Early preparation: use your holidays wisely
Firstly, keep reading! Read your books at least once and make some initial notes and summaries.
My Resource Packages will help you delver deeper into your texts. They provide you with background notes; the political and social context; thematic and character summaries. The notes hone in on the examples that I use in all my essays because they are central to the author’s views and values. I include a summary of the author’s narrative devices (story-telling /film techniques) as an awareness of these techniques will help you avoid summarising the text. I also include essay plans and essays so that you can start thinking about ways to engage with a variety of prompts. (I will be holding some essay-writing sessions on specific texts, so please send me an email (jminter@englishworks.com.au)
I will also be holding some essay-writing sessions, including some advanced year 12 techniques/argument sessions.
Please note there is a big difference between Year 11 and Year 12 in Section C (Argument Analysis) . There are a lot of tricks that can help you maximise your mark and polish your response. For starters, my English Works Analytical Vocab Builder (also see the Analytical Vocab Builder post) is excellent to get you up to speed with the metalanguage you should be normalising. It consists of all the terms that I use for my responses, including my suggested responses to the VCAA Year 12 Exams: How to write an A+ response, please see these VCAA Exam “suggested responses” – written by Dr Jennifer Minter.
This Resource Package is very popular among teachers as it models the analytical language/sentences you need to use to tick off all boxes in Section C.
The following Resource Packages are very popular:
- The Women of Troy Resource Package
- Station Eleven Resource Package
- Wordsworth Poems Resource Package
- Rear Window Resource Package
- Ransom/The Queen (If you’re feeling keen, please read a few chapters of Homer’s The Illiad, which forms the inspiration for Malouf’s text).
- The Crucible/The Dressmaker (If you’re feeling particularly keen, please read a few chapters from Arthur Miller’s autobiography, Time Bends.)
