VCE English Exam: How It Works and How to Prepare

The English exam is set and marked by the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA), which runs the VCE. It counts for half of your English study score, your result for the subject out of 50. The other half comes from your SACs, short for school-assessed coursework: the essays and tasks your school sets and marks during Units 3 and 4.

On the day you get 15 minutes of reading time and 3 hours of writing time, with the questions in a Task Book and a separate Answer Book to write in. VCAA's exam specifications (a Word document) don't set how long to spend on each one, so the split is yours to decide. With equal marks, about an hour per section is a reasonable place to start, and your practice exams can show whether it suits you.

The specifications also describe each section and list the criteria examiners mark it against, in words the examiners' reports use too.

Our guide to the VCE English study design shows where each section comes from in Units 3 and 4.

Section A: an analytical response to a text

You write an essay that analyses one of your texts in response to the topic you choose. VCAA looks for “knowledge and understanding of the text, its structure, and the ideas, concerns and values it explores”, a “coherent analysis in response to the topic” and “evidence from the text to support the analysis”.

Our guide to writing a VCE text response takes you through planning and writing this essay.

Section B: creating a text

The four Frameworks of Ideas are writing about country, protest, personal journeys and play. Each has a title and stimulus: images or short passages to draw ideas from. Your piece uses the title as given, at least one stimulus and one Framework. The piece also needs a clear purpose, which VCAA lists as “to explain, to express, to argue, to reflect”. Any form of prose works, but song, poetry and verse don't count for this task.

Section C: an analysis of argument and language

You analyse how a persuasive text uses argument and language, including any images, to persuade its intended audience “to share the point of view expressed”. In the 2025 exam it was a letter to a community newspaper, with images. You don't judge whether the argument is a good one: the specifications say students “will not be required to evaluate the relative merits or successes of argument(s)”.

Our guide to VCE argument analysis shows how to build this response step by step.

After each exam, VCAA publishes an external assessment report: the examiners' comments on what helped responses and what held them back, with extracts from real answers. The report on the 2025 exam (a Word document) was published in 2026 and is the latest one for the current exam.

Section A: answering the topic you chose

The 2025 topics asked about specific ideas and values in each text, and the report found “a correlation between students who could demonstrate an understanding of the implications of the topics, and higher scores”. Students limited their responses by using memorised quotations unrelated to the topic, discussing only one of two ideas the topic named or stopping without a conclusion. The report also describes Section A writing as a ‘first draft’ completed under timed conditions, where “fluency was not equated with perfection”.

Section B: building from that day's title

Stronger pieces “responded to the title and used it as a focus when exploring ideas from the selected Framework”. Responses were held back when the writer “contorted a previously prepared response to connect with the examination title and stimulus”, or used the stimulus in a literal way with no other link to the Framework. The examiners focused on how each student developed that day's title and stimulus into a cohesive text, which is worth knowing before you memorise a piece.

Section C: explaining rather than listing

Most students could identify the arguments, but “not all students were able to explain how the sequencing of the ideas or the connection between them reflected the text's purpose”. Naming a technique doesn't earn marks on its own, because “identification is not an assessment criterion”. You also don't have to cover everything. Students “were not expected to laboriously identify and discuss every element”, and choosing the elements most central to the persuasion “had a high correlation with student success”.

VCAA puts its past English exams and reports online for free. The 2024 and 2025 end-of-year papers and VCAA's sample exam use the current format. The 2024 Northern Hemisphere (NHT) paper and papers from 2023 or earlier belong to a previous course, and VCAA notes they are “not necessarily a guide to the current VCE examination”. Your teacher can tell you which parts of them still suit practice.

A full paper under timed conditions shows you how the three hours feel, so it's worth sitting a few before the exam. Between them, a single section is easier to fit into a school week. When you finish one, you can check it against the assessment criteria printed in the Task Book, then read that year's report on the same section to see what higher-scoring responses did.

For Sections B and C, you can practise with new titles, stimulus and persuasive texts each time, whether they come from your teacher or, for Section C, a newspaper's opinion pages. For Section A, the report says an important part of preparing is developing ways to “interpret and understand unseen topics”. Reading a lot of topics on your texts and sketching a quick plan for each builds that.

To keep a timed section or two going each week alongside your other subjects, you can block out the time in our weekly study planner, then print or save the week.

You learn more from practice once someone else has marked it. Your English teacher is the first person to ask: you can find out whether they'll read extra practice pieces, and whether your school runs a practice exam with marked papers before the real one.

If you'd like more practice marked than school can manage, or one section keeps holding you back, you can also work on it with a tutor. Our VCE English tutors help with text response, creating texts and argument analysis, using practice prompts, teacher feedback and timed writing, in person or online.

By the time you sit the exam, its three sections and three hours can feel familiar from practice, with only the topics and texts new. After each practice paper before then, you can choose one thing to work on next, which is a steadier way in than trying to fix everything at once.

When is the 2027 English exam?

It falls within VCAA's 2027 written exam period, Tuesday 26 October to Wednesday 17 November 2027. The exact day will be in VCAA's exam timetable, which in 2026 was released in May.

Can I bring a dictionary?

Yes. You can bring a printed English or bilingual dictionary, along with pens, pencils, highlighters, erasers, sharpeners and rulers. The 2025 report reminded students to bring one, since a topic can include a word you haven't met before.

Which texts will be on the 2027 exam?

Section A uses the List 1 texts on VCAA's published 2027 English and EAL text list. List 2 holds the mentor texts for creating texts.

What if I study poems or short stories?

You can write on several poems or stories from your collection in Section A, or on at least two in close detail.

Do I refer to mentor texts in Section B?

No. The mentor texts you read in class are there to help you write, and you don't need to refer to them in the exam.

What if I'm sick on the day?

Tell your school as soon as you can. If illness or another serious circumstance affects you at the time of the exam, you can apply for a Derived Examination Score, which VCAA calculates from what you've shown in English over the year. Your VCE coordinator can help you apply.

We checked these official sources on 6 November 2026.