Dear Students and Parents
Preparing for the new VCE Study Design: 2016-2020:
1. Text response: You are required to write text response essays on a variety of texts showing an in-depth knowledge of narrative devices, characters, themes and issues. Each week, please do a paragraph on a text you are studying in class, or on one of the passages we are working on in the group. In the paragraph, you must identity /analyse the big picture concept and refer to the passage for quotes. We are working on a logical flow of ideas throughout the paragraph. For example:
- Ransom – dealing with grief, loss (anecdotal account of Somax, beauty and the loss of son)
- Twelve Angry Men – the ways that people suffer by being stereotyped – how discrimination / racial prejudice can interfere with the rule of law
- Crucible – how people are ruled by fear – contagious spread of unproven assumptions and views of others
- And Shakespeare’s plays.
2. Creative response: In the new VCE Study Design 2016-2020, you are required to do more creative writing. It is therefore important to read (long and short) stories, and also character profiles/ stories, for eg. in the Good Weekend. We need to explore the character’s thoughts, feelings and behaviour in as much depth as possible. See Typical analysis of Two of Us : creative writing; people analysis
3. Comparative Analysis: In the new VCE Study Design: 2016-200, you are required to compare and contrast two books: characters, issues and themes. Using a variety of text passages, and characters from above, we will work on the skill of comparison. We must have a good grasp of concepts and then compare similarities and differences in thoughts, actions, experiences and behaviour.
4. Language Analysis (Structure and techniques): We have done and will continue to do, a lot of work on persuasive and reasoning techniques. Please choose a short persuasive text, an article or letter to the editor, and write a short paragraph on language analysis and structure. We will continue to improve these skills.
5. We will continue to improve our analytical vocabulary so that good words become a normal part of our writing. We will also study examples of good quality writing. You must weave through your paragraph, good words, and nice sentence constructions. You must incorporate quotes in a sophisticated manner.
6. Also See Below.
How you can accelerate your improvement in English and get the best out of good guidance.
As a minimum, please bring to every lesson at least one to two paragraphs so that I can monitor your expression. We will start off each lesson with these pieces. (You can also send them to me prior to the lesson.)
- This will give me an opportunity to point out common/obvious grammatical errors. (See sample.)
- I can also check to see how well you are using our new words/phrases (i.e the words that are modelled in our workbooks). (See sample.)
Paragraphs:
1 paragraph analysing an author’s language: choose an (short) article from one of my workbooks, or from a letter to the editor and comment on the author’s viewpoint, their most important techniques and their purpose/impact. See Sample. (Also see the Turn to Exercises for each workbook on this website.) Green Workbook. Orange Workbook.
1 paragraph analysing a “people” story that we have discussed/circulated from the newspaper (such as from Two of Us/Good Weekend). I have also prepared a “concept” list so that we can analyse the story from a psychological/ethical/moral point of view. It is important to identity key concepts so that we can also compare and contrast people stories. (Also themes such as identity/conflict/power/perspectives)
Some concepts for different perspectives: “concept” (Also see this post: every day tasks)
Or
1 paragraph based on a character in a novel and the relevant concepts.
Useful Forms for Classes
- Please click : See Checklist for Technique Identification.
- Please click here for “tone test” practice: learn some extra metalanguage:
Tone Test One
Tone Test Four - Please click here for the Techniques Checklist/Summary Page