In Year 11 you may receive decent marks for identifying (and listing) techniques and their impact. However, this approach can be limiting in terms of meaning, purpose, and the author’s positioning tactics.
To do well in Year 12, you must understand how the argument is constructed, and how the most important argument/persuasive techniques reinforce each other.
If you isolate techniques, you will end up reaching a dead-end. Your paragraph will end up a list; your sentences will be generic with a tendency to summarise.
Contrastingly, good students intuitively recognise how the techniques complement each other and the author’s viewpoints. They recognise how the author uses techniques to develop their views/reasons in order to position readers.
This will also enable you to get more depth – uncovering both direct and indirect implications of strategic emotive/figurative word choices.
For success, see our latest publications:
- VCAA Suggested Responses.
- 2020: Argument Techniques Membership Page
- Arguments and Persuasive Language: analysing and presenting opinion-based texts
- 2020: Argument, Metalanguage and Techniques
- 2021: The 10 Tips approach (10 Argument Techniques)
