VCE English case studies
VCE English · Put your knowledge to work in context.
VCE English is a Victorian senior secondary study administered within the Victorian Certificate of Education, the certificate framework the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA) publishes study designs and examination material for. Candidates are senior secondary students in Victoria, typically in their final years of schooling, who complete the study as part of their VCE program and sit external examinations set and reported on by VCAA. The VCE English case studies are 5 cases and about 1,850 words.
1The Tonally Split Passage
A student is analysing a 600-word opinion piece arguing that a local council should keep its 10pm curfew on public basketball courts. The piece opens with measured statistics: 42 noise complaints in six months, a 31% drop in late-night incidents, and a quoted council engineer.
360 words, about 2 min2Quoting the Villain
In a unit on a novel, a student writes an essay on a character who betrays the protagonist. The student's central contention is: 'The novel condemns the betrayer completely.' To support this, the student quotes a line in which the betrayer says, 'I did what anyone would have done.' The student treats the line as the author's own judgement.
357 words, about 2 min3Two Texts, One Claim
A comparative essay pairs two texts about migration. Text A is a memoir in which the narrator describes leaving home as 'a tearing.' Text B is a documentary-style novel in which a family's departure is described as 'a door clicking shut, quietly, as if it had always been closed.' A student writes: 'Both texts show that leaving home is painful.' The teacher says this is true but too thin for the comparative task, which rewards analysis of how the texts differ in their treatment of a shared idea.
363 words, about 2 min4The Student Who Argues With the Prompt
A student is preparing an oral presentation for the Presenting Argument outcome. The prompt asks them to argue a position on whether their school should ban mobile phones during lunch.
425 words, about 2 min5The Counter-Argument That Isn't
A student writing a persuasive piece on lowering the voting age to 16 includes a paragraph beginning: 'Some people say 16-year-olds are too immature to vote. But this is obviously wrong, and anyone who thinks so is out of touch.' The teacher marks the paragraph as a failed counter-argument.
345 words, about 2 min