Disclaimer: All opinions my own.
Tye & English helped push me to another level at MHS and in my academics. Under Mr Tye's guidance, I received academic awards, acceptance into KLD and Monash Scholar Programs, and now I'm studying my dream course at my dream university.
I LOVE his commitment as a teacher. He's always willing to help a student who wants to learn; someone once wrote 10 VCE essays every week for him to mark - he marked every single one of them by the following week... He always take time to provide detailed one-on-one feedback - with red ink annotations peppered all over an essay when they were handed back.
He sometimes goes off-topic - so class never really finishes on time - to tell us some amazing come-back story of one of his past students to motivate us. He has good intentions, even though I've missed the 6:30pm train home several times (class started at 4:30pm and was supposed to finish at 6:00pm...)
It took me 90 mins to go there and back home, but the travel was worth it - I made up lost time by studying on the train.
His teaching style is a bit old school, but he's a very wise and humble guy from the 5 years I've observed of him (during Years 8-12).
His English qualifications are outstanding and combined with his plethora of experience in the journalism industry, he's not your ordinary high school English teacher.
Some have made remarks about Year 11 VCE Eng Lang here, which I relate due to the disjunct nature of how VCAA designed the Year 11 and 12 VCE Eng Lang courses.
You may be better-off doing Year 12 Eng Lang here TWICE in both Years 11-12 since Child English and Old English from Year 11 doesn't carry over to Year 12, but Year 11 meta-language foundations are essential for Year 12 - this is covered in Tye's Year 11 course.
In hindsight, I wish I did Year 11 Eng Lang here in Year 10, then followed by 2 years of Year 12 Eng Lang here, because it took me quite a bit of time to adapt to the Year 12 course. Eng Lang is not necessarily hard if you have the right resources and work hard. Each school also creates their own personalised SAC; I took some hard SACs at MHS - in hindsight, sometimes our SAC questions were a bit too hard/irrelevant.
The idea is that you're looking at the forest, not the tree. That is, you use the analytical skills you learn here and apply/tailor it towards the final exam and your school SACs. Tye's a nice guy - he'll happily help you with your situation if you ask.
Aside: I found most aspects of Tye & English's pre-VCE English courses really useful (e.g., "Power Writing"), except "Newspaper Reading" (I suppose the gist was that you could find these little 'gems' that you could use to improve your English and be more informed about the world, regardless, newspapers turned out to be a crucial tool used by VCE Eng Lang students for finding linguistic examples to use in their essays).
Additionally and rather unfortunately for Mr Tye, a few past students ended up tutoring VCE English courses themselves using Tye's teaching material as their own - some also charge higher prices than Tye...
The way I see it, you're better-off going to the original guy.
As I said, he sometimes go off-topic. That's why I recall him mentioning that he pays his staff well (to attract the best), as well as fulfilling tax obligations (unlike others who avoid payroll). This was said in the context of Tye hoping that us students appreciated the significant time and effort that it takes him to provide us comprehensive essay feedback, asking us for a small favour to write him a review.
To conclude:
Very affordable fees. Excellent students with 99+ ATARs and raw 50s in various VCE English subjects have been here. But I know some went to multiple tutors.
For me, Tye & English is the "Holy Grail" of English education. And Mr Tye is one of the best teachers and mentors I've ever had. I was also taught by some other staff who were also really good.
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