I know this has been said in the papers before (and perhaps on here somewhere...), but the bos and english syllabus does NOT know what it wants.
1 -Instead of teaching us to think for ourselves and apply ideas etc, they want us to learn to imitate styles like feature articles and speeches, as though we're expected to be worldclass reporters and speechwriters after our 13years. I think this can limit our ability to most effectively convey our knowledge.
2 - They want us to do too many things at once. Its not so bad for 3u, but for advanced they want us to write 3 "essays" in 2hours, each in different "forms", as well as bring in related material - which means less time to develop a coherent argument based on the texts ACTUALLY STUDIED! The shift to wide reading rather than close study means that instead of providing an indepth analysis you are regurgitating a few "incisive" comments on several texts u may have developed over the course of exams .
3 - their attempts to update themselves. Whoever mentioned the postmodern stuff - i agree wholeheartedly. Sometimes its ok, but sometimes it is just soooo frustrating having them parade multimedia and websites as texts as proof of their "relevance", while making them still so irrelevant to life... (i personally think the atsic website will leave teh advanced syllabus - only one school chose it last year, and it costs to much to develop questions and marking guidelines....ditto for "the essay" in 3u)
Hmmmm i think i should stop before BOS does something terrible to my english marks!