VCE English Language past exams 2016–2025, by year and topic

Language variation and purpose · 4 mapped questions

Language variation and identity · 4 mapped questions

The rest of the study design

Question-level mapping for these areas is still being verified. Every official paper covering them is in the year table above.

• Unit 3, Area of Study 1: Informality — Role of Standard English in formal vs informal texts · Register, tenor and audience in informal texts · Features of informal writing and informal speech · Subsystem patterning in informal texts · Colloquial language, slang, taboo language, dysphemism, swearing · Emoticons, emojis and context-specific graphemes · Discourse strategies and cooperation in informal exchanges · Purposes of informal language: intimacy, solidarity, equality, politeness strategies, linguistic innovation, in-group membership · Textual cohesion and coherence in informal texts · Transcription conventions for spoken English texts
• Unit 3, Area of Study 2: Formality — Role of Standard English in formal vs informal texts · Register, tenor and audience in formal texts · Features of formal writing and formal speech · Subsystem patterning, rhetoric, jargon, euphemism, doublespeak, non-discriminatory language · Discourse strategies and cooperation in formal exchanges · Purposes of formal language: politeness, reinforcing social distance/authority, establishing expertise, negotiating taboos, clarifying/manipulating/obfuscating · Textual cohesion and coherence in formal texts · Public language: politics, reportage, law, bureaucracy
• Unit 4, Area of Study 1: Language variation in Australian society — Features of Standard Australian English and its societal role · Broad, General and Cultivated Australian English accents · Aboriginal Australian Englishes and migrant ethnolects · Prescriptivist and descriptivist attitudes to English varieties · Influence of global contact and modern technologies on Australian English · Language and perceived national identity · Language stereotypes (established and emerging) and their validity
• Unit 4, Area of Study 2: Individual and group identities — Sociolects and idiolects (age, gender, sexuality, occupation, interests, aspirations, education) · Representations of individual and group identity in texts · Overt and covert prestige in speech communities · Linguistic repertoires, power and prestige · Code switching and group membership/belonging · Social attitudes, prejudice and language choice · Social disadvantage and discrimination via language
• Unit 1, Area of Study 1: The nature and functions of language (school-assessed only, not examined) — Language as an arbitrary, convention-governed meaning-making system · Major functions of language in context · Register, tenor and audience · Situational and cultural context: field, mode, setting, text type, authorial intent · Core subsystems: morphology, lexicology, syntax, semantics; introduction to phonetics/phonology and discourse/pragmatics · Speech vs writing: paralinguistics and prosodics
• Unit 1, Area of Study 2: Language acquisition (school-assessed only, not examined) — Developmental stages for first- and additional-language learners · Universal grammar vs usage-based theories · Child vs adult language learning, multilingualism, code switching · Phonetics/phonology and the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) · Phonological, morphological, lexical, syntactic and semantic development in children · Linguistic field work and data collection
• Unit 2, Area of Study 1: English across time (school-assessed only, not examined) — Historical development of English and key change events · Relationship of English to Indo-European languages · Codification and evolution of Standard English · Subsystem change: Great Vowel Shift; morphological/lexical/syntactic/semantic change processes · Prescriptivism vs descriptivism · Elective depth study: Incursions (Vikings, Norman conquest, religion, plagues) OR Inventions (printing press, dictionaries, typewriters/keyboards, internet)
• Unit 2, Area of Study 2: Englishes in contact (school-assessed only, not examined) — Global spread of English: trade, colonisation, contemporary factors · Development of Australian Englishes including Aboriginal Australian Englishes · Pidgins and creoles · English as a lingua franca · Language and cultural identity/worldview · Language maintenance, shift and reclamation · Language loss and its effects, with particular reference to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages