Why Student Leadership is Important

January 12, 2021 ,

Why Student Leadership is Important

This article has been written by Lydia McClelland, a VCE French, Music Theory, Literature & VCE English Tutor at Learnmate.

What has leadership got to do with school? Some might say nothing at all. Others might try to push you into applying for opportunities, such as sports, arts, music or school captain leadership roles. Before you say you can’t be bothered, or before you assume that it isn’t rewarding enough to put yourself forward for such opportunities, let’s consider some of the potential benefits. How could leadership opportunities apply to your real life?

  • Communication skills. Taking on a leadership position means you will certainly have the opportunity to practise your communication skills with a wide range of people and in many different ways, including public speaking, liaising with teachers and parents, communicating with your peers and even resolving conflicts. Communication skills are highly sought after in nearly every possible career path, so you can be assured you will develop skills essential to the rest of your life.
  • Sense of empowerment. Students granted access to leadership are able to feel the satisfaction of knowing they are contributing towards making a difference, on whatever scale it may be. Students should have a voice in their schools, so take pride in your position and make sure you are vocal about the issues you care about if you are given the chance to lead!
  • Problem-solving skills. Leaders will inevitably be faced with problems and forced to make difficult decisions. It is highly beneficial for young people to have the chance to solve problems, think creatively and in this way work alongside others. If you are working on attacking problems in an innovative way, this is a great ability which will apply to countless more situations in your life.
  • Step outside your comfort zone. Throughout your life you will be confronted with opportunities that might make you uncomfortable to even consider doing. It can feel risky to take on a position you have no experience with, but step outside of your comfort zone and embrace the challenge! You can never predict exactly how it will turn out and you have nothing to lose.
  • Develop team-work skills. The best leaders are collaborators, people who are willing to listen to others’ input and take that into consideration. Another highly sought-after skill in most professions is the ability to work successfully in teams, and leadership in school is a great opportunity to work on this skill.
  • Build up your resume. Having any leadership experience is looked upon favourably by employers down the track as it is seen as a demanding role: if you have the chance to get leadership experience, you should take it. You never know where a small leadership role at school might help you reach.
  • Achieve success in a non-academic forum. You may not feel at home with memorising definitions and studying for hours upon end, but this doesn’t mean you would be a bad leader. Taking on a leadership role and doing a good job is a very highly regarded form of success which is not tied to academics.

If you loved this article, you will LOVE all of our other articles, such as: 3 Facts You Should Know About Your ATAR, Tips for Supporting Your Child in Year 11 and 12! and Will anyone care about your ATAR in a year?

 – LearnMate Tutoring.

LearnMate is Australia’s leading tutoring agency offering private lessons in all primary & high school subjects including English, maths, science, humanities, foreign languages, and so much more. Our mission is simple: to provide professional, engaging and enthusiastic tutors to students, while also ensuring the student feels empowered and confident during their assessments! Ultimately, our goal is to empower students all over Australia to achieve amazing results and make their dreams come true!

LearnMate provides you with tailored, one-on-one lessons for tutoring in a variety of suburbs in Melbourne, Sydney, Geelong, Brisbane, Hobart, Canberra, Perth & Adelaide! With hundreds of tutors on the LearnMate platform, you’re bound to find someone local for any primary or high school year level! You can choose to have lessons in-person or online – whatever is easiest for you!

Why Student Leadership is Important
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Review of Language in 2020

January 8, 2021

Introduction to Unit 3/4 English Language for 2021

This article has been written by Liam McAlary, a Years 7 – 12, VCE Legal Studies and VCE English Language Tutor at Learnmate. If you’re interested in private tutoring from Liam then please check out his page here.

 

Hello everyone, here is my English Language article for January. I hope that you are enjoying your summer break and that you feel prepared and ready for the year ahead. Despite all of our undoubted excitement about the new year, and the fact that 2020 can be kicked the curb once and for all, I have decided to make this article something of a, ‘Linguistic Year in Review,’ where I will examine some of the most interesting language examples from 2020, and try to relate them to the course.

Real world examples are vital to this course, especially for your essays (I have written about the importance of examples before). Examples ought to be contemporary, so these will be older than is ideal by the time your exam comes around, although they will hopefully still be of use to you.

One quick example that I would like to explain initially is the Chief Health Officer. I have heard the position that Brett Sutton currently occupies pronounced both as letters, ‘C.H.O.’ and as a word, ‘CHOE.’ The reason that I have used this example is so that I can quickly show you the distinction between an initialism, which is where you say the individual letters, and an acronym, which you pronounce as a word.

2020 was the year of the Coronavirus pandemic, which brought about significant linguistic development. In a very useful essay, linguists Kate Burridge and Howard Manns discussed some of the language that the situation has brought about. I have too much other language to discuss in this article, so I will not devote much more time to it, although the essay can be found here: ‘Iso’, ‘boomer remover’ and ‘quarantini’: how coronavirus is changing our language (theconversation.com).

Also, a video excerpt of an interview with Professor Burridge on the ABC can be found here: Linguist Kate Burridge writes an essay all about COVID-lingo (msn.com). Additionally, I also wrote multiple articles during the year about some of the language associated with the pandemic (and our epidemic). They can be found here:

 

Further, a quick look at social media can also show you some interesting examples of language. For example, after Victoria had started recording several days of 0 cases and 0 deaths (colloquially referred to as double doughnut days), Tim Smith (the divisive Liberal member for Kew) uploaded a photo of four doughnuts being arranged to look like the number 800, representing the number of deaths that occurred during Victoria’s second wave. However, and rather unfortunately for Mr Smith, the doughnuts also bore a strong resemblance to a male reproductive organ. This led to the alliterative (alliteration is a form of phonological patterning), ‘donutdick’ hashtag being continually used on social media (invariably by those who do not support him and/or his political party) to mock him and undermine his credibility as a member of the opposition. This also became a nickname for Mr Smith, as did, “Dim Tim,” which both uses the phonological patterning of rhyming, and is also a pun, based on the popular, “food,” item, the dim-sim.  This has been used to mock both the member’s intellect (dim obviously being a colloquial adjective for person of subnormal intellect), his weight, and his relatively low popularity (some tweets have compared him to dim sims with regards to popularity in Melbourne).

Moreover, in addition to the pandemic, there were also the United States and Queensland elections, which also gave some interesting language examples, mainly through the use of jargon. Jargon was used by journalists such as Antony Green, Stan Grant, and Casey Briggs (all with the ABC) to show their knowledge of the elections and electoral systems. In respect to the United States, terms like, ‘electoral college,’ (the means by which the US president is elected, this article does not explain the full American electoral process), ‘provisional vote,’ (a vote cast on election day by someone whose ability to do so is not clear), ‘county’ (an administrative region within an American state that helps to organise and analyse vote distribution), and ‘mail-in ballot’ (pretty self-explanatory) were all used to show the knowledge of the reporters, with respect to the specific elements of the United States election, whilst also allowing more efficient analysis, especially in the days that followed after November 4, as time to discuss the election on air was often limited. Similarly, in analysing the Queensland state election, Antony Green used terms such as, ‘preference flows,’ (how second and subsequent preferences are distributed where no candidate reaches a clear majority after primary votes), ‘primary votes’ (first preference votes), and, ‘legislative assembly’ (the lower house of state parliaments, and the only house of Queensland’s parliament). Green used these terms again to show his expertise on elections, and to establish the credibility of the analysis and predictions that he is making, based on the votes that have come in. I could discuss elections all day and explain and analyse their processes, however, this article is already very long, and my interest extends beyond the language used.

With all that said, I hope that this little year in review has given you a few good starting points for examples to have in your back pocket, and to start attaching metalanguage to the language surrounding you.

LearnMate is Australia’s leading tutoring agency offering private lessons in all primary & high school subjects including English, maths, science, humanities, foreign languages, and so much more. Our mission is simple: to provide professional, engaging and enthusiastic tutors to students, while also ensuring the student feels empowered and confident during their assessments! Ultimately, our goal is to empower students all over Australia to achieve amazing results and make their dreams come true!

LearnMate provides you with tailored, one-on-one lessons for tutoring in a variety of suburbs in Melbourne, Sydney, Geelong, Brisbane, Hobart, Canberra, Perth & Adelaide! With hundreds of tutors on the LearnMate platform, you’re bound to find someone local for any primary or high school year level! You can choose to have lessons in-person or online – whatever is easiest for you!

Review of Language in 2020
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The Importance of Reading Every Day

January 5, 2021 ,

The Importance of Reading Every Day

This article has been written by Lydia McClelland, a VCE French, Music Theory, Literature & VCE English Tutor at Learnmate.

What is one small thing you can do that would make a massive difference in Year 12? What if you heard it could improve your ability in every subject? That it could dramatically improve your writing ability? And what if it only took 20 minutes a day?

When I arrived at my very first English class for Year 12, my teacher decided to tell the class, ‘Only one thing will decide your final grade. And that is how many books you have read in your life.’

This, I decided, was an exaggeration – there are a few more factors which will determine how you perform in English, not least the amount of effort you put in! But the core point is this: you can’t reach your potential as a good writer if you don’t read. Year 12 is not too late to start!

You should read every day.

I hear you groan. I hate reading! I haven’t read a book since I was in primary school except for the books I have to read for school! I don’t have time!

But hear me out – anyone can put aside 20 minutes in their day. It might mean cutting out your social media deep dive before bed or dragging yourself away from Mario Kart (which has just been released for phones, I’ve been reliably informed). Creating a rhythm is hard work, but if it’s for reading, the benefits will vastly outweigh the inconvenience of that 20 minutes put aside. Once you get into a book, you might even find that you want to keep reading, beyond those 20 minutes!

A great time to read is while you’re taking public transport, so you can use your time productively, or just before bed, as reading is a great way of winding down that doesn’t rely on technology. You don’t even have to read books if you don’t like them – read the latest news, or a magazine, or articles on subjects which interest you.

So why should you take the time to read? Let look into a few different reasons.

  • Improve your vocabulary. This can obviously have benefits in everyday life, but also is particularly helpful if you’re a student. This is an important part of improving your writing. As an English tutor, I don’t think I’ve encountered a student who doesn’t wish to grow their vocabulary. This is the easiest way of doing so, unless you find it fun to search for synonyms or memorise word lists!
  • There are long-term benefits to reading. It has been found that reading daily strengthens neural pathways, and can even reduce the chances of early onset Alzheimer’s disease.
  • Increase your memory capacity and focus. Some studies have shown that reading, by strengthening brain pathways, actually helps short-term memory recall. Think of how helpful this could be to your studies as a whole. Additionally, in a world where information is readily available at the click of a mouse, we need ways of practising concentration and focus.
  • Time to relax. This is simple – you’re studying hard, and you need time to relax and unwind. If you don’t give yourself this time, you might come close to burning out. Reading is a great stress reliever. Why not use something that’s going to ultimately benefit you, rather than mindless scrolling on your phone?

Need any more persuading?

If you loved this article, you will LOVE all of our other articles, such as: The Importance of Personal Development, How to Speed Read and Will anyone care about your ATAR in a year?

LearnMate is Australia’s leading tutoring agency offering private lessons in all primary & high school subjects including English, maths, science, humanities, foreign languages, and so much more. Our mission is simple: to provide professional, engaging and enthusiastic tutors to students, while also ensuring the student feels empowered and confident during their assessments! Ultimately, our goal is to empower students all over Australia to achieve amazing results and make their dreams come true!

LearnMate provides you with tailored, one-on-one lessons for tutoring in a variety of suburbs in Melbourne, Sydney, Geelong, Brisbane, Hobart, Canberra, Perth & Adelaide! With hundreds of tutors on the LearnMate platform, you’re bound to find someone local for any primary or high school year level! You can choose to have lessons in-person or online – whatever is easiest for you!

The Importance of Reading Every Day
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The Importance of Personal Development

December 22, 2020

The Importance of Personal Development

This article has been written by Lydia McClelland, a VCE French, Music Theory, Literature & VCE English Tutor at Learnmate.

 

Getting through high school can be an incredibly challenging time. Adding to the tough mixture of stress from schoolwork and drama in friendship groups and social circles, is also the ever-developing identity – high school is a pivotal time in the development of self. The first aspect of one’s personality to suffer from all of these changes is often self-confidence.

But how can you build confidence?

  • Put yourself forward for new opportunities. Remind yourself that experiencing failure does not mean that you are a failure. Most experts in any field would agree that repeatedly trying and failing is necessary for development, and is inescapable if you are to fully participate in the world. Trying new things can allow you to develop new understandings of yourself and your abilities which you could not realise otherwise: put yourself forward to join that debating team, or go for that leadership position you always wanted, or apply for that job you don’t think you have a chance of getting.
  • Make sure you take care of yourself. Are you overworked? Constantly tired? Burnt-out? It can be difficult to allow positive self-talk when you are always feeling low. Know that it is healthy to take breaks and do things that you love alongside the tricky work you’re slogging through. Join a sports team, or go and walk in nature after you’ve spent an hour studying, or go and get a coffee with friends. Have fun!
  • Affirm yourself. So many people live with constant negative self-talk which is so internalised that they may not even be cognisant of it. You are probably your own harshest critic! Work on becoming aware of the ways that you think of yourself. Practice complimenting yourself, or affirming something about yourself which might be an insecurity. If you practice this consciously, such positivity and self-image can shift to the subconscious.
  • Notice the goals that you meet. As well as acknowledging your inevitable failures, make sure you notice and celebrate the successes in your life. These could be the smallest of victories, or the things that you have worked tirelessly towards of which you are most proud. Make to-do lists where you can divide up your work, and relish that feeling of accomplishment as you tick each item off. An idea floated in this article is to use “did-it” lists, a method of reflecting on your achievements which will affirm you of your abilities and give you the opportunity to celebrate them.

So how will building confidence help you? Not only will you reap the benefits of heightened self-confidence in your current daily life, but it will also help you in the future, as you navigate the world of work and employability. These days, employers are looking for well-rounded people with a range of attributes. The self-confidence that accompanies putting yourself forward for new opportunities will allow you to constantly develop your skills and your ability to articulate these skills.

It is worth acknowledging that sometimes, nothing you do can seem to help your self-confidence or negative self-talk. In these cases, consider seeing a professional counsellor or psychologist: recognising that you need help is a sign of strength, not weakness. You are not alone.

 

If you loved this article, you will LOVE all of our other articles, such as: 3 Facts You Should Know About Your ATAR, Tips for Supporting Your Child in Year 11 and 12! and Will anyone care about your ATAR in a year?

 – LearnMate Tutoring.

LearnMate is Australia’s leading tutoring agency offering private lessons in all primary & high school subjects including English, maths, science, humanities, foreign languages, and so much more. Our mission is simple: to provide professional, engaging and enthusiastic tutors to students, while also ensuring the student feels empowered and confident during their assessments! Ultimately, our goal is to empower students all over Australia to achieve amazing results and make their dreams come true!

LearnMate provides you with tailored, one-on-one lessons for tutoring in a variety of suburbs in Melbourne, Sydney, Geelong, Brisbane, Hobart, Canberra, Perth & Adelaide! With hundreds of tutors on the LearnMate platform, you’re bound to find someone local for any primary or high school year level! You can choose to have lessons in-person or online – whatever is easiest for you!

The Importance of Personal Development
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Introduction to Unit 3/4 English Language for 2021

December 18, 2020

Introduction to Unit 3/4 English Language for 2021

This article has been written by Liam McAlary, a Years 7 – 12, VCE Legal Studies and VCE English Language Tutor at Learnmate. If you’re interested in private tutoring from Liam then please check out his page here.

 

Hello everyone, my name is Liam, and I am an English Language and Legal Studies tutor for Learnmate, and have been since the start of 2017. In addition to tutoring, I write these blog posts for year 12 English Language students every month. This article will provide you with an introduction to units 3 and 4 English Language, and give you a bit of advice for the subject.

Holidays:

Firstly, the upcoming school holidays (you may already be on them by the time you read this). Although you will almost certainly have some holiday work to do to prepare for the start of 2021, the biggest piece of advice I have for you is to take a break. 2020 has been a year like no other, and unquestionably one of the most draining years for the entire world. Remember to rest and recharge your batteries, as you will need the rest and the energy for year 12. Having said that, make sure that you get your holiday work done as well, either getting it done at the start so it’s out of the way, or taking a break before getting it done right before going back to school. Do whichever works for you, although I preferred to get it done early. I would also strongly recommend having a read of the study design for your subjects. I have attached a link to the English Language study design at the end of this article

For English Language, I would recommend paying particular attention to the metalanguage, which is vital for the course, and starting to search for good language examples.

Unit 3:

Unit 3 focuses on language variation and social purpose. In a sentence, this unit focuses on formal and informal language, and why it is used in particular circumstances. You will examine language in both the spoken and written mode, and of both formal and informal (as well as mixed) registers. You will examine the key features of formal and informal language across the subsystems, and you will look at their role in specific texts, as well as generally. Generally speaking, this outcome primarily uses short answer sections and analytical commentaries for SACs, although essays are not uncommon in this unit, and almost invariably appear as at least one of the three exam prompts. Additionally, AOS 2 is also particularly useful to your personal writing, as you look at coherence and cohesion, which are important discourse features for your writing.

Unit 4:

Unit 4 looks at language, and its role in constructing and demonstrating identity. AOS 1 focuses on Australian national identity (when parts of it aren’t ripped out due to a pandemic), which is probably the most enjoyable part of the course. Furthermore, you also look at cultural and regional variations within Australia, as well as the attitudes towards variation. In addition, AOS 2 looks at individual identity, and identity as a member of a group.

Unit 3 leads into unit 4 well because the features you learn in unit 3 are what you use to discuss identities in unit 4. Moreover, this outcome is most commonly assessed with essays, although analytical commentaries and short answer sections can also be used.

Other tips:

  • Contemporary language examples are absolutely vital to this course, so be aware of the language around you, and make a note of anything that seems interesting
    • Once you get into the course, it is worth actively seeking them (using Google news and other resources)
  • When you write in response to a specific text (short answer sections and analytical commentaries), make sure you discuss the specific function of the feature in that text, not just its generic function.
  • Utilise your teacher, and get their feedback on your work throughout the year. This is especially important in the lead up to your SACs, which they just happen to mark.

 

English Language study design: https://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/Documents/vce/englishlanguage/2016EnglishLanguageSD.pdf

 

Anyway, I hope that you have found this article useful, have a good break, and I hope that you are looking forward to year 12 English Language.

 

LearnMate is Australia’s leading tutoring agency offering private lessons in all primary & high school subjects including English, maths, science, humanities, foreign languages, and so much more. Our mission is simple: to provide professional, engaging and enthusiastic tutors to students, while also ensuring the student feels empowered and confident during their assessments! Ultimately, our goal is to empower students all over Australia to achieve amazing results and make their dreams come true!

LearnMate provides you with tailored, one-on-one lessons for tutoring in a variety of suburbs in Melbourne, Sydney, Geelong, Brisbane, Hobart, Canberra, Perth & Adelaide! With hundreds of tutors on the LearnMate platform, you’re bound to find someone local for any primary or high school year level! You can choose to have lessons in-person or online – whatever is easiest for you!

Introduction to Unit 3/4 English Language for 2021
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