Part 1: Text Response
Part 2: Crafting a piece; mentor texts (wider reading excerpts)
To improve your ability to recognise and articulate complex ideas, we will be exploring poems and literary excerpts as well as literary models and opinion pieces (with regards to personal journeys, country/landscapes, protest/conflict/play and perspectives/realities and illusion);
The updated VCE English Study Design Year 11 (2023) notes that you will explore four types of “purposes”: “The purpose of the text is closely connected with audience and context, but has another dimension – why is the writer creating this text?
“The following four verbs offer overviews of purposes students can explore. Students can explore more than one purpose in their writing.
Express: A student writer seeking to express would explore recounts, storytelling and/or narratives of imagination to engage with actions, events, experiences and/or ideas.
Explain: A student writer seeking to explain would explore cause and effect, and possible consequences of actions, events, experiences and/or ideas.
Reflect: A student writer seeking to reflect would explore experiences of personal discovery that shape their understanding of actions, events, experiences and/or ideas.
Argue: A student writer seeking to argue would explore a point of view, would take a stand and propose solutions to convince others of actions, events, experiences and/or ideas.”
My preferred model is a hybrid between “express” (imaginary scenarios/dramatic /personal recounts) and “reflect” (exploration of events/experiences) with reference to relevant authors/poets/commentators. Choose a setting (audience and context) that enables you to impart complex ideas and use sophisticated linguistic features. (Beware of the “explain” purpose: it is difficult not to summarise.)
A hybrid model enables you to include the salient features of a high-range score. These include the use of literary devices, story-telling and language features to show:
- complex ideas (dissect ideas; be analytically precise)
- emotional complexity (fears, phobias, obsessions, idiosyncracies)
- ironies, inconsistencies, contradictions, dramatic irony
- dilemmas that people face: depict people who are confronted with difficult situations/problems
- sophisticated reasoning abilities: similarities and differences between people, situations and events
- similarities/differences; reference to philosophers, social/political commentators/key ideas; poets
Return to 2023 Summer Break Program
Link to Year 11 Study Design 2023:
Link to Literature
Sample excerpts