing scientific articles is the author's use of English. If the article is badly written, chances are, I'll reject it.

Plus, during your English lessons, you were probably taught how to use paragraphs...

...which are pretty helpful on message boards

 

[Chi Meson]

I like 'thusly'. It's 'thus' with elan. 'Thus' is a common opener, 'thusly', a nice finish - nicer even than Michelob.

What really gets me though, is when people use double quotation marks when they should be using single quotation marks.

Well if you're talking about beer, you can do as you wish, "thus."

As far as the quotes go, you are probably following the British rules (doubles within the singles) which is opposite from the American rules (singles within the doubles). This was decided by the early typesetters and the choices they made also determined where the period goes (if a sentence ends in a quote).
'British'.
"American."

Evidently, the decision was made by typesetters to protect the delicate "." (NOW where do I put the period? I know, I'll add a parenthesis).
With the little dot all by itself next to a space, it tended to get crushed by the ink rollers. Placing it inside the double quotes made it last longer. (This is what was told to me by my Editing professor).

 

[J77]

Evidently, the decision was made by typesetters to protect the delicate "."

Nah - the decision was made to annoy people who write papers in perfect English, only for them to be bastardised by the American type-setters

 

[Schrodinger's Dog]

You don't have to put a full stop in at the end of a quote or a passage of speech I think e.g.

Adam walked along the path where he met suzy 'Hi suzy'

'Hi Adam'

'What's knew'

'not much'

or as Einstein said "God does not play dice with the universe"

I believe it's because the quotes already denote a start or finish break such as a comma bracket or full stop( it's the same reason you don't put a full stop at the End of a bracket, I think) See.

AFAIK anyway but then I've never been accused of writing good English so I really wouldn't know. This thread has turned into US/UK English 101. Good work

 

[star.torturer]

who speaks beter american?
clasic bad joke coming up
i am fluent in 2 languages, english and bad inglish.

sory i had to put it

im absolutly crap at english, but that's cause i have dyspraxia, me complaining about my self again, oh no.

actualy Mr Shrodinger's Dog, you are wrong, they do need punctuation at the end of the sentence. even with quotes and brackets

 

[Schrodinger's Dog]

In that case I'm glad I don't hold with the convention as it's just a waste of my time, or it's just a waste of ink

"Never stand up if you can sit down, never sit down if you can lie down" My chemistry teacher used to say that, KISS.

 

[star.torturer]

same here

unfortunatley my spelin doesn't hold up either

 

[Mk]

omnipotent: Pronounced as omni - potent

When I read, the little voice in my head always says omni-potent. Like when I read Euler. You-ler.

Of course I say it the right way.