See our response (circulated) for VCAA Exam Response 2020
Paragraph 1:
In defence of a socially-inclusive community, Ms Campbell advocates for an inclusive sports environment at the community-based level.
- A solicitous tone
- Drawing upon her family’s migration experience, she insists on values such as integration and inclusivity.
- (Quotes – emotive language to prove just how much of a difference it did make and why integration is so important for those who may feel isolated, marginalised or different.)
- Anecdotal: personal experience as an outsider to show how important inclusivity is .. “It was there, in the bustling suburbs of Brisbane, that a shy, tall, freckly girl, with a strange South African
- context: accent and absolutely no fashion sense, found her place.”
- Purpose: to establish her principles of fairness and her wish that all members of the community display a sensitive attitude towards people who do not fit a mainstream mould. – and to deflect criticisms of bias.
- We see you, value you and accept you.
Paragraph 2
Drawing upon her values of fairness, Ms Campbell mounts a compelling case against transgender people competing at the elite Olympic level. To substantiate this point, Ms Campbell urges people in the community, and her Fina audience, to appreciate the complexity of elite sport whereby values such as fairness and inclusivity come into conflict.
- purpose: quotes etc. to show that one must distinguish between a community-based level and elite sport – these values do not conflict at the community level.
- Using her own professional experience as an Olympiad, she shows that a failure to make this distinction counterintuitively discriminates against elite women athletes. (quotes)
- Also exposes her emotional conflict to show the difficulty of arriving at a decision that may appear to be discriminatory
- Other techniques – urges the public to be guided by evidence/scientific opinion and not by their intuitive prejudices – seeks to clarify misconceptions etc.
- quotes : implores people to suspend their prejudices misconceptions etc.
- By asking people to examine their “feelings” and to breathe and think before “reacting”, Ms Campbell hopes that members of the public will reconsider their biased opinions which may be misguided
- Should consider the medical evidence.. prioritise fairness..
- She criticises a trend towards inclusion which will discriminate against “women” athletes.
- She defends hers and fina’s policy – on the grounds that it does not stem from “feelings” – the quoted reference to ‘feelings “: and what people “felt” is a subtle criticism of people who resort to their own parochial (narrow-minded) prejudices and feelings. by contrast, she implores people to evaluate the scientific and medical evidence before arriving at conclusions.
Paragraph 3
What are the similarities/differences with the letter writers?
Make sure you are clear on the nuances of each author’s viewpoints.
Please learn:
“to my consternation” (dismay, anguish, dread)
Note: how Cate tries to position her own argument in sensitive ways: .. she knows she will anger some people from the cisgender/transgender community; she may “injure, infuriate, potentially alienate people from an already marginalised community”
Keep quoting key words : the “competitive cornerstone of fairness”
Show/ signpost a deeper understanding of the text.
Note how Cate works her audience/target groups. Keep this in mind for your own purpose/positioning statements.
How to improve – a range of points will help:
Excellent sentences
Despite Campbell rejecting the idea of inclusiveness in terms of professional sport, she strongly countenances transgender participation in community sport.
Main points – work on clarity:
- In her speech on FINA’s transgender policy, Cate Campbell contends in an assertive tone that transgender participation in professional swimming competition should be prohibited in the condition that the inclusiveness of the sport should not be jeopardized as a result.
Expression
- By targeting the swimming and transgender communities, Campbell galvanises them to support FINA’s controversial decision towards transgender competition in female swimming.
- galvanise INTO
- Cate Campbell’s speech, while bringing up the two key values of inclusiveness and fairness, prioritises one over the other when it comes to the context of professional sport.
Evidence – is key – but examine the purpose
Personal and professional experience and credibility must be yoked specifically to key points of the argument…
CONTEXT – more meaning – tie to the argument – lot of generic sentences regarding personal/professional experience expert opinion – yoke to meaning and analyse the purpose
- Through establishing her own credentials as a “four-time Olympian, world champion, world record holder, and a beneficiary of fair elite competition”, Cate Campbell justifies her own credibility as someone who is well versed on this topic.
- You need to do more – show the difference between personal migration experience –to prove the need for inclusivity – but Olympic experience to suggest that elite level needs to be exclusive. – you need to distinguish the two in terms of credibility of her argument
- She uses a personal experience of being an Olympian to appeal to the readers emotionally. This is done to make the readers relating to the argument and understand it comes from a person with experience on the topic, thus giving it more authority. By exposing her emotional conflict, she shows the difficulty in deciding on the topic. She states that inclusivity and fairness “come into conflict” at a professional level. To make her argument seem less opinion based and objective she states to “listen to the science and experts.” This can impact the readers by making them believe that her argument is science based and factual.
- To enhance his credibility, Jayant Bapat refers to setting foot on Australia ’57 years ago,’ which strengthens his viewpoint that Australian’s are friendly, welcoming and easy to get along with. Listing the proud moment of becoming an Australian citizen, he explicitly mentions the ‘subhuman conditions, segregation, racial prejudice,’ which reinforces that despite peoples hardships, individuals can become ‘a proud member of the Australian multicultural landscape.’
Try to avoid really long quotes
By underpinning inclusion as a pillar of sport in general, Cate asserts the importance of transgender involvement in community sports – “it is also my hope that a young gender diverse child can walk into a swimming club and feel the same level of acceptance that a nine-year-old immigrant kid from Africa did all those years ago”. Through this, she expresses that she is an ally of the
Watch summaries – can do a bit but then must nail the purpose – need to work our analytical sentences
- The juxtaposition of the inclusiveness of sport and the fairness of sport highlights the incongruity of transgender participation in swimming.
- The ability of sport to draw people together, “irrespective of background, race or religion”, supports the notion of transgender athletes in sport. However, “without fair competition, sport in its elite sense, would cease to exist”.
- Purpose/ position – work on dispelling biases – play with opposites…
- Cate Campbell’s speech, while bringing up the two key values of inclusiveness and fairness, prioritises one over the other when it comes to the context of professional sport.
Improve your analysis and evaluation
- By highlighting the importance of fairness in pro sport – “without fair competition, sport in its elite sense, would cease to exist”, Campbell accentuates that the biological differences between men and women are too difficult to overcome.
- To substantiate her argument, she appeals to expert opinion – “the policy was created with the inclusion of medical professionals, legal professionals, athletes, coaches, and people from the transgender community”.
- The reference to the facts allows her to dispel the emotional biases that may be present in members of the transgender community.
Don’t keep jumping to next point and next point– keep analyse that point
- In defence of a socially-inclusive community, Ms Campbell advocates for an inclusive sports environment at the community-based level. She substantiates her view, by drawing upon her family’s migration experience, highlighting the importance of integration for those who may feel isolated, marginalised or different. Through her anecdote as an outsider- “a shy, tall, freckly girl, with a strange South African accent and absolutely no fashion sense” who “found her place” when her coach said “See you this arvo”, she seeks to underpin the power community sport has in social inclusivity. EXTRA SENTENCE TO NAIL THE PURPOSE … KEEP DIGGING… Furthermore her use of the repetitive inclusive phrases- “we value you, we accept you, we…you”, Campbell reassures members of the transgender communities that they will not be forsaken
- Show complexity: THERE IS A DUAL PURPOSE TO THESE PERSONAL REVELATIONS OF EMOTIONAL CONFLICT – firstly she shows the moral basis for her views and her insistence on
- Through deeply personal comments such as …………… Campbell painfully admits that while she preaches inclusion and fairness as cornerstones of sport, the inclusion of transgender, gender-diverse and non-binary atheletes “in the female category of elite sport, is one of the few occasions where these two principles come into conflict.”
- show complexity: THERE IS A DUAL PURPOSE TO THESE PERSONAL REVELATIONS OF EMOTIONAL CONFLICT – firstly she shows the moral basis for her views and her insistence on inclusivity and … Secondly, by displaying her regret Campbell positions the audience to feel her opinion is not based on predisposition but rather on the evidence. She uses this as a basis to urge members of her audience to suspend their own prejudices, as she did -“absorb before reacting”.
Summary level
- She highlights this by conveying the value of sport as a means of inclusion – “It creates a community… irrespective of background, race or religion…” – at a community level.
Listing – word by word – sentence by sentence … surface level
Try to avoid a word-level analysis – sentence by sentence – because you can’t do a deep analysis
- She then goes on to contrast the value of inclusivity at a community-based level with the value of fairness at ‘professional competition’. By describing fairness as one of the ‘cornerstones of sport’ she instills the idea that fairness should be upheld to the same degree as inclusivity.
- Campbell further emphasizes the influence of elite sport adding that “Unlike in… amateur sport, in elite sport, winning and losing goes hand-in-hand with politics, money, and power.” this communicates the idea that due to the influential nature of the elite sport it should be treated as a fair playing field, with no room for ‘unfair advantage’.
More analytical sentences
- SHE THEREBY HOPES they will put aside their biased judgments and study reports from the medical and legal fraternities- which shows “men and women are physiologically different… and the lasting effect of differing hormones”. Campbell implores that failure to make this “gender category distinction” would be “to the detriment of female athletes everywhere” “who have fought long and hard for their inclusion”.
Work your analytical sentences
- She encourages like-minded athletes at the community level to show the same tolerance and degree of fairness, and to support the FINA transgender policy in a rally against inclusivity in Olympiad sports.
- In defence of a socially-inclusive community, Ms Campbell advocates for an inclusive sports environment at the community-based level. She substantiates her view, by drawing upon her family’s migration experience, highlighting the importance of integration for those who may feel isolated, marginalised or different. Through her anecdote as an outsider- “a shy, tall, freckly girl, with a strange South African accent and absolutely no fashion sense” who “found her place” when her coach said “See you this arvo”, she seeks to underpin the power community sport has in social inclusivity. EXTRA SENTENCE TO NAIL THE PURPOSE … KEEP DIGGING…
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