Whilst I don't mind english I have some HUGE issues with the Eng Adv syllabus. It's not that I don't like it, I just have almost a total lack of respect for it.
I think at heart the idea was good... but ultimately I feel (particularly in recent years) that either the syllabus or the teachers themselves are going overboard with the terminology and hardcore concepts/theories/whathaveyou in an attempt to get students up to par with EE1/uni levels to give them an advantage/better marks = higher UAI.
What they seem to have forgotten is that EE1 only has to deal with one module, and even at Uni, you tend to look at one "thing" (usually a genre) per semester. In Eng Adv, you get one year for THREE modules, and usually they have absolutely no correlation with each other. Considering the fact that your fourth term is usually reserved for trials/HSC study, this pans out into one module per term - that's 10 weeks each.
Admittedly that's quite similar to how it's done in uni, however we have an advantage - we tend to cover things in great detail and aren't as obsessed with reciting terminology the way HSC students are taught to. Do the majority of HSC students have time to learn all that crazy terminology/concepts, and actually understand it by the time the exams come around? No. Can a lot of them get screwed over in uni because all they know is to go on a spiel about the techniques Shakespeare used in Hamlet, how personal context affected Harwood's poetry, etc etc? Oh yes.
It's so disappointing to learn, as a uni student, that you might know some texts in great "detail", however you don't actually "know" those concepts and techniques well enough to apply them to other texts. In essence, so much of it is just regurgitation... (ie where do you know all these "facts" from? Because your teacher told you to write it down in an essay, that's why) there's little scope for actual learning.
I do think some modules are written well/chose their texts carefully to promote understanding rather than pure regurgitation (such as the choice of "Birthday Letters") as they make you think, but other modules and a number of teachers are all about 'write down what I tell you to'/"you have two options - be an idiot, or look at it from only ONE perspective" other than encouraging the students to be able to express what THEY actually think about the texts.
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