Hey everyone! I was going to write an example essay but decided not to. For one, no single essay is alike, and I didn’t want to suggest that “you can only do well if you write an essay like mine”. Instead, I’ve written a general breakdown that might give some reassurance if you said one or two of the things that I also picked up on. What I will say is that everyone talks about different stuff, and if you didn’t talk about stuff that was written here, IT DOES NOT MATTER AT ALL. It’s literally impossible to talk about everything. Generally, you just get marked on how well you discuss what you actually did pick up on or write about. I’ve also included an “FAQ” at the bottom of this post! If you want to discuss any of the points here or discuss this section of the exam, head over to the Section C discussion thread! If you want to download a copy of the English exam and take another look, you can do that here!

Pretty much, I’ve just decided to give my general thoughts on some different sections within the speeches that might be relevant to you. I haven’t structured it in a particularly rigorous way, but I’ve made use of bolded headings to help you follow along. As far as my “credentials”, I did VCE back in 2012 and scored in the high forties for English, and I’ve dabbled in tutoring in years since. So, without further ado!


Background Information

Some basic information that we can glean from the background:

– Bigsplash = financial institution
– Stephanie = CEO of financial institution
– Bigsplash = donors for volunteer award
– Mathew Nguyen = recipient of award on behalf of organisation
– Form of text = speeches (televised). This is really interesting because it tells us that there are in fact two audiences as well as two speeches. The first audience are the people who are present and watching the speeches live. They probably have reason to attend the even in person – perhaps they are stakeholders of the company or relatives to the nominees. Then, there is the TV audience, who are probably less interested than those who went in person. They probably only stumbled across the speeches as they were channel surfing.

Now, if we take a step back from the VCE English exam and generally think about what these speeches might feature, we can see that for bigsplash, and for Stephanie, this will largely be a branding exercise. That is, no right-minded financial institution is going to drop $100k just for kicks, right? Instead, they’re spending $100k on something they think is very worthwhile: they want the public to have a positive view of their company (probably so nobody looks into their tax evasion habits…)

Further, a recipient of any such award generally wants to portray themselves well and portray their organisation well. They generally want to appear humble, appear grateful, and present themselves as a worthy winner of the award.

So even before I read these speeches, I’m expecting for Stephanie to position her company in a positive light, explain why they give away the money, and perhaps give a general introduction to Mathew. I’m expecting Mathew to position himself as a humble guy, and perhaps say some more random VCAA-esque type stuff.


Image #1: First Impressions

One aspect of the image is the bigsplash logo in the top right hand corner. “Big” is written in bold, which you could talk about, but I probably wouldn’t have bothered. There’s a “splash” of $ signs above the written words “bigsplash”. It looks almost like you’ve thrown a ball into a pool and the water droplets that have “splashed” out have some $ signs inside of them. This could potentially have a negative impact on the audience – i.e., they could be distrusting and generally confronted by how blasé this company is about money in their logo. However, given that this is an award’s night and that this image is displayed on the front of the lectern, the audience is likely to be friendly, and not hostile.

The handshake is generally symbolic of co-operation, whilst the caption reads “giving back to the volunteers of Australia”. “Giving back” connotes some level of generosity, trying to position bigsplash in a positive light. The handshake associates bigsplash with the volunteer organisations they are supporting… so in a way, they’re trying to associate themselves with the goodwill in the community associated with volunteers.

So, in summary, here are some key aspects of the image you might have spoken about:

– Logo on the top right
– Handshake in the middle
– “Giving back” text.

In general, if you spoke about this image and said that it positions bigsplash in a positive way, you probably earned some credit from your assessor.


Opening Part of Speech #1

This whole opening part is pretty much Stephanie trying to seduce everyone into loving bigsplash. Keep in mind that because she is the CEO, she is representing bigsplash, and she may as well be bigsplash. Hence, when she says stuff like, “it is my great privilege”, it makes her, and bigsplash, sound like really tops people, rather than an evil financial institution. She talks a bit about the $100k donation which is intended to “further the aims” of volunteer organisations, talks about how bigsplash has a “strong commitment” to serving the community, and talks about how bigsplash’s “corporate ethos” is about lending a “helping hand”.

So, language that positions bigsplash as a beautiful, wonderful, super-fun-happy-good-time organization is really prominent in the opening bit of this speech. This is probably outside of the “main contention”, so not a lot of people would have spoken about it… instead, it probably comes under one of those “mini-aims” of the author. It’s not the whole point of the speech, but she definitely wants to make sure bigsplash comes off in a good light. It’s what they’re paying $100k for, after all.

General points:

– Opening part positions bigsplash as awesome
– Pairs with the image – “giving back” (visual language) and “helping hand” (spoken language). The visual language and spoken language reinforces each other here.
– You wouldn’t have needed to discuss either of the first two general points to get very good marks. Remember this is just my take on the article in general.


Body of the Speech
When I say “body” of the speech, I’m referring to the part where Stephanie simply won’t shut up about how good volunteers are. A lot of you will have read this part and focused all of your energy here instead of the introduction, which is fair enough. This is also where the contention for a lot of you would come from, which would probably be something along the lines of “Stephanie contends that volunteers a f*%ing brilliant”.

One interesting point of discussion is that many of her sentences are quite short and stunted, creating a constant emphasis on everything she says. This actually got a bit annoying to read! You almost certainly wouldn’t have bothered talking about this in your language analysis, but I thought it was interesting to note anyway.

When she starts talking about money and how many billions of dollars in voluntary work Australia performs, you could definitely draw on her title of CEO, or bigsplash’s industry of finance to talk about some appeals to authority. Could also discuss some appeals to patriotism and some appeals similar to an ‘appeal to the hip-pocket’, as well as a tonne of rhetorical questions… for those of you who are inclined to talk about techniques.

She talks about how volunteers are taken for granted and underrated, which perhaps guilt trips the reader, or at least exposes them to their own unawareness. Then, after she does this, she’s all like “BUT BIGSPLASH IS AWESOME AND WE GIVE VOLUNTEERS A TONNE OF MONEY”, which positions bigsplash as a super great company, because unlike everyone else, bigsplash don’t underrate volunteers. Instead, bigsplash give them money. Isn’t that nice of them?

So, this middle bit has at least two effects. One, by explaining the value of volunteers, she tries to make the audience happy that there’s money going to volunteers. That is, in general, she establishes a really positive image of volunteers, which in turn positions the volunteer industry as a worthy recipient of a big donation, validating bigsplash’s decisions to donate. Two, it positions bigsplash as awesome, because after building up this awesome image of volunteers, she goes on to link back to bigsplash as helping volunteers – who she just established as being worthy of help.

In the next bit, she starts talking about heroes and heroicism etc., slips in an anecdote about her gorgeous old mum, says some mad patriotism type stuff, uses some inclusive language, and some repetition. Again, she just talks up volunteers a tonne, talks about how overlooked they are and how much everyone always forgets volunteers, before she says “We should never forget or overlook them. bigsplash certainly does not. We at bigsplash recognize the value of the volunteers of Australia, and we thank them!” Isn’t it convenient that bigsplash are the only people who ever remember how good volunteers are? They must be a great company! …Right?

So, the body of her speech has a repetitive structure that goes as follows:

– Position volunteers as awesome
– Position everyone else as treating volunteers like crap
– Plot twist: bigsplash doesn’t treat voluntters like crap, therefore, bigsplash is brilliant.

There’s also “applause” and then “…steps forward to accept the award amid resounding applause”. You could probably get some bonus points for talking about how the applause might invoke some inspirational or positive feelings in both audiences. Think of whenever something awesome happens and there’s massive applause and you get those “tingles” through your whole body. If you talked about this impact on the audience, you probably got some mad marks for it.


Image #2 

This one is pretty boring. There’s a bunch of hands in the middle symbolising togetherness, helpfulness, teamwork, working together,  and collaboration between the millions of volunteers that have already been mentioned. This visual language works well with any written language referring to the collaborative nature of volunteering, or Mathew thanking all the members of Tradies Without Borders (TWB) who work together etc.


Mathew’s Speech

“Thanks heaps, bigsplash. Cheers, everyone. We didn’t expect this. Speaking isn’t really my strong point but I’m totally blown away”.

Love this bit. Notice that he thanks people TWICE. First, bigsplash. Then, “everyone”. “Thanks heaps” and “cheers” are really casual and provide a big contrast to the relative important of a “CEO”. This language is very ingratiating, and intends to position Mathew as a regular, humble, grateful “Aussie” bloke. Basically, it positions him as very likeable. This is awesome because when someone likes you, they’re surely far more likely to agree with what you say, right?

This “I’m an awesome humble guy” image is followed up with “we didn’t expect this”. I mean, everyone would think he was pretty bloody arrogant if he got up there and said “yeah I’m the best”. Hence, talking about how they didn’t expect the award just reinforces the idea that Mathew/his organisation are humble people.

“Speaking isn’t my strong point”. Again, positioning himself as a ‘regular Aussie’. “Totally blown away”, casual language, humble guy image, etc.

“We are really grateful” – continues to reinforce the same “good guy” image. The whole introduction of Mathew’s speech is just him positioning people to like him a tonne.

“My mate and I” – same thing. Aussie language. Loveable tradie image.

“We realized how hard some people find it to afford a plumber when their sink gets blocked” — what a top bloke?!?! This might give some tingles through the spine of the audience, because at the end of the day, how good is Mathew that he’s helping out people poor enough that they can’t afford a plumber? There’s almost a religious, Jesus-like connotation here. After all, Jesus was a tradesperson just trying to help the less fortunate. Mathew continues to talk about building toilets overseas and generally talks about how much good his organization is doing in the world, positioning the organization in a positive light, and positioning his organization as a worthy winner of the award.

He then disagrees with Stephanie, again providing a contrast between the ‘big rich lady’ and the little loveable tradie. He instead says that he feels like volunteers are appreciated, which again reinforces his humility.

There’s more “applause and cheering”, again inspiring audiences.

Generally, Mathew’s language is:

– Positioning TWB as awesome people
– Positions himself as humble, loveable, a regular Aussie bloke
– His language is based on positioning people to like him, and then leveraging that likability for the benefit of his organisation.


In Sum

There were lots of techniques. Rhetorical questions, money techniques, patriotism, rhetorical questions, humility, applause, comparison and contrast, connotations, etc.

The contentions were interesting. If you spoke about a contention in a blatant sense, you probably spoke about Stephanie claiming volunteers are underrated, and might have claimed that Mathew’s contention was the opposite of that. In a more subtle sense, Mathew just wanted to be liked and seize the branding opportunity for TWB, whilst Stephanie wanted to position bigsplash as an awesome and generous company.

The first image had some cool stuff. The logo, the writing, the handshake. The second image was some general symbolism for teamwork and togetherness.

There were two audiences, but this was super subtle, and almost everyone wouldn’t have spoken about there being two audiences. Bonus points if you did.

I think this was a bit of a tough one, but fair. There was lots of stuff to talk about that would have been accessible to most students, but it was quite long and required students to talk about two different speeches. This might have been challenging for a lot of people, and probably caused some timing issues for many. At this point, you might have some questions left, and I’ll answer them now.


FAQ’s.

  1. I didn’t finish/didn’t write a conclusion. Am I screwed?Definitely not. Personally, I didn’t finish my exam either and still scored well into the forties. A friend of mine scored a 50 without finishing any of the three sections. We both went to a low-ranking public school. Ultimately, your mark is determined by how well what you did write hits the criteria.

  2. I referred to it as an article instead of a speech. Am I screwed?No.

  3. I spelled Mathew’s name wrong. Am I screwed?No.

  4. I didn’t mention one of the images. Am I screwed?To be honest with you, it might have been beneficial if you had mentioned both, but you definitely are not screwed. The criteria sheet says “analysis of ways in which language and visual features are used to present a point of view and to persuade readers”. The key words there are “visual features”. If you spoke about at least one of the images, then you are hitting this criteria. You might have hit the criteria better if you had spoken about both, but at the end of the day, it’s a very small part of the essay, and you definitely won’t be penalised severely (if at all) just for missing one of the images.

  5. I didn’t  talk about the anecdote/rhetorical question/patrotism/<any technique>. Am I screwed?NO! It simply isn’t required to talk about absolutely every technique in the article. For all you know, your friend and yourself could both get 10/10 without mentioning any of the same things (although… that would be pretty improbable – you get the idea!) 


If you have anymore questions, the author of this blog post will be having a look at the Section C Discussion thread, where you can discuss the exam with other Year 12s and get the advice of people who’ve already been through the VCE system.

From everyone here at ATAR Notes, we really hope you absolutely SMASHED this English exam, and smash the rest of your exams! Whether you did well or did poorly… one thing’s for sure… VCE English is over FOREVER!