ESL > Advanced ? (1 Viewer)

[Freyo]

Hello, My first post here

I need help deciding if I should do ESL or Advanced English. I have been in Australia for two years now however I've been learning English since Kindy in my home country. In Years 9 & 10 here in Australia, I was getting around 70% and ranked 20's and 30's out of 60 so kinda average although I think I should be doing better than that in the next two years. Standard English is completely out of the equation since I heard it scales very badly. I feel like I'm capable of doing Advanced English but at the same time if ESL scales higher or the same, then putting the same effort in ESL is going to get me better marks since it's much easier plus, allowing me more time to study the rest of the subjects I'm doing. So... questions are:

1) How does ESL usually scale in comparison to Advanced?

2) The people that are doing ESL next year in my school are much worse than me in English, does that mean Moderation is going to be an issue for me? and how much would it affect me if I was still getting high marks (maybe not first just in case but say second, third, fourth?)

3) I want to get into a bachelors dentistry degree probably at UQ,JCU etc.. would doing ESL be a problem for me?

 

[hawkrider]

1) Advanced scales better than ESL - so definitely Advanced. Your ATAR will thank you trust me.

2) Moderation wouldn't be as bad compared to Standard English where it usually has a very weak cohort so don't worry about that right now. It all depends on your rank (not necessarily high marks, although it does help).

3) As long you have good English skills, than you should be fine. Check out these links for your degree:

http://www.uq.edu.au/study/program.html?acad_prog=2257
http://www-public.jcu.edu.au/courses/course_info/?userText=73010-#.UqDr1mQW3DU

 

[Freyo]

2) Moderation wouldn't be as bad compared to Standard English where it usually has a very weak cohort so don't worry about that right now. It all depends on your rank (not necessarily high marks, although it does help).

Thanks for your reply, I thought that even getting ranked high doesn't mean much since you would be ranked in the top 5 for example in a weak cohort. If say, everyone was getting around an average of 55% and my mark is 85% with the top mark being 90%, wouldn't that greatly affect me since I'm ranked third for example in a really bad cohort?

 

[hawkrider]

Thanks for your reply, I thought that even getting ranked high doesn't mean much since you would be ranked in the top 5 for example in a weak cohort. If say, everyone was getting around an average of 55% and my mark is 85% with the top mark being 90%, wouldn't that greatly affect me since I'm ranked third for example in a really bad cohort?

It wouldn't affect you that much because you have a decent rank.

 

[Freyo]

So is it better for me to get high ranks in ESL even though the cohort may be very weak than getting average ranks/marks in advanced? also, apart from moderation, does ESL scale higher than advanced?

 

[hawkrider]

So is it better for me to get high ranks in ESL even though the cohort may be very weak than getting average ranks/marks in advanced? also, apart from moderation, does ESL scale higher than advanced?

Yes, and Advanced scales better than ESL.

 

[strawberrye]

So is it better for me to get high ranks in ESL even though the cohort may be very weak than getting average ranks/marks in advanced? also, apart from moderation, does ESL scale higher than advanced?

You should definitely do ESL, by the sounds of it, you are fully capable of trying to aim for being number one in your ESL cohort, as long as you are ranked one, having a weak cohort will not affect you much if you are able to perform consistently, this includes performing well in the external HSC exams, it is a much wiser and strategic decision to choose a subject you will definitely do well in and scales well then choose a subject that you will be at a significant disadvantage of-since most people doing Advanced will have learnt English for a lot longer than you have. Best wishes for the year

 

[Freyo]

You should definitely do ESL, by the sounds of it, you are fully capable of trying to aim for being number one in your ESL cohort, as long as you are ranked one, having a weak cohort will not affect you much if you are able to perform consistently, this includes performing well in the external HSC exams, it is a much wiser and strategic decision to choose a subject you will definitely do well in and scales well then choose a subject that you will be at a significant disadvantage of-since most people doing Advanced will have learnt English for a lot longer than you have. Best wishes for the year

Great to hear other people's opinions as well I was thinking about trying out Advanced English for a term or two and see how I go, then I would have the option to drop to ESL whenever I wanted instead of going ESL and being stuck with it but yes, you definitely have a point. Thanks