VCE English Question Thread

[cosine]

Anyone here a tutor for english 3/4? If so please PM me or if you know of someone good PM me their contact, really desperate for a tutor for english!

[Apink!]

Hello,
I often lose marks because I do not directly answer the prompt But if I do, I cannot come up with original ideas that will make my essay stand out
I'm currently studying "Shark Net" and "whose reality?"

How do you make sure that you DO answer the prompt? Many assessor's reports and my teachers always emphasize on making sure that we answer the prompt but I tend to wander off...And how do you come up with original ideas while answering the prompt? To what extent can you explore a prompt without seeming as you are not answering it?

Also, I am meant to do an expository style essay on a prompt (that is unseen). In the previous years when we did context, I would always do a creative piece or persuasive so i'm not used to the idea of expository... How would you structure your essay? What is the purpose of expository? I heard that you explore the issue at hand, so do you always need to consider both sides of the prompt?

Also, since the prompt is unseen, how can I prepare myself?

Gahh, I am so worried. Although I do love English, I am far from good

Please help me

[cosine]

Same with me, I always fall under the impression that im not fully answering the prompt in an essay, and consequently i lose motivation throughout the essay and sort of give up at the end. What can I do to ensure I can analyse the prompt well, and be able to come up with good arguments/ideas? Thanks

[literally lauren]

Hello,
I often lose marks because I do not directly answer the prompt But if I do, I cannot come up with original ideas that will make my essay stand out
I'm currently studying "Shark Net" and "whose reality?"

How do you make sure that you DO answer the prompt? Many assessor's reports and my teachers always emphasize on making sure that we answer the prompt but I tend to wander off...And how do you come up with original ideas while answering the prompt? To what extent can you explore a prompt without seeming as you are not answering it?

Also, I am meant to do an expository style essay on a prompt (that is unseen). In the previous years when we did context, I would always do a creative piece or persuasive so i'm not used to the idea of expository... How would you structure your essay? What is the purpose of expository? I heard that you explore the issue at hand, so do you always need to consider both sides of the prompt?

Also, since the prompt is unseen, how can I prepare myself?

Gahh, I am so worried. Although I do love English, I am far from good

Please help me

Same with me, I always fall under the impression that im not fully answering the prompt in an essay, and consequently i lose motivation throughout the essay and sort of give up at the end. What can I do to ensure I can analyse the prompt well, and be able to come up with good arguments/ideas? Thanks

Rather than thinking of it as "answering" the prompt, try to see your essays as taking the prompt a step further.
Let's say you're doing Conflict and the prompt is It is not what we learn, but how we learn from conflict that is important.

The simplistic, middle-band pieces would have contentions like 'yes' or 'no.' You don't want to fall into that chasm of simply repeating a bunch of evidence that demonstrates the same point. Your piece must have a contention, and it should be at least a sentence long (preferably more.) For instance, I might want to argue that 'how we learn' tells us more about who we are and what we value, whereas the lessons learned (ie. 'what we learn') have to be filtered through our understanding of the world. 'How we learn' is a process, 'what we learn' is simply the result; it's almost like 'what we learn' is a subset of the 'how.' Therefore the former is more important because it's an all-encompassing journey, not an end-goal.

Note how I haven't gone straight for the text, or any of my examples. I'm simply rationalising what the prompt is suggesting on an idea-level. Ultimately, you could boil down my contention to 'yes,' but the important thing is that I've got my reasoning here. I've done the development, and so the outcome is a way more powerful contention than it would have been if I'd just considered the prompt for 30 seconds and gone 'yeah, I guess that sounds about right.'

So that's the most beneficial thing you can do: develop your thinking so that you're not stifling yourself into repeatedly saying 'yes,' or just talking about the key words in the prompt.

But I know this seems risky when you don't know the right questions to ask, or if your discussion is actually relevant.

The question now becomes 'how do I maintain relevance while still conducting sufficiently broad and deep exploration?' To which I say the answer is weaving!
Usually I explain this with hand-drawn diagrams, so I'll see if I can upload something later when I have access to a scanner. Also, this is geared mostly towards expository pieces; different rules can apply for the other forms.

What you want to do is weave your discussion through to different levels. For anyone who knows anything about sewing, you'll know that the needle and thread have to be woven from one side of the material to the other, and back again. But if you prick the needle too close to the hole you just made, you can end up ripping the material and creating a hole that's too big, and can't be woven through. At this bottom level that the thread is trying to get to: you have the very close examples, often from the set text, though not always. This can have seemingly little to do with the Context itself, so the way you make it relevant is by slowly weaving it through the upper levels. However, using too much evidence to illustrate the same point is the equivalent of sewing too close together: you can't do any more sewing in that area, and you can't get to the next stage.

In the middle, you have 'theorisation,' which is where you're drawing conclusions from the examples, but not necessarily going all the way out to the Context yet. You might be discussing the meaning of an event, or comparing it to other occurrences for the sake of drawing parallels or contrasts. This is where you're actually passing through the material and connecting one level with another.

Where you chose to do this theorisation is incredibly important. I'll explain that more in the section on essay structure below.

Then towards the top you have the Context and the prompt, a.k.a. the umbrella that everything else must be under. This is where you start to tie everything together with a 'Therefore...' statement, and hammer home the relevance to the assessor. It's not enough to just conduct an exploration and assume your reader can piece together its relevance - YOU HAVE TO TELL THEM EXPLICITLY!

One of the worst things you can do in an expository piece is allow your marker to get to the end of a paragraph and ask 'so what?' You've brought up the example of post-war America and how people tried to learn from their mistakes... so what? You've reflected upon a past experience when you felt you learnt an important lesson... so what? You've tied together several historical and psychological examples about the way people learn in the midst of conflict... SO WHAT? Why are you saying this? What has this discussion taught us? What contention are you trying to reinforce here??

Answer these questions in your writing, and don't give your assessor the chance


This relates quite neatly to your question about essay structure as well. I usually recommend the following format to people as a starting point, as it'll make apparent the amount of discussion you have to do at different levels, as well as help you find areas of weakness in a very obvious way. Just a note for anyone else: even if you're dead set on writing an imaginative piece or w/e, you should write at least one expository essay anyway. It spells things out in the clearest way possible, which, when it comes to something as messy as Context, is pretty useful.

Overall (and this is a massive generalisation, not a hard-and-fast rule) you should aim for an even ratio of general abstract theorisation about the Context, to close evidence-based discussion.
Think of it like this:

In the second image, there's not enough on the upper (ie. general Context stuff) level, meaning the final product is going to have a whole lot literal and metaphorical loose threads hanging at the bottom (evidence) level. The reverse could also be true: if you've gone a heap of talking about the Context but don't have anything to back it up, you won't be getting credit for all the loose loops up the top.

If you want your essay to be tight  you have to not only balance the amount of discussion you do on either side, but you also have to know when and how to transition. Let's say you had a metre long piece of material to sew and you only made five stitches - one every 20 cm. It'd hardly look like an appropriate sewing job, and it wouldn't hold things together. Similarly, make too many stitches and you end up wasting thread (ie. wasting your time.) You also want to avoid making inconsistent transitions. Take a look at any piece of clothing you own; good stitching is evenly spaced out. Miss out on one of those spaces, and things fall apart.

To move away from my slightly tortured sewing metaphor now... you'd want your essay to look something like this:

   ---------------
-----------------    <-- intro exploring the prompt, all general
-----------------   <-- maybe an example at the end to lead into the B.P.

   ---------------       <-- body paragraph, T.S. starts off general
-----------------    <-- start integrating evidence
-----------------     <-- draw out some conclusions so you can link your discussion
-----------------     <-- more evidence, adding to, not repeating your point
-----------------     <-- lastly moving back out to the prompt and reinforcing your contention

   ---------------
-----------------    <-- conclusion tying things up, all general, though
-----------------          perhaps calling back to something mentioned in the intro (=bookending)

Here's an example I wrote in response to a similar question last year:

For example, the prompt: 'Our identities are always changing'
My paragraph might begin by looking at the idea of change, rather than just assuming the reader knows what I'm talking about. Obviously you don't have to give definitions, but it can be helpful to clarify
eg. 'Change is an inevitable part of our lives, but that is not to say all things are changing all the time. Often there are parts of our personas that remain stagnant until external events prompt us to reconsider ourselves, or to react in different ways.' {I haven't used any examples yet, I'm just breaking down some theory. Then I'd work on linking it to a specific idea or piece of evidence}: 'Nowhere is this change more obvious than in adolescence; a time of transition when we are forced to consciously reevaluate our selves in relation to society. In Bruce Beresford's Paradise Road, the majority of the cast are adult actors dealing with adult concepts, and it is easy to forget the children and teenagers that were likewise subject to the harsh conditions of POW camps in WWII. Following one of the choir's productions, we see boys as young as 15 and 16 being sent away to the men's camp as their mothers cry in the background 'no, please, he's just a child!' {I'm paraphrasing here, it's been ages since I saw the movie } One can only imagine the irreparable psychological damage this caused the boys. The separation of a child from their mother is incredibly traumatic, and a further indictment of how the brutality of war pervades all aspects of life. Who we are is, of course, a fluid concept, but our identity as a whole isn't entirely self-determined - we cannot ignore the role of external factors.'

Orange: abstract discussion
Purple: specific examples, from the text or otherwise

In hindsight, the conclusion I've drawn at the end of that paragraph is a bit dodgy, but that's mainly because I've only done two sentences of evidence-unpacking: your essays will obviously go into more detail, and hopefully draw from multiple sources, not just one scene in one text.


Hopefully that addresses the bigger questions, so to clarify the little ones in case you're still unsure:
- The purpose of the expository style is to expose facets of the prompt. It's giving you a literal, usually fairly straightforward assertion, and you have to take that and explore the implications.
- You don't need to consider 'both sides' because there are more than two sides. You need to consider many, but have your considerations fall under the umbrella of your contention. They're giving you an opportunity for limitless exploration, but you only have to explore what's most relevant to you.
- Rather than preparing for specific content like you would in other subjects (ie. 'this maths SAC is going to test these areas, in this format, probably with questions similar to last year' etc.) English is more about preparing a skillset that can handle anything. Collect examples, make a conclusive list of major prompts, write practice paragraphs and essays - do whatever you think will help you solidify your understanding.

Apologies for the verbosity, but 'how to answer a Context prompt' is a huge area, so I figured I'd tackle it from the ground up. If you have further questions, please let me know, as this definitely hasn't covered everything

[M_BONG]

Holy F, Lauren. You deserve a Noble Prize in Literature for writing all that! Also, a whole lot of awesome  and well-illustrated advice as well!

[brenden]

Rather than thinking of it as "answering" the prompt, try to see your essays as taking the prompt a step further.
Let's say you're doing Conflict and the prompt is It is not what we learn, but how we learn from conflict that is important.

The simplistic, middle-band pieces would have contentions like 'yes' or 'no.' You don't want to fall into that chasm of simply repeating a bunch of evidence that demonstrates the same point. Your piece must have a contention, and it should be at least a sentence long (preferably more.) For instance, I might want to argue that 'how we learn' tells us more about who we are and what we value, whereas the lessons learned (ie. 'what we learn') have to be filtered through our understanding of the world. 'How we learn' is a process, 'what we learn' is simply the result; it's almost like 'what we learn' is a subset of the 'how.' Therefore the former is more important because it's an all-encompassing journey, not an end-goal.

Note how I haven't gone straight for the text, or any of my examples. I'm simply rationalising what the prompt is suggesting on an idea-level. Ultimately, you could boil down my contention to 'yes,' but the important thing is that I've got my reasoning here. I've done the development, and so the outcome is a way more powerful contention than it would have been if I'd just considered the prompt for 30 seconds and gone 'yeah, I guess that sounds about right.'

So that's the most beneficial thing you can do: develop your thinking so that you're not stifling yourself into repeatedly saying 'yes,' or just talking about the key words in the prompt.

But I know this seems risky when you don't know the right questions to ask, or if your discussion is actually relevant.

The question now becomes 'how do I maintain relevance while still conducting sufficiently broad and deep exploration?' To which I say the answer is weaving!
Usually I explain this with hand-drawn diagrams, so I'll see if I can upload something later when I have access to a scanner. Also, this is geared mostly towards expository pieces; different rules can apply for the other forms.

What you want to do is weave your discussion through to different levels. For anyone who knows anything about sewing, you'll know that the needle and thread have to be woven from one side of the material to the other, and back again. But if you prick the needle too close to the hole you just made, you can end up ripping the material and creating a hole that's too big, and can't be woven through. At this bottom level that the thread is trying to get to: you have the very close examples, often from the set text, though not always. This can have seemingly little to do with the Context itself, so the way you make it relevant is by slowly weaving it through the upper levels. However, using too much evidence to illustrate the same point is the equivalent of sewing too close together: you can't do any more sewing in that area, and you can't get to the next stage.

In the middle, you have 'theorisation,' which is where you're drawing conclusions from the examples, but not necessarily going all the way out to the Context yet. You might be discussing the meaning of an event, or comparing it to other occurrences for the sake of drawing parallels or contrasts. This is where you're actually passing through the material and connecting one level with another.

Where you chose to do this theorisation is incredibly important. I'll explain that more in the section on essay structure below.

Then towards the top you have the Context and the prompt, a.k.a. the umbrella that everything else must be under. This is where you start to tie everything together with a 'Therefore...' statement, and hammer home the relevance to the assessor. It's not enough to just conduct an exploration and assume your reader can piece together its relevance - YOU HAVE TO TELL THEM EXPLICITLY!

One of the worst things you can do in an expository piece is allow your marker to get to the end of a paragraph and ask 'so what?' You've brought up the example of post-war America and how people tried to learn from their mistakes... so what? You've reflected upon a past experience when you felt you learnt an important lesson... so what? You've tied together several historical and psychological examples about the way people learn in the midst of conflict... SO WHAT? Why are you saying this? What has this discussion taught us? What contention are you trying to reinforce here??

Answer these questions in your writing, and don't give your assessor the chance


This relates quite neatly to your question about essay structure as well. I usually recommend the following format to people as a starting point, as it'll make apparent the amount of discussion you have to do at different levels, as well as help you find areas of weakness in a very obvious way. Just a note for anyone else: even if you're dead set on writing an imaginative piece or w/e, you should write at least one expository essay anyway. It spells things out in the clearest way possible, which, when it comes to something as messy as Context, is pretty useful.

Overall (and this is a massive generalisation, not a hard-and-fast rule) you should aim for an even ratio of general abstract theorisation about the Context, to close evidence-based discussion.
Think of it like this:
(Image removed from quote.)
In the second image, there's not enough on the upper (ie. general Context stuff) level, meaning the final product is going to have a whole lot literal and metaphorical loose threads hanging at the bottom (evidence) level. The reverse could also be true: if you've gone a heap of talking about the Context but don't have anything to back it up, you won't be getting credit for all the loose loops up the top.

If you want your essay to be tight  you have to not only balance the amount of discussion you do on either side, but you also have to know when and how to transition. Let's say you had a metre long piece of material to sew and you only made five stitches - one every 20 cm. It'd hardly look like an appropriate sewing job, and it wouldn't hold things together. Similarly, make too many stitches and you end up wasting thread (ie. wasting your time.) You also want to avoid making inconsistent transitions. Take a look at any piece of clothing you own; good stitching is evenly spaced out. Miss out on one of those spaces, and things fall apart.

To move away from my slightly tortured sewing metaphor now... you'd want your essay to look something like this:

   ---------------
-----------------    <-- intro exploring the prompt, all general
-----------------   <-- maybe an example at the end to lead into the B.P.

   ---------------       <-- body paragraph, T.S. starts off general
-----------------    <-- start integrating evidence
-----------------     <-- draw out some conclusions so you can link your discussion
-----------------     <-- more evidence, adding to, not repeating your point
-----------------     <-- lastly moving back out to the prompt and reinforcing your contention

   ---------------
-----------------    <-- conclusion tying things up, all general, though
-----------------          perhaps calling back to something mentioned in the intro (=bookending)

Here's an example I wrote in response to a similar question last year:
In hindsight, the conclusion I've drawn at the end of that paragraph is a bit dodgy, but that's mainly because I've only done two sentences of evidence-unpacking: your essays will obviously go into more detail, and hopefully draw from multiple sources, not just one scene in one text.


Hopefully that addresses the bigger questions, so to clarify the little ones in case you're still unsure:
- The purpose of the expository style is to expose facets of the prompt. It's giving you a literal, usually fairly straightforward assertion, and you have to take that and explore the implications.
- You don't need to consider 'both sides' because there are more than two sides. You need to consider many, but have your considerations fall under the umbrella of your contention. They're giving you an opportunity for limitless exploration, but you only have to explore what's most relevant to you.
- Rather than preparing for specific content like you would in other subjects (ie. 'this maths SAC is going to test these areas, in this format, probably with questions similar to last year' etc.) English is more about preparing a skillset that can handle anything. Collect examples, make a conclusive list of major prompts, write practice paragraphs and essays - do whatever you think will help you solidify your understanding.

Apologies for the verbosity, but 'how to answer a Context prompt' is a huge area, so I figured I'd tackle it from the ground up. If you have further questions, please let me know, as this definitely hasn't covered everything

Let the upvotes rain.

[Alter]

Hey there guys.

Just to preface this, I should clarify that last year I did 1/2 Literature as opposed to mainstream English. As a result, I'm a bit behind in terms of having practised the different types of responses necessary for the subject, but I don't find them overly difficult to adapt to.

My question relates to doing a context piece. I should clarify that I am particularly interested in writing a creative piece for my SACs/exam as this is the text type I am most comfortable with, it being something I greatly enjoy and have done a lot in the past outside of school. That being said, I am not entirely sure how one is supposed to link into studied texts they've read while still maintaining cohesion and originality in a response. Are there any examples of how I can incorporate textual reference in a creative piece that I should read? To clarify, I'm doing encountering conflict with the texts The Lieutenant and Every Man In This Village Is A Liar.

On top of this, what are the best pieces of advice you can provide for someone who is keen on doing a creative piece for context, but has not had much experience with regular English before? I've read some threads on here for context which were quite helpful, but there don't seem to be a great deal of resources for people in my specific position. Thanks in advance.

[literally lauren]

Hey there guys.

Just to preface this, I should clarify that last year I did 1/2 Literature as opposed to mainstream English. As a result, I'm a bit behind in terms of having practised the different types of responses necessary for the subject, but I don't find them overly difficult to adapt to.

Dw man, in some ways Lit is better preparation for English because it helps you analyse and discuss things more closely. So long as you're across the basic 3 essay types in English, you're not really behind.

My question relates to doing a context piece. I should clarify that I am particularly interested in writing a creative piece for my SACs/exam as this is the text type I am most comfortable with, it being something I greatly enjoy and have done a lot in the past outside of school. That being said, I am not entirely sure how one is supposed to link into studied texts they've read while still maintaining cohesion and originality in a response. Are there any examples of how I can incorporate textual reference in a creative piece that I should read? To clarify, I'm doing encountering conflict with the texts The Lieutenant and Every Man In This Village Is A Liar.

Just so I can answer this properly, what sort of creative piece are you doing? Short story, letter, reflective piece, hybrid? There are slightly different rules for each format, so maybe give us a general overview of what one of your pieces might be dealing with. (You don't have to post a full essay or anything, just a brief outline)

On top of this, what are the best pieces of advice you can provide for someone who is keen on doing a creative piece for context, but has not had much experience with regular English before? I've read some threads on here for context which were quite helpful, but there don't seem to be a great deal of resources for people in my specific position. Thanks in advance.

Like I said above, write an expository piece anyway. You can definitely stick with creatives for your SACs and the exam, but expository pieces are the easiest way to grasp the requirements of the task, and the balance of your discussion. Not having done English 1&2 really isn't a disadvantage, and a lost of people I know (myself included) weren't exactly top-of-the-range in Year 11, but compensated by working hard in Year 12 when it mattered. Other than that, I'll wait till I know your preferred writing style before I go into more depth in terms of text integration

[Alter]

Thanks for the quick response, Lauren!

I'm glad that not doing 1/2 English won't be detrimental for my score. At my school, mainstream English seems to have a pretty poor reputation/stigma for being a subject done by people that aren't intelligent enough to do English Language or Literature do. As a result, the cohort seems to be typically weaker. That being said, there was a girl from my school last year who pretty impressively got a 50 in English despite having transferred from Literature in the same situation as me.

I see now that I was a bit vague with just 'creative writing'. I mean a short story, or possibly a hybrid (although I have very limited experience with the latter...). To be honest, anything that falls under the banner of a typical "narrative" / "short story" will work for me, although perhaps I'm being a bit naive in how distinct different types of creative pieces are.

[Apink!]

Rather than thinking of it as "answering" the prompt, try to see your essays as taking the prompt a step further.
Let's say you're doing Conflict and the prompt is It is not what we learn, but how we learn from conflict that is important.

The simplistic, middle-band pieces would have contentions like 'yes' or 'no.' You don't want to fall into that chasm of simply repeating a bunch of evidence that demonstrates the same point. Your piece must have a contention, and it should be at least a sentence long (preferably more.) For instance, I might want to argue that 'how we learn' tells us more about who we are and what we value, whereas the lessons learned (ie. 'what we learn') have to be filtered through our understanding of the world. 'How we learn' is a process, 'what we learn' is simply the result; it's almost like 'what we learn' is a subset of the 'how.' Therefore the former is more important because it's an all-encompassing journey, not an end-goal.

Note how I haven't gone straight for the text, or any of my examples. I'm simply rationalising what the prompt is suggesting on an idea-level. Ultimately, you could boil down my contention to 'yes,' but the important thing is that I've got my reasoning here. I've done the development, and so the outcome is a way more powerful contention than it would have been if I'd just considered the prompt for 30 seconds and gone 'yeah, I guess that sounds about right.'

So that's the most beneficial thing you can do: develop your thinking so that you're not stifling yourself into repeatedly saying 'yes,' or just talking about the key words in the prompt.

But I know this seems risky when you don't know the right questions to ask, or if your discussion is actually relevant.

The question now becomes 'how do I maintain relevance while still conducting sufficiently broad and deep exploration?' To which I say the answer is weaving!
Usually I explain this with hand-drawn diagrams, so I'll see if I can upload something later when I have access to a scanner. Also, this is geared mostly towards expository pieces; different rules can apply for the other forms.

What you want to do is weave your discussion through to different levels. For anyone who knows anything about sewing, you'll know that the needle and thread have to be woven from one side of the material to the other, and back again. But if you prick the needle too close to the hole you just made, you can end up ripping the material and creating a hole that's too big, and can't be woven through. At this bottom level that the thread is trying to get to: you have the very close examples, often from the set text, though not always. This can have seemingly little to do with the Context itself, so the way you make it relevant is by slowly weaving it through the upper levels. However, using too much evidence to illustrate the same point is the equivalent of sewing too close together: you can't do any more sewing in that area, and you can't get to the next stage.

In the middle, you have 'theorisation,' which is where you're drawing conclusions from the examples, but not necessarily going all the way out to the Context yet. You might be discussing the meaning of an event, or comparing it to other occurrences for the sake of drawing parallels or contrasts. This is where you're actually passing through the material and connecting one level with another.

Where you chose to do this theorisation is incredibly important. I'll explain that more in the section on essay structure below.

Then towards the top you have the Context and the prompt, a.k.a. the umbrella that everything else must be under. This is where you start to tie everything together with a 'Therefore...' statement, and hammer home the relevance to the assessor. It's not enough to just conduct an exploration and assume your reader can piece together its relevance - YOU HAVE TO TELL THEM EXPLICITLY!

One of the worst things you can do in an expository piece is allow your marker to get to the end of a paragraph and ask 'so what?' You've brought up the example of post-war America and how people tried to learn from their mistakes... so what? You've reflected upon a past experience when you felt you learnt an important lesson... so what? You've tied together several historical and psychological examples about the way people learn in the midst of conflict... SO WHAT? Why are you saying this? What has this discussion taught us? What contention are you trying to reinforce here??

Answer these questions in your writing, and don't give your assessor the chance


This relates quite neatly to your question about essay structure as well. I usually recommend the following format to people as a starting point, as it'll make apparent the amount of discussion you have to do at different levels, as well as help you find areas of weakness in a very obvious way. Just a note for anyone else: even if you're dead set on writing an imaginative piece or w/e, you should write at least one expository essay anyway. It spells things out in the clearest way possible, which, when it comes to something as messy as Context, is pretty useful.

Overall (and this is a massive generalisation, not a hard-and-fast rule) you should aim for an even ratio of general abstract theorisation about the Context, to close evidence-based discussion.
Think of it like this:
(Image removed from quote.)
In the second image, there's not enough on the upper (ie. general Context stuff) level, meaning the final product is going to have a whole lot literal and metaphorical loose threads hanging at the bottom (evidence) level. The reverse could also be true: if you've gone a heap of talking about the Context but don't have anything to back it up, you won't be getting credit for all the loose loops up the top.

If you want your essay to be tight  you have to not only balance the amount of discussion you do on either side, but you also have to know when and how to transition. Let's say you had a metre long piece of material to sew and you only made five stitches - one every 20 cm. It'd hardly look like an appropriate sewing job, and it wouldn't hold things together. Similarly, make too many stitches and you end up wasting thread (ie. wasting your time.) You also want to avoid making inconsistent transitions. Take a look at any piece of clothing you own; good stitching is evenly spaced out. Miss out on one of those spaces, and things fall apart.

To move away from my slightly tortured sewing metaphor now... you'd want your essay to look something like this:

   ---------------
-----------------    <-- intro exploring the prompt, all general
-----------------   <-- maybe an example at the end to lead into the B.P.

   ---------------       <-- body paragraph, T.S. starts off general
-----------------    <-- start integrating evidence
-----------------     <-- draw out some conclusions so you can link your discussion
-----------------     <-- more evidence, adding to, not repeating your point
-----------------     <-- lastly moving back out to the prompt and reinforcing your contention

   ---------------
-----------------    <-- conclusion tying things up, all general, though
-----------------          perhaps calling back to something mentioned in the intro (=bookending)

Here's an example I wrote in response to a similar question last year:
In hindsight, the conclusion I've drawn at the end of that paragraph is a bit dodgy, but that's mainly because I've only done two sentences of evidence-unpacking: your essays will obviously go into more detail, and hopefully draw from multiple sources, not just one scene in one text.


Hopefully that addresses the bigger questions, so to clarify the little ones in case you're still unsure:
- The purpose of the expository style is to expose facets of the prompt. It's giving you a literal, usually fairly straightforward assertion, and you have to take that and explore the implications.
- You don't need to consider 'both sides' because there are more than two sides. You need to consider many, but have your considerations fall under the umbrella of your contention. They're giving you an opportunity for limitless exploration, but you only have to explore what's most relevant to you.
- Rather than preparing for specific content like you would in other subjects (ie. 'this maths SAC is going to test these areas, in this format, probably with questions similar to last year' etc.) English is more about preparing a skillset that can handle anything. Collect examples, make a conclusive list of major prompts, write practice paragraphs and essays - do whatever you think will help you solidify your understanding.

Apologies for the verbosity, but 'how to answer a Context prompt' is a huge area, so I figured I'd tackle it from the ground up. If you have further questions, please let me know, as this definitely hasn't covered everything

Thank you so much! That really helps me clarify it a whole lot better.
If you could, could you please upload a good expository essay? I learn things by observing what great writer's had done and analyse it and then apply it to my own writing.
There were some on the essay thread, but not a lot of them are expository

Thank you Lauren, you explain it so much better

EDIT: Also my teacher is very keen on the idea of personal anecdotes in expository essay. She kinda implies that by putting a personal anecdote of some sort in the beginning of the essay, we will score better than generalising in the first paragraph. What do you think?

I personally do not like personal anecdotes. They are interesting, but often they don't seem like a  'must' think to put in a context expository essay. Should I do what my teacher says to get a better mark or should I just do my own thang?

Also, if you advise me on doing a personal anecdote/ creative bit in the first paragraph, how can I make sure my opening stands out with 35 or so of personal anecdotes/ creative stories? I want to be original

[paper-back]

How can I improve on my expressiveness and fluency? Sometimes when others read my paragraphs, they don't seem to know what I'm trying address and it's becoming a real worry

Any tips would be much appreciated
Thanks!

[Floatzel98]

When we are writing context pieces, what do we need to include at the end when writing the summary of intent, or the explanation of the piece. How long does it need to be and does it affect the marking?

[JackSonSmith]

How can I improve on my expressiveness and fluency? Sometimes when others read my paragraphs, they don't seem to know what I'm trying address and it's becoming a real worry

Any tips would be much appreciated
Thanks!

Personally, I find that using short sentences helps. They ensure ideas are easy to follow.

[literally lauren]

Apink!: I'll try and upload something later tonight. I have a few good-ish expository essays, but I think it'd be more helpful if I wrote a piece from scratch.
With regards to personal anecdotes, no they're not compulsory, and the assessors don't really favour "petty personal stories" (not that all personal stories are petty, but it can be hard to go from 'My sister and I used to pull each others hair, but now we don't. Sometimes people learn lessons from conflict' ) But you should absolutely so anything and everything your teacher suggests for the SAC. The exam approach might be a little different though.


Alter:

First of all, you need to be aware of the balance between a good Context piece, and a good short story. Here's what happens if you do too much of the former:
Jocelyn stood on the shore, a cool zephyr blowing through her hair. As she gazed at the setting sun, she wondered whether fear or prejudice is really at the heart of conflict. :/ It stops sounding like a believable story at the end there. That's because your piece has to have verisimilitude which is a lovely word that here boils down to 'tell a good story without being bogged down by nonsense.'

The easiest rule of thumb here is not to use the key words of the prompt, or the name of the context itself (eg. prompt is 'Our identity depends on our upbringing, not our values' --> the words 'identity,' 'upbringing' and 'values' are off-limits) as these are things you're meant to show in the story itself. (more on that later)

On the flip side, you still want to be ensuring marks for relevance, and you could write the most amazing short story in the world that totally blows the assessors out of their chairs - but if it has no relation to the prompt - 4/10 for effort, maybe
Regardless of your writing style, the prompt dominates everything. It's where your contention, ideas, and examples should all stem from.

The text is a subset of this, but how you integrate it is really up to you. If you find explicit connections easier, then you could write a POV from one of the characters, or rewrite another ending/ 'lost scene' from the text. But the better links will be idea-based ones; if the speaker in your story is going through a certain struggle, see if you can find parallels with someone from the set text.

Using the language of the author can also be very effective. For instance, Every Man has that famous quote about how "you can survive and not survive both at the same time," so if the idea of survival is relevant to your piece, consider integrating or adapting those words and including them in your work.

eg, let's say you were writing about spousal troubles and abuse: Lucy sat at the dinner table, petrified that she would sweat through her concealer and reveal the bruises. She must have looked too nervous, as Micheal took a firm grasp of her knee under the tablecloth. She felt his grubby fingers dig under the kneecap as though he was willing her bones to separate, but she knew she'd pay for her mistakes more severely once the guests had left. She glanced at the other couples and their affectionate tactility, their total comfort with one another. Micheal gripped her knee tighter. At least she was alive, she thought, but this was far from living.

For your SACs, you will have the opportunity to explain yourself fully in a Statement of Intention/ Written Explanation - a paragraph at the end that mentions your choice of form, style, language, audience, contention, and textual connection. So for the above, part of my SOI might read: 'I have used Megan Stack's questioning of what survival really means, and recontextualised it from a global, to a very personal setting.'

In the exam, you don't get this chance though. There are no SOIs, it's just the piece you write, and you have to rely on the assessor being smart enough to grasp the connections. I won't like - this is a massive challenge, and it's the reason I chickened out and went with a nice safe expository piece in the exam. I know people who can make it work, but it takes a lot of practice.

Story-time: Why Lauren abandoned imaginative pieces:

I wrote a piece around mid-year that was sent off to an external marker, and I thought the connections were pretty obvious. One of the films that used to be on the list (Paradise Road) had a line like 'The will to survive is strong, stronger than anything,' and one of the lines in my intro was 'Although the will to survive is strong, the pervasive effects of conflict... something something' and other such similar connections (I think I did this four or five times with the most major quotes that came to mind.) And I figured, that should be clear enough. Nuh uh. I got a 6/10, purely because the text "wasn't there" which scared me straight. It's definitely possible to circumvent these issues, but you need to be aware of the risks when making implicit links.
Moral of the story: assume everyone's an idiot and spell things out as much as the piece allows (without getting too clunky.) Don't assume your marker will fill in the blanks or connect the dots for you, because they won't :/

Since the priority of any context piece is the ideas it deals with, find a few points of interest in the text that you can generalise, and practice applying them. Treat the SOI as an opportunity to reiterate the connection though, not to do all the work for you


paper-back:

What kind of fluency issues are you having? If it's something like run-on sentences, then shortening them is definitely an option. But is your writing confusing because of the words you use/ how you express your ideas, or because of what you're actually trying to say. It may just be an issue with grammar and syntax, or there might be underlying issues with your ideas and/or contention depending on the piece. Maybe ask the people (students? teachers?) who said your piece was confusing and ask them how & why they're confused.

Whatever their response is, a good place to start is just to de-clutter your intentions. What are you trying to say, in the simplest, most basic terms? eg. 'okay, I wanna say how we know the character is evil because of how the director casts her in dark lighting and accentuates her sharp features.' --> The director's use of dark lighting to accentuate character X's sharp facial features contributes to her mysterious and sinister persona.

Start simple, and build it up, rather than just beginning a sentence without knowing where it's going to end. This should ensure that at the very least, you're getting your ideas across. After that, you can gradually work up to more complex sentence structures and better vocab.


Floatzel98:

Tbh a lot of schools make up their own rules for this, so I'll tell you what I've found to be most often the case, but it's worth clarifying with your teacher as well.
The standard acronym for what you should include is FLAP-C : Form (essay, speech, diary entry, etc.) Language (ie. what is appropriate for an address to US Congress vs. a high school essay competition,) Audience (same as above, consider the situational context of your Context piece,) Purpose (explained below) and Contention (also below.)
Your contention is what you, as a Year 12 English student, are saying about the prompt. But the purpose should be more imaginative.
Take this example of a creative editorial in a WA newspaper. Let's say the Context was 'Life and Experiences' or something like that; this author's contention would be that taking a life is inexcusable, no matter the circumstances. But his purpose is to address the inhumanity of execution and the hypocrisy of trying to attribute blame in this particular case. He doesn't end every paragraph by saying 'Therefore a human life is very valuable, and we should not deprive anyone of their right to live.' Instead, he communicates it through language and ideas. THAT'S what you need to do in your piece.

Re: marks, that's totally up to the school. Some places assign 5 or 10 marks to the SOI alone, other teachers just say 'do it, I'll tick it, and we'll move on with our lives.' It won't have a drastic effect on your marks, but it can help clarify your intentions. I think I remember hearing that it won't cost you any marks, but it might earn you some, if your teacher is generous

[KingDrogba]

Currently doing identity and belonging for context, have a strong list of ideas which i can bring into an expository essay but was wondering if anyone would share some other issues/movies/books/news articles which i could write about? Specifically to do with crisis and how that affects identity and belonging

Thanks for the help!