How would we best prepare students for VCE Section A questions?

 

How would we best prepare students for VCE Section A questions?

October 26, 2025 by Doug McCurry 

According to the Executive Examiner for VCE English, there are four kinds of Section A questions: propositional, quotation, direct and hybrid. We were originally told that there would be no questions about single characters in the new course, but that seems to have been extended into there being no named characters in questions. The author is resurrected in current questions, but characters are buried. It also seems that there are to be no references in questions to incidents, plot or setting. One wonders at the rationale for this peculiar approach to a text list that is 75% fiction.

---

The propositions and the questions of the 2024 English exam seem to be based on what the examining panel would see as ‘concepts’, and by that they mean what is usually referred to as themes. The questions of 2024 were based on themes rather than characters or plot. (Themes disappeared from Section B in 2024 to universal relief only to return in Section A.)

The exam report and comments by exam panel members also show a new interest in what is called ‘resolving the topic’. What this phrase means is not explained and what it amounts is unclear. What is clear is that attention is focussed on dealing with the question (hopefully with analysis and argument about it) rather than offering a reading of the text.

The various comments of the exam panel imply that good text study questions are:

• specific;
• conceptual;
• requiring at least analysis and explanation of a concept;
• preferably requiring argument to agree or disagree about the concept as a proposition; or
• dealing with multiple concepts requiring ‘resolution’.

Another more standard approach would see good text study questions as:

• specific;
• concrete;
• requiring a reading of what happens, to whom and why; and
• an argument agreeing or disagreeing with a proposition about what happens, to whom and why.

These are fundamentally different approaches. The first is focused on the question and the themes, and the second is focused on any or all aspects of the text. The first currently preferred approach is significantly narrower than the second more or less traditional approach. The first is focused on the question while the second is more focussed on the text.

I won’t push this contrast between the current and the traditional approach any further, but whether the assumptions involved with the thematic slant of the current questions has significance in the terms of the marking is a cause of concern.

Is dealing with the question of more importance is assessing Section A exam responses than showing an understanding of the text?

It is unfortunate, of course, that we can learn little about the assumptions of the marking from the limited published discourse about it. We have to speculate about how best to prepare our student for the exam.

With these concerns in mind, how would we best prepare for the kind of thematic questions currently set in the English exam?

Given the emphasis on analysing and hopefully ‘resolving’ questions, the emphasis on exam preparation should be on analysing thematic questions and exploring a text through themes and the way plot and character are linked to themes.

This is not an attractive or intellectually rigorous approach to text study, but it is consistent with the questions set and one fears the way responses are currently marked in VCE English.