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Lauren's Ask Me Anything

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literally lauren:

--- Quote from: QCAAMemes on October 21, 2019, 08:05:02 pm ---Very helpful, thank you very much! Apologies for the incorrect use of the IA#, I thought that it was the same for everyone in grade 11 this year haha. For my school, IA1 was a multimodal presentation about filling in gaps and silences, IA2 was an analytical essay response to a question and IA3 was an imaginative piece of the chosen genre (gothic).
I think I speak for myself and most people I know when I say Literature is a great subject. It is entertaining, challenging yet somewhat relaxing. However, an inevitable problem is that of which I have described - it becomes difficult to achieve highly when the marking can be so sporadic. I find the ISMG for literature especially very difficult to dissect and it is super subjective. I wouldn't say no to listening to your take on it, however, as it appears to be almost the same ISMG for every assessment piece!
Thank you again for answering!

--- End quote ---
No worries at all - the IAs for Year 11 are a little more fluid, but it sounds like your school gave you some great tasks to prepare you for Units 3&4!

As for the ISMGs, you're totally right in that lots of the details are the same across the board (...though on the plus side, that's because there are lots of transferrable skills in Literature!) To translate the example from above from Teacher Jargon into Actual Human English Words:

1. This is a catch-all for the task as a whole, and refers to how you use language to write a believable creative piece that is based on your prescribed text. To do this, you'll need to deconstruct the text and then make decisions about how and why you are going to link things. It's not enough to just write a piece that "explores a character's perspective in more detail" or "changes the setting for a contemporary audience." You have to think about things on all four levels of the text...
For example: link to structural features by mirroring the imagery and foreshadowing in the set text, but use it to create a more ominous effect; link to characters by taking foregrounding a secondary character and giving the audience a more robust view of their perspective; link to themes by taking a key idea from the set text like 'the naivety of youth' and subverting it by showing that sometimes young people can actually be quite wise and enlightened in spite of their lack of experience; and link to V&V (Views and Values) by considering the author's core message (=views) and what their text conveys as important (=values), and either reaffirm or challenge this yourself.

2. This is about constructing a valid and consistent persona - for instance, if you are someone reading aloud a letter to a dying relative, you should communicate suitably solemn emotions, and hence evoke the intended response from your audience of sympathy and sorrow.

3. Does your piece have a clear sense of themes, characters, and settings, all communicated through your creative writing? If yes = ✓ :D

4. This means you have to do something to CHALLENGE the set text so that, if a reader read the original and then your piece, they would know that yours came second because it was building off of the original in some way. This is usually easier to do when you have an older text (e.g. set in the 1920s) which you can "modernise" and perhaps highlight how various cultural norms have changed. However, you could also achieve this by changing something about the original, and thus creating meaning by subsequently changing the themes and messages (e.g. King Lear but the genders are reversed; The Quiet American but set in Russia instead of Vietnam; Heart of Darkness but from the perspective of the mistress, etc.)

5. Similar to points 8/9, this is about your use of language features, but here we're specifically talking about the emotional and critical responses you elicit. In other words, your piece should be ~evocative~ and leave your reader thinking about things, or feeling a certain way. (I know this sounds really abstract, but it's basically just about how much thought you put into crafting the piece.)

6./7. This is about the logical sequencing (i.e. progression of your ideas), and the balance of points across your piece. If it feels 'top heavy,' or as though you'd run out of time by the end and just rushed the conclusion, you might lose marks here.

8./9. Key word here is choice - everything you do should be deliberate, so you'd need to think about the register (i.e. formality) of your writing, your use of any symbols/metaphors/imagery etc. and even the nature of the words you choose (i.e. why did you describe the main character as 'anxious' as opposed to 'highly-strung'?)

10. Is your piece grammatical? If yes = ✓ :D

11. This just means you have delivered your piece in an appropriate way, making use of oral presentation or multi-modal techniques (like vocal inflection, facial expressions, and body language).


Since this is the first year this is being implemented, I wouldn't be surprised if this was subsequently refined to be a bit more specific. And although this is more of a resource to help teachers understand how to give you marks (as opposed to something super useful for students on the surface), a basic grasp of the marking scheme can help you understand the perspective of assessors, and then just write to cater to them!

Hope this makes a little more sense - please let me know if you have any requests for Lit guides or resources you'd find helpful :)

lastapasta:
hi lauren!

do you have any suggestions on what can be done to prepare for unit 1/2 mainstream english? i want to have consistent progress throughout next year, and hopefully improve my writing skills by a lot. what can i do to ensure i am doing this?

thank you!

JR_StudyEd:
Hi Lauren,

Unlike a good majority of students on this forum, I would consider myself to be a mediocre, run-of-the-mill student in every single one of my Year 12 subjects. Back in Year 12, would you have considered yourself to be a pretty average student?

I haven't really had a particularly outstanding year in terms of results, and in some subjects, I've flopped and broken down many times. But I don't even need a 90+ ATAR. Did you even need an ATAR that high for your course? Or did you just love learning and studying so much that you just went for it anyway? Because unfortunately I've lost the drive to do anything related to studying. :'(

I am essentially in a period of swotvac (is that what uni students call it? lol), and it sucks. The numerous uncompleted and unattempted practice exams that lie on my desk are becoming more and more intimidating as the days pass.

For English (VCE), is there much more I can do between now and Wednesday, other than getting a load of prompts for Section A and B, planning three body paragraphs and getting some good quotes? It's kind of getting tedious and unremarkable. And timed practice exams. Yeah let's not talk about those. I'm in a cycle of, 'I should probably get started' and 'Stuff this', you get me?

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