TIMETABLE AND TIME MANAGEMENT

TIMETABLE AND TIME MANAGEMENT

The timetable will help you to with plan your time and work during the year and will also give an idea of what will be expected from candidates in examinations and tests. The allocation in the timetable for Home Language is 4.5 hours per week. If you add 20 – 30 minutes homework per day, you’ll find that candidates can cope with the quantity of work included in each lesson.

Home Language time for Grade 12 is calculated on a 30-week academic year, with an additional 10 weeks for exams. In reality, the 30 weeks does not always realise. It depends on what dates are set for the beginning of the Preparatory Exams (Prelims) and the final matric exams. You will see that the year plan below doesn’t have 30 weeks. The two weeks or so that should be available in the fourth term have not been included, because this will involve revision.

Study units must be done thoroughly. Answers should be done carefully and thoughtfully. Do not use the memorandums as an easy solution. The purpose of many questions is to encourage your independent thinking and to use language for expressing your own thoughts.

The National Curriculum Statement focuses on active and critical learning, encouraging an active and critical approach to learning, rather than rote and uncritical learning. The NCS sets high, achievable standards in all subjects. The focus of this English course is mainly on advanced reading and writing skills – comprehension and appreciation of literary texts, and communication skills to express one’s knowledge, thoughts and opinions. Candidates are required to not simply take a text at face value, but to read between the lines; to make “personal, thoughtful, and honest interpretations and comment”, to make their own deductions and question certain statements. This requires practise. Candidates must constantly think about what they are reading. “Unless they learn how to understand a literary text on their own, they will not have learnt much. Interpretation is not about right or wrong [within reason], it is about searching for what is meaningful to the reader.” (Quoted extracts from the Curricular and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) of the Department of Basic Education.)