Since September 2015, the current affairs has been raging with numerous controversial topics - perfect for your oral presentation! Here are some of the more interesting issues that would be a good starting point for your oral. Remember to offer an interesting and unique argument, even if it may mean adopting the unconventional or unpopular point of view on the issue!
Oral presentation topics 2016
1. Should we have 24 hour public transport on weekends?
2. Gender selective abortion in Australia
3. Should the driving age in Australia be lowered?
4. Cricket star Chris Gayle’s treatment of journalist Mel McLaughlin
5. Should children be vaccinated?
6. Should the voting age in Australia be lowered to 16 years?
7. Should singer Chris Brown be denied entry to Australia?
8. Cultural appropriation in Australia
9. Should an Australian Prime Ministers be removed from office without a general election?
10. Should Australia be a republic?
11. Should the Australian flag be changed?
12. Is Australia Day racist against Indigenous Australians?
13. Adam Goodes booing: Are AFL football crowds racist?
14. Australian of the Year - Rosie Batty: Victim blaming
15. Should UBER be made legal in Australia?
16. Should baby formula be limited in sales?
17. Should greyhound racing be banned in Australia?
18. Is Australia’s border security policy justified?
19. Should Australian Open arenas have sports betting advertising?
20. See more Oral Presentation Topics 2017, click here.
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Can you believe it’s already 2021? To kick off the year in VCE English, you’ll probably be working on your Oral Presentation sometime soon. The past year has flown by, but so much has happened in that year - there are plenty of juicy and controversial topics to get stuck into for your SAC.
Each heading below represents a broad topic and each subheading under it takes you into more specific debates. A more precise topic can make your speech more engaging and current, so feel free to pick a broad issue that resonates with you but don’t forget to zoom in on more specific questions too.
ICYMI, there’s been this global pandemic going around for about a year now. It’ll probably come up in a few speeches this year, but let’s work through some more specific ways of using it in yours.
First up is working from home. In 2020, a lot of people spent a lot of time working from home - but this hasn’t been possible for everyone, meaning that it could be worsening certain forms of inequality. ‘Essential workers’ like supermarket clerks and delivery drivers have not been able to work from home, which might put them at a disadvantage when it comes to the flexibility or even the conditions of their work. Conversely, a ‘tax on remote workers’ has been proposed which would see people pay a 5% tax if they chose to work from home instead.
Is working from home all that it’s chalked up to be? Is it a positive sign of flexibility, or a widening gap between the manual working class and white-collar professionals? What can we learn about working from home now that we can apply to the future? Is it the environmentally responsible thing to do?
All workplaces, especially those with essential manual or physical labour, should provide paid health and safety training to staff who are for example more at risk of disease
A working from home tax is a bad idea - it encourages people to commute and pollute. We should look to ways of promoting flexibility and sustainability instead
Casual workers in manual professions should be given paid sick leave and other entitlements to make their jobs as flexible as remote office workers
2. Education
You might’ve spent 2020 learning from home too. Everything happened pretty quickly right at the start of the year, but as the months wore on it became clearer that some students were adjusting better than others. In particular, ‘digital exclusion’ became a big problem for many students around the country. Inequality is once again a big theme: access to the internet and other technology is vastly uneven, and students who were already dealing with things like mental ill-health were set further back by remote learning. Even though the Victorian government applied special considerations to all Year 12 students in 2020, this is far from a long-term fix.
What can be done about the education system to make it fairer, or even just to make it work better for you? Is it an issue with technology, or are there underlying problems around, say, mental health and wellbeing? Maybe it’s time to axe the ATAR system - would a new scoring system solve these problems?
The government should supply public schools with tech for every student, including iPads and broadband devices
The government should implement a needs-based approach to technology in schools
Schools need engagement staff as well as teaching staff: COVID-19 has shown just how easy it is for students to disconnect
Replace the ATAR with something that measures skills and interests, rather than just results
The Climate Crisis
1. The Paris Agreement
The Paris Agreement is an international agreement that was signed a little over five years ago. It binds every country to a commitment of carbon neutrality by 2050 - this means that everyone will be taking as much CO2 out of the atmosphere as we emit. Part of the Agreement is that countries have to commit to new, increasingly ambitious plans every five years, and this deadline has just passed.
How did we do, you might ask. While the mid-century goal still stands, the five-year increment isn’t looking fantastic - most countries, including Australia, haven’t strengthened their climate targets. The Prime Minister was even snubbed out of a speaking slot at a UN climate summit, some suggest because of his inaction on climate. None of this has really snatched headlines though.
Is this something that you’ve been following? If not, is it a problem that this news isn’t really getting out there? What can Australia do better with regard to the climate crisis?
Australia needs to be proactive on the Paris Agreement, rather than doing the bare minimum
Australia needs to transition away from coal
Our country’s lack of climate action is a great source of shame, particularly for young Australians who want a better future
The Australian media should take the climate crisis more seriously
2. Environmental Racism
One aspect of the climate crisis we’re starting to talk about more now is environmental racism. The term started in the US, where it was used to describe the disproportionate impacts of environmental problems like pollution on working class people of colour. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t apply in Australia though - earlier in 2020, a sacred Aboriginal site was blasted by Rio Tinto in order to expand a mine. Now, taxpayer money is being set aside for fracking in the Northern Territory. This will have an adverse impact on not only the climate, but also the local water quality on which First Nations communities depend.
What can be done about environmental racism? Is it about making changes in government, or about activism from outside the halls of power? If environmental racism is the problem, is there a solution that can tackle both problems at once? Is it even accurate to refer to them as two separate problems?
Indigenous land rights is not just a social movement: it could help us avoid environmental disaster as well
Politicians are too reliant on fossil fuel companies: we need more grassroots activism around climate justice
Fracking is dangerous, its impacts disproportionately affect BIPOC communities and as such it should be banned
3. A Carbon Price?
This topic was kind of on our 2020 topic list, but the debate around climate action has changed a little bit since. A carbon price would make the atmosphere a commodity basically - corporations would have to pay in order to pollute.
But maybe that’s still giving them too much power? If you can just pay your way out of environmental responsibility, who’s to stop you from polluting? Maybe there isn’t a capitalistic or free-market solution to carbon emissions - maybe we need to rethink our entire relationship with land and country. What can and should Australia learn from its First People in this regard?
A carbon price is still necessary, but it’s a stepping stone in a larger conversation
Putting a price on excessive pollution isn’t the same as creating laws to prevent it: as such, it is no longer enough
Race
1. First Nations Justice
You might recall the huge impact that George Floyd’s death had on conversations about race around the world. Though this erupted in a wave of furore last June, the conversation has been shifting ever since. In Australia, we’ve been grappling in particular with First Nations justice. While the Prime Minister’s made attempts to unify the country through certain words and gestures, First Nations leaders such as Lidia Thorpe, the first Indigenous senator from Victoria, have been calling for something more substantive. In the meantime, police brutality against First Nations people continues.
Where to from here? What does the future of First Nations justice look like in Australia, and what is the role of leaders like Ms Thorpe? Where do non-Aboriginal folks fit into this? What could we do better?
Reconciliation is an outdated term; it implies two parties are coming together as equals, when history would tell us otherwise
Lidia Thorpe’s election is the first step in a longer journey towards representation, truth-telling and self-determination
Even after the #BlackLivesMatter movement in 2020, we still a long way to go with anti-racism
Australia is far from a multicultural utopia: we need to learn to treat politicians like Lidia Thorpe with more respect
2. Refugees
In 2019, the ‘medevac’ bill allowed refugees to be brought to mainland Australia for medical care. That bill has since been repealed, but it did allow some refugees to leave their detention centres and receive medical treatment. 60 of them have now been detained in various Melbourne hotels for over a year now. In December, they were moved to a former COVID-19 quarantine hotel, where they will continue to be isolated and detained.
What injustices (plural) are going on here? Did medevac force us to confront our out-of-sight-out-of-mind asylum seeker policy? And if this isn’t the impetus we need to shut offshore detention once and for all, what exactly will it take?
Bring back medevac: it was a bare minimum policy to begin with, and it’s unconscionable that it would be repealed, thereby denying sick people healthcare
Australia’s refugee policy is as lazy as it is harmful: something needs to change
The hotel industry is profiting off detention and we should consider boycotting chains like Mantra
3. COVID-Related Racism
This could’ve gone in the first section, but it poses important questions about ongoing and future race relations in Australia. During 2020, Asian Australians and particularly those with Chinese heritage experienced a sharp increase in racially-provoked harassment. Towards the end of the year, Chinese Australians were asked in a Senate committee hearing to condemn the Chinese Communist Party, which many have described as race-baiting. Many Australians with Chinese heritage have no relation to the Chinese government, so it’s jarring that they’d be called upon to give an opinion like this.
How does race still impact civic life in Australia? If you’re Australian, should you be expected to have opinions about or deny loyalties to foreign governments? Does it matter what race you are, and if so, how is that problematic?
Politicians are increasingly out of touch with Australia’s diverse communities because they are just so overwhelmingly undiverse
Again, Australia is not a multicultural utopia. When times get tough, the racism really jumps out
Australians are yet to confront the reality that there are Chinese Australians (which sounds like a joke, but based on these articles isn’t really a joke) - their behaviour continues to ‘other’ people who actually really are Australian, telling them they somehow don’t belong
More people of colour should run for public office; this starts with civic empowerment in schools
The Media
1. Representation
As it turns out, journalism isn’t a very diverse profession. When issues about disability come up, for example, they’re often covered by abled journalists in a “pity party” or “inspiration porn” manner. When issues about race come up, it’s also often white people who cover them, usually with racist undertones as well. We started seeing a bit of this in 2020: the stories that kept coming up about people breaking COVID restrictions were often targeting minorities - their names and faces would be splashed across newspaper front pages, while their white counterparts were afforded privacy and forgiven for making a mistake.
How fair is the media landscape towards people from minority backgrounds? What different forms might racism and ableism take in the media, and how can we overcome them? Is it as simple as allowing disabled people to tell their own stories, for example?
The media landscape isn’t fair towards minorities: stereotypes can be subtle but persistent
Journalism schools should create more scholarships for diverse applicants
Australian media should adopt a code of ethics around representation of minorities
2. Youth
This may or may not come as a surprise to you, but young people are also one of the groups that are likely to be underrepresented in the media. A report from the Foundation for Young Australians found that there were not only less stories about young people in the media in 2020, but barely half of them actually quoted a young person.
Again, we return to questions around representation - does the media have an ethical obligation to let young people tell their own stories? How much do you, as a young person, trust the media to accurately depict you? What can be done about this?
Young people can no longer trust the media, and this is detrimental to civic society
There needs to be a national youth broadcaster, kind of like the ABC, run by young people for young people
3. Murdoch
Remember Kevin Rudd? The former Prime Minister has been making waves recently for starting a parliamentary petition for a royal commission into media diversity. The petition was signed by a record 501,876 people, and it looks like the commission - a bit like a government inquiry - will go ahead. The ‘media diversity’ in question isn’t about race or disability though - it’s more about media ownership. In Australia, Rupert Murdoch owns almost two-thirds of metropolitan media circulation. He’s also a climate sceptic, which means a large chunk of his media output is also climate-sceptic.
What is the role of media in democracy, and can it still fulfill that role if one person gets to own so much of it? What are some ways Murdoch has used his influence, and what have been the consequences for the Australian people? What should the royal commission look to now achieve?
Because the media holds government to account in the eyes of the people, one person owning this much of the media gives them too much power
Australia’s climate inaction is a direct result of Murdoch’s media empire, and we need to break it apart to get honest debate and coverage
Pop Culture
1. Sia
In December 2020, the Australian singer Sia was caught in a bit of Twitter beef. She defended casting Maddie Ziegler, an abled actress, in a disabled role for her upcoming film. Disability justice activists argued that autistic people should be able to portray themselves, and that roles for autistic people should be written by them as well. Sia later admitted this was “ableism”, but didn’t back down on her decision.
What is the appropriate way for celebrities and creatives to approach representation? Without debating anyone’s actual identity, how can the film industry do better here?
Abled people shouldn’t write roles for disabled people, nor should they play these roles; if a disabled person can’t play the role, then it isn’t appropriate in the first place
Cancel culture isn’t a thing, given how comfortable Sia feels admitting to ableism and then committing to her decision anyway
We shouldn’t cancel people, but we still need new ways to really hold them to account: otherwise, they can still get away with discrimination
2. Grammys
The Grammy Awards have been oft-criticised for racial biases, including once again in this year’s coming ceremony. Black artists like Beyonce are often relegated to subcategories like R&B and rap - of her 24 Grammy Awards, only one was awarded in a major category (Best Music Video in 2017 for ‘Formation’). Meanwhile, she was arguably snubbed for Album of the Year wins in both 2017 (Adele won) and 2015 (Beck won). Now though, the Grammys are hoping to #ChangeMusic and acknowledge the contributions of Black artists to the industry.
What should this look like? Are award wins all it will take? Is a change for the future enough to fix wrongs of the past? Maybe awards aren’t even that important - is cultural impact what really matters?
The cultural impact of Bla(c)k artists can’t be measured through awards
Awards are a necessary first step to acknowledging Bla(c)k talent in the music industry
Radios stations should make more of an effort to diversify their sets, particularly when local BIPOC talent in Australia is at an all-time high (think Thelma Plum, Sampa the Great etc.)
Be sure to check out our Ultimate Guide to Oral Presentations for more advice on how to write your speech, presentation tips and more. Or, if you really want to dive in further to make sure you absolutely nail your Oral, then you'll definitely want to check out our How To Write A Killer Oral Presentation ebook - it explores essay structure, the written explanation and even has sample A+ essays so that you can learn from past students who have succeeded in VCE!!
Oral Presentations - fun and full-scoring. Bet you’ve never heard those words in the same sentence before! As much as the Oral is a SAC that is often feared by many English students, I managed to come out of my presentation not completely terrified - I was actually able to somehow enjoy myself a little up there, and I might have even had a smile on my face when it was all done. And, what’s even better is that I managed to score full marks!
In this blog post, I’m going to be guiding you through how I approached the Oral Presentation in Year 12 to achieve full marks. I’ll be breaking down my Oral Presentation script as well as giving some pointers about giving the Oral Presentation on the day.
Scroll down to the bottom to read my full Oral Presentation script!
The Topic I Chose and How I Chose It
You’ve probably heard a million times before to choose an issue that you’re passionate about. This can often leave you thinking, I don’t know what I’m passionate about! or I’m not passionate about anything in the media right now! I was one of those students in the beginning, but this is how I chose an issue that I ended up loving.
Taking Inspiration From My Other Year 12 Subjects
The subject I enjoyed the most in Year 12 was Legal Studies, and my love for this subject guided me in choosing an issue that I genuinely wanted to speak about. I was lucky to have a Legal Studies teacher who was a big nerd in everything law-related, and he often liked to update us about recent and ongoing legal cases that he found interesting. One case that he told us about that I became very interested in was the Ben Roberts-Smith defamation case against Nine Entertainment where some journalists called out Ben Roberts-Smith (a war veteran) for committing war crimes. Roberts-Smith sued these journalists, alleging that this wasn’t true.
I knew I wanted to speak about this case, but I also knew that I had to argue an opinion, and not just provide an overview of the case. So, I began my research into the views of the stakeholders in the case. Something that was very useful to me in my research was news podcasts! In particular, I came across a podcast episode from a podcast called Please Explain(as of 26/02/2024 it seems to have been rebranded and is now called The Morning Edition) by The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, where the actual journalists that were getting sued in the case talked about their experiences. After listening to this podcast episode on the way home from school, I found myself really sympathising with the journalists and that’s how I knew that I wanted to speak about this defamation case from the journalists’ perspective.
After some thinking, the contention that I arrived at was this:
More should be done to protect public interest journalism.
So my advice for choosing an Oral Topic that you love is to take inspiration from other subjects you’re studying and enjoying, and to pick up on and research anything that your teachers tell you about that piques your interest!
Breaking Down My Script
The Introduction
A Hook Start
Let me take you back in time. Six years ago, in 2017, many of us in this classroom were in Year 6, probably sitting in a primary school classroom, learning what an isosceles triangle is. And obviously, we had all been paying attention because now everyone’s thinking, “Oh yeah, I remember what an isosceles triangle is!” and we’re all imagining a tall triangle that looks like this.
Grabbing the audience’s attention from the very start of your speech is key! To do this, I tried to open up my speech in an interesting way by encouraging the audience to do something - to reflect on what their lives looked like six years ago. Hook starts such as the one I used (which establish a common ground with the audience) were commonly used among my classmates - they quickly grab the audience’s attention and are relatively easy to implement!
In my Statement of Intention*, I wrote that ‘I initially engage[d] my audience with a hook start, encouraging them to cast their minds back to 2017, and through the imagery of a primary school classroom, I aim[ed] to establish relatability and common ground with the audience, positioning them to be more agreeable to my arguments later on.’
*Statement of Intention - a written statement accompanying my Oral Presentation, where I explained the choices I made in my presentation. As of 2024 and with the implementation of the new study design, students are no longer required to submit a Statement of Intention with their Oral Presentations. However, if you’re curious to know more about Statements of Intention, check out this blog.
Providing Context
Now, while our Year 6 teachers were providing us with the life-changing information that is the different types of triangles, something bigger was happening on Collins Street. A huge news sausage was in the making. Picture this: a conversation between two passionate and overworked journalists, working for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. One of which had heard whispers from his contact book of Australian military circles that our most decorated living soldier was not the person that everyone thought he was, and that he had in fact been involved in war crimes like the killing of unarmed civilians. A shared desire to put these rumours to the test, with an open mind, wanting to disprove them as much as to prove them.
This marked the start of a 4-year long legal battle in the form of a defamation lawsuit lodged by decorated war vet Ben Roberts Smith against two investigative journalists, Chris Masters and Nick McKenzie. And, after more than 100 days of hearings, this battle recently ended, with the judge ruling overwhelmingly in favour of Masters and McKenzie that what they had reported about Roberts Smith was substantially true, hence the two had not defamed him.
I spent a fair bit of time explaining the issue of protections around public interest journalism in the context of the Ben Roberts-Smith defamation case because it was a bit of a niche issue and I thought that my audience of Year 12 students were unlikely to have known too much about it. To keep this explanation engaging, I tried to explain the case in a descriptive and dramatic way, as if the events were unfolding in front of their eyes, and I tried not to make it sound like I was just listing background information. To do this, I used phrases like ‘A huge news sausage was in the making’, ‘Picture this’, to really set the scene in a dramatic way!
A side note on choosing niche topics for the Oral Presentation: I know it’s often NOT recommended to choose topics that are unlikely to be well-known by your fellow students. This is because it can be disengaging when a student goes on a 5-minute tangent using complicated jargon on a topic that none of the other students know anything about. And… I guess I kind of turned that rule on its head! But this was precisely why I wanted to spend a chunk of my speech explaining the context of my issue - so that my speech would be accessible to my audience, so they wouldn’t be bored, and so we would all be on the same page.
At the end of the day, it’s all about finding a balance between choosing a topic that you love and a topic that is easy for the audience to understand. So, if the topic that you would love to present to the class might be a bit less well-known, my advice would be to make sure to provide adequate context and spend a bit of time explaining key information at the start so that your speech is more accessible to the audience!
Stating Contention
ABC News called it a win for public interest journalism. So why have I brought up this case today to highlight that not enough is being done to protect public interest journalism?
After my explanation section, I smoothly slid into contention territory. Even though I didn’t directly state my contention (i.e. I didn’t say “I believe that more should be done to protect public interest journalism”), through the question, ‘Why have I brought up this case to highlight that not enough is being done to protect public interest journalism?’, I implied that my contention was exactly that - that not enough is being done to protect public interest journalism.
The Supporting Arguments
I actually only had one supporting argument throughout my whole Oral Presentation, and although this might be an unusual way to do it, it worked well for me since I needed to spend quite a bit of time introducing the issue at the start. My one supporting argument was bulky enough that I had a complete speech with just a long introduction, bulky argument and conclusion.
Work out what might work best for you in your presentation. If your issue needs a bit of breaking down like mine did, it might be easier to stick to a very simple structure.
Outlining the Supporting Argument and Providing Evidence
Legal battles in general are a huge issue for journalism because they can be used as a threat to journalists. This defamation lawsuit was only the tip of the legal iceberg for Masters and McKenzie. They also faced challenges to source protection and Roberts-Smith’s numerous attempts to silence the two and other witnesses by sending them legal letters telling them to shut up, to suppress the truth about his actions from coming to light.
I then went on to explain my supporting argument - that legal battles such as defamation cases put public interest journalism at risk (which is why, going back to my overall contention, more should be done to protect public interest journalism). As you can see, I constantly linked back to the Roberts-Smith defamation case because that’s what I wanted to speak about, but I did not have to do this and you absolutely don’t have to - a general explanation would have gotten the job done just as well.
You might be wondering why I didn’t signpost at the start of my supporting argument - in other words, why I didn’t include a sentence like “My first supporting argument is that legal battles such as defamation cases put public interest journalism at risk”. Some teachers love signposting and encourage students to do so. If your teacher seems to prefer clear signposting, go ahead and do that!
TIP: Keep in mind that for anything internally marked, it is important that you keep your teacher/school’s preferences and requirements in mind.
My teacher wasn’t as insistent on signposting, and I personally didn’t like how clear signposting made my speech sound a bit robotic, so to keep the flow of the speech I decided to fluff it out and start my argument the way that I did. You’ll also notice a lack of signposting throughout my speech in general for the same reasons.
The biggest issue about the Ben Roberts Smith defamation case for journalists and news corporations has been costs. Their win has come with a hefty price tag estimated to be around $25 million, and even though the majority of this is to be borne by the loser of the trial, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald newspapers will still end up losing millions of dollars, just for defending themselves and their journalists in court.
I backed up my supporting argument with some evidence. To quote my Statement of Intention, ‘I went on to use numerical statistics like “4 year[s]” and “100 days of hearings” to emphasise that much of Masters and McKenzie’s time and energy was taken by BRS’s claim, aiming to evoke sympathy for them and positioning readers to agree that more protections are needed to prevent journalists from being involved in these time-consuming legal battles. I also established costs as another major issue using the statistic of “$25 million” to emphasise that not only are these legal battles time-consuming, but also expensive, and through connotations of immensity when describing this as a “hefty price tag”’.’
Explaining the Argument and How It Is Relevant to the Audience
But why exactly is this our issue? It’s not like we’re the ones having to pay millions of dollars.
But it becomes our issue when this financial burden creates a chilling effect on public interest journalism. Fear of bankruptcy or crippling financial strain forces journalists to retreat, self censor or settle for silence. This financial issue for news organisations becomes our issue as the quality of our public interest journalism deteriorates and we are deprived of vital information.
Throughout my speech, I made an effort to constantly tie it back to the audience and explain why exactly this issue was important and relevant to them. This was important for me to do because the issue I chose was relatively niche so I felt like I had to prove to them that this issue was worth presenting. Even if the issue you’re presenting isn’t exactly niche, it’s important to link back to the audience every now and then and to remind them why it’s important to them. In my case, I explained that defamation cases like the Roberts-Smith case against journalists and news corporations were a threat to high school students having access to information that they should be aware of!
Something else that I attempted to do here was to include some persuasive devices! To quote my Statement of Intention, ‘having established costs as a major issue, I segued into the effect that these costs can have on journalists, listing these effects as causing journalists to “retreat, self-censor or settle for silence”, and through listing and sibilance in the latter half of this phrase, I aimed to make these effects memorable to listeners, emphasising the consequences of the costs of legal battles on journalists and public interest journalism.”’
Evidence
Masters and McKenzie talked about the pressure that was put on them to leave the rumours about Ben Roberts Smith be. Chris explained that his colleagues tried to convince him not to fight with Ben Roberts Smith by telling him that it was like shooting Bambi. Well, I guess in that case, he would have been shooting Bambi for shooting unarmed civilians, which sounds pretty fair to me. Nick explained that convincing their bosses to publish the story was an exhaustive process, and even after successfully having their story on Roberts Smith published, Chris said there was a propaganda war waiting for them, with their former colleagues being hired by other news corporations to criticise them and disassemble their work, with their story being put on the cover of a rival newspaper, as an attack on Chris, accusing him of smearing the memories of dead soldiers, and it was designed to intimidate and hurt him and his biding relationships with people in the military who consider him a deep friend. These attempts of BRS to silence the two are not just unfair - as students, we want to grow up in a world where people are held accountable regardless of their connections or wealth.
After explaining my argument, I backed it up with evidence by going back to the defamation case and giving practical, real-life examples of how this case may have worked to hinder the quality of public interest journalism. I took much of the information in this section from the podcast that I talked about earlier (where Masters and McKenzie talked about their firsthand experiences) - for example, the so-called “propaganda war” that Masters faced after having the story published, rival news outlets who were on the side of Roberts-Smith publishing articles attacking Masters - and explained that this was designed to intimidate the two investigative journalists and deter them from exposing controversial stories against prominent figures. I not only told but also showed my audience that legal battles were a very real threat to journalism. I referred to this section of my speech as ‘personal anecdotes’ in my Statement of Intention and I wrote that I hoped to make my speech more convincing by illustrating the consequences of legal battles that Masters and Mckenzie experienced firsthand.
I tried my best to not make this section sound too much like a “he said, she said” situation by slipping in some of my own commentary. My tutor at the time (yes, I also had an LSG English tutor!) gave me the idea of mirroring ‘shooting Bambi’ with ‘shooting unarmed civilians’, and it was so brutal but I liked it so much that I decided to implement it as part of my commentary. In my Statement of Intention, I wrote that this comparison ‘aims to portray Masters and McKenzie as merely holding him accountable for his actions rather than bullying him, encouraging audiences to view journalists as necessary whistleblowers that require protections.’
My final sentence in this section worked to link all of this back to the audience and remind them, again, why all of this was relevant to them!
The Conclusion
It’s obvious that in the end, it didn’t really matter that, this time, the courts sided with the journalists and news corporations in this legal battle. Because the reality is that the fact that this legal battle existed in the first place has been enough of a threat to public interest journalism, with cover up attempts and pressures to retreat, and may be a sign of many other stories being covered up. If two journalists, working for big news companies, felt the chilling effect of the legal battles that they came across, how much worse is it for smaller news organisations or independent journalists, who don’t have the deep pockets that The Age, Masters and McKenzie had in withstanding these challenges? This is only the tip of the iceberg of other stories that need to be broken and known by the public. We can’t continue to allow the law to be weaponised against journalists and against democracy. Thus, the recent conclusion of the Ben Roberts-Smith defamation case is a sign that more should be done to protect public interest journalism.
In my concluding paragraph, I did three things:
I wrapped up
I aimed to evoke a sense of urgency on the issue (the bolded part)
I restated my contention at the very end to seal the deal
I didn’t exactly include a call to action in the part where I evoked a sense of urgency, but you totally could if that would work for your speech!
It’s optional to restate your contention as your final sentence, and I opted to do this. I wanted to emphasise the point of my speech again so that my conclusion didn’t sound like it was straying away from the actual contention. I’d say do it if it flows well with the rest of your conclusion because when it’s done right, it really is like ending your speech with a bang!
I’ve Finished Writing a Killer Oral Script. What Now?
When you’ve perfected your speech script, it’s practice time! The way you present the speech is arguably as important, if not even more important than the script itself - presenting your speech in an engaging way can really make your script shine while presenting it in a dull way can make even the best script sound unappealing.
Practice saying your speech out loud as early as possible and work towards having at least 85-95% of your speech committed to memory (especially if you’re paranoid and get anxious about public speaking like me). By the time I presented my Oral, I had memorised about 95% of my speech and the fact that I knew it off by heart gave me confidence and helped me feel less paranoid that I would mess up. This being said, I would definitely recommend having cue cards with dot points of your main ideas or little prompts with you in the presentation (which I also did), just in case you suddenly blank out!
I spent a week memorising my speech, reciting it out loud over and over again in my bedroom. In doing this, I pretty intuitively found the spots where I wanted to include pauses, change up my intonation or emphasise certain words or phrases - I committed these things to my muscle memory. If public speaking doesn’t come naturally to you, it might be a good idea to highlight and annotate your script and physically write in the parts where you want to include pauses or emphasise words. Practice with that script in front of you until you’ve memorised those things.
I also generally focused on my projection making sure to speak loudly, and I paid attention to my speed and diction. I tend to speed up and start rapping my speech when I’m nervous, so I made a conscious effort to speak slower and steadier in my practice runs, trying to engrain the perfect speed in my muscle memory (to varying levels of success haha). I also tried to make sure I was pronouncing everything clearly and that I wasn’t mumbling.
Before I started my presentation, I took a moment to take a deep breath, shake out my nerves and fix my posture. Good posture is the first step to feeling confident or faking confidence (which we all are when we’re up there)!
What I Wish I Had Done Before I Did My Oral Presentation
If I could go back and give my Year 12 self advice on the Oral, it would be this:
Practice saying my speech in front of someone.
I was pretty shy about my speech - you might relate - so I was very reluctant to practice my speech in front of my peers and even my friends. Unfortunately, this meant that I never practised it in front of another person at all, not even once. This is something that I really regret because I didn’t get to practice keeping a good balance between holding eye contact and looking at my cue cards. This ended up being a criticism from my teacher when she assessed my presentation! My teacher also criticised the fact that I didn’t hold an equal amount of eye contact throughout the whole classroom - she wrote that the right side of the classroom must have felt left out because I barely looked in their direction, haha! So, if you can, I really recommend getting out of your comfort zone and practising presenting your Oral in front of your friends or family members… and practice holding eye contact!
If you’ve made it to the end of this blog post, I’m assuming you’ll be having your Oral Presentation soon. Good luck, and try to enjoy presenting your speech if you can, because it’s the first and last time you will ever have the opportunity to present it!
My Full Oral Presentation Script: More Should Be Done To Protect Public Interest Journalism
Let me take you back in time. Six years ago, in 2017, many of us in this classroom were in Year 6, probably sitting in a primary school classroom, learning what an isosceles triangle is. And obviously, we had all been paying attention because now everyone’s thinking, “Oh yeah, I remember what an isosceles triangle is!” and we’re all imagining a tall triangle that looks like this.
Now, while our Year 6 teachers were providing us with the life-changing information that is the different types of triangles, something bigger was happening on Collins Street. A huge news sausage was in the making. Picture this: a conversation between two passionate and overworked journalists, working for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. One of which had heard whispers from his contact book of Australian military circles that our most decorated living soldier was not the person that everyone thought he was, and that he had in fact been involved in war crimes like the killing of unarmed civilians. A shared desire to put these rumours to the test, with an open mind, wanting to disprove them as much as to prove them.
This marked the start of a 4-year long legal battle in the form of a defamation lawsuit lodged by decorated war vet Ben Roberts Smith against two investigative journalists, Chris Masters and Nick McKenzie. And, after more than 100 days of hearings, this battle recently ended, with the judge ruling overwhelmingly in favour of Masters and McKenzie that what they had reported about Roberts Smith was substantially true, hence the two had not defamed him.
ABC News called it a win for public interest journalism. So why have I brought up this case today to highlight that not enough is being done to protect public interest journalism?
Legal battles in general are a huge issue for journalism because they can be used as a threat to journalists. This defamation lawsuit was only the tip of the legal iceberg for Masters and McKenzie. They also faced challenges to source protection and Roberts-Smith’s numerous attempts to silence the two and other witnesses by sending them legal letters telling them to shut up, to suppress the truth about his actions from coming to light.
The biggest issue about the Ben Roberts Smith defamation case for journalists and news corporations has been costs. Their win has come with a hefty price tag estimated to be around $25 million, and even though the majority of this is to be borne by the loser of the trial, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald newspapers will still end up losing millions of dollars, just for defending themselves and their journalists in court.
But why exactly is this our issue? It’s not like we’re the ones having to pay millions of dollars.
But it becomes our issue when this financial burden creates a chilling effect on public interest journalism. Fear of bankruptcy or crippling financial strain forces journalists to retreat, self censor or settle for silence. This financial issue for news organisations becomes our issue as the quality of our public interest journalism deteriorates and we are deprived of vital information.
Masters and McKenzie talked about the pressure that was put on them to leave the rumours about Ben Roberts Smith be. Chris explained that his colleagues tried to convince him not to fight with Ben Roberts Smith by telling him that it was like shooting Bambi. Well, I guess in that case, he would have been shooting Bambi for shooting unarmed civilians, which sounds pretty fair to me. Nick explained that convincing their bosses to publish the story was an exhaustive process, and even after successfully having their story on Roberts Smith published, Chris said there was a propaganda war waiting for them, with their former colleagues being hired by other news corporations to criticise them and disassemble their work, with their story being put on the cover of a rival newspaper, as an attack on Chris, accusing him of smearing the memories of dead soldiers, and it was designed to intimidate and hurt him and his biding relationships with people in the military who consider him a deep friend. These attempts of BRS to silence the two are not just unfair - as students, we want to grow up in a world where people are held accountable regardless of their connections or wealth.
It’s obvious that in the end, it didn’t really matter that, this time, the courts sided with the journalists and news corporations in this legal battle. Because the reality is that the fact that this legal battle existed in the first place has been enough of a threat to public interest journalism, with cover up attempts and pressures to retreat, and may be a sign of many other stories being covered up. If two journalists, working for big news companies, felt the chilling effect of the legal battles that they came across, how much worse is it for smaller news organisations or independent journalists, who don’t have the deep pockets that The Age, Masters and McKenzie had in withstanding these challenges? This is only the tip of the iceberg of other stories that need to be broken and known by the public. We can’t continue to allow the law to be weaponised against journalists and against democracy. Thus, the recent conclusion of the Ben Roberts-Smith defamation case is a sign that more should be done to protect public interest journalism.
There are a plethora of controversial issues in the current Australian media that may be perfect for your 2017 oral presentation! Below are just a few ideas to get you started on your way towards acing that SAC. Remember, pick a topic that you’re passionate and enthusiastic about. Don’t forget that there is no ‘right’ opinion, however, make sure you offer a distinctive argument, even if it means adopting an alternative point of view. Good luck!
Should the Australian Government ban the wearing of the burka in public?
Should the homeless be banned from Melbourne’s CBD? (Robert Doyle proposal)
Should the Australia Government continue to fund the Safe Schools Coalition?
Should gay marriage be legalised in Australia?
Should the date of Australia Day be replaced/changed?
Treatment of asylum seekers in detention centres (especially women and children)
Is enough action being taken to diminish the sugar industry propaganda to minimise obesity?
Should on – site pill testing be mandatory at all public events?
Cultural insensitivity in Australia
Is the development of technology and social media encouraging narcissism in young adults?
Victoria’s legal system
Stem cell research
Is the development of technology and social media encouraging the sexualisation of boys and girls?
Drug testing and drug control in Australia (Bourke Street attack)
Fake news being published by researchers to the media
Should Victoria’s juvenile justice system be improved by the Government?
Do students learn as effectively with ebooks compared with traditional, hardcopy books?
Should security footage of detention centres be released?
Is Australia becoming an alcohol and sugar driven society?
Has the notion of privacy been compromised in the 21st century? (internet, technology, terrorism)
Before you start writing your oral presentation, you can't miss our A+ tips that have helped hundreds of students get perfect marks in their SAC. Stand out from others with confidence now.
The oral presentation SAC is worth 40% of your unit 4 English mark and is comprised of two sections: your statement of intention, and your oral presentation. It can be difficult to understand what is expected of you, as this SAC definitely varies from your typical English essay! So, if you need help understanding what’s expected of you, check out Our Ultimate Guide to Oral Presentations. If you’d like an even more in-depth guide on how to approach this assessment, definitely check out the How to Write a Killer Oral Presentationstudy guide!
Here, I’m going to dissect five of the most common mistakes students make during their oral presentation, and gloss over ways in which you can improve your marks for this critical SAC.
1. Writing an Unentertaining Speech
Whilst your other English SACs may require you to write in a formal and sophisticated manner, the oral presentation SAC is the one shining exception! Many students fall into the trap of writing a frankly boring and uninspiring speech that does no justice to their academic ability. Here are some mistakes to watch out for:
Choosing the Wrong Topic
Your school may or may not already give you a list of topics to choose from. However, in the event that you must research your own topic, it is essential that you choose an issue relevant to your current audience. You must adopt a clear contention in your speech.
Do not, for example, write a five-minute speech on why one sports team is better than the other, or why murder should be illegal. Choose an issue that you can take a passionate stance on and engage the audience with. Avoid a contention that is obvious and aim to actually persuade your class. Make sure you choose a 'WOW' topic for your VCE Oral Presentation.
Writing With the Wrong Sense of Tone
This is one of the biggest mistakes students make when writing their oral presentation. I cannot stress this enough – your speech is not a formally written text response! You are presenting your stance on an issue, which means that you are allowed to be passionate and creative. You can educate your audience on the facts without boring them to sleep. Let’s analyse two sample excerpts on the same issue to see why:
Issue: Should the Newstart allowance be increased?
Sample 1: 722,000 Australians are on Newstart. Single people receive approximately $40 a day. The Australian Bureau of Statistics recently increased this payment by $2.20 to adjust to price inflation. However, I am arguing that this price should be increased more.
Sample 2: As Australians, we pride ourselves on community values, and supporting one another. Yet, the way in which we treat 722,000 of our most vulnerable people doesn’t reflect this. The Australian government recently increased the Newstart payment by $2.20 weekly. But this means that Newstart recipients still live on just over $40 a day. Ask yourself, is that really enough to survive?
Samples 1 and 2 have the same information. Yet, Sample 2 engages with the audience in a much more effective manner. Try to avoid an overly formal tone and speak with passion and interest.
2. Presenting Without Confidence
Presenting in front of your class can be a very daunting experience. However, in order to distinguish yourself from your classmates, you must speak clearly and with confidence. Try to avoid making the following mistakes:
Reading Instead of Talking
Think back to primary school. Remember when your teacher would read you a storybook, and they would put on voices to make the story more engaging and interesting? The same sort of idea applies to your oral presentation. Simply reading a well-written speech will not get you marks. Rather, you should talk to your audience. Make eye contact, maintain good posture, and project your voice. Confidence is key!
Stalling for Time
I’m sure we’ve all been in a situation where we haven’t prepared ourselves for a test as well as we should have. The oral presentation SAC is not an assessment that you can simply wing on the day. Oftentimes, poor scores stem from a lack of preparation which can be reflected in the way students present themselves – and stalling for time is a big giveaway. Save yourself the mental stress and prepare for your SAC by writing out your speech beforehand (or even preparing a few dot points/cue cards). I personally find it helpful to practise in front of a mirror or even in front of pets/stuffed toys.
3. Not Distinguishing Yourself From Your Class
If you’re gunning for a good mark, you want to stand out from your class. This can be especially difficult if you are presenting the same topic as one of your peers. Avoid:
Starting in an Uninspiring Way
This is another big mistake students make when presenting. Let’s just estimate that there are approximately 20-25 people in your English class. Now, imagine if every person who presented before you began their speech with:
“Good morning, today I’ll be talking about why Newstart should be increased”.
It gets repetitive. You can distinguish yourself by beginning in a myriad of other ways. Here’s an example of how I started my own oral presentation for my SAC:
Topic: Should we ban sunscreens with oxybenzone and octinoxate?
Imagine you are a foreigner, excited to visit Australia. In your head, you’re picturing our beautiful flora and fauna, our stunning beaches, and the Great Coral Reef. You finally arrive after a long flight, eager to explore the country. You’re expecting the Great Coral Reef to be boasting colour, to look like all the pictures spotted online. Instead, you find what looks like a wasteland – a reef that has essentially been bleached to death. As Australians, we have to wonder what went wrong. If we really loved and cared for our environment, how could we not be protecting the reef, preventing any further damage? Recently, Hawaii banned sunscreens containing the chemicals oxybenzone and octinoxate, reasoning that these chemicals were causing harm to coral. Yet, in Australia, banning sunscreens with these chemicals are seen as drastic and useless measures, which simply isn’t true when you look at the facts.
This is an example of an “imagined scenario” starter. How to Write a Killer Oral Presentation outlines other ways to start your speech with examples! If you’re having trouble figuring out how to start with a BANG, definitely make use of this resource.
No Enthusiasm
I say this to my students regardless of the English SAC that they’re writing – you want your writing/speech to reflect that you are indeed learning and enjoying your education. Your teacher will be able to tell if you choose a topic that you have no interest in, or if you are simply regurgitating information. Use this SAC to learn about an issue and take interest in your learning. Believe me, your grades will thank you for it.
4. Incorrectly Using Visuals
Whether you are allowed to present with visuals or not is up to your English teacher. However, it is essential that you do not incorrectly use these visuals, as it can cost you marks. Avoid:
Overusing PowerPoint Slides
I’m a bit old-fashioned myself and honestly prefer presenting a speech with no images. That’s not to say that some images can’t be a great addition to your piece. However, PowerPoint can quickly steer you away from presenting your topic in an engaging manner.
This is an oral presentation with a stance on an issue, not an assessment where you are marked for presenting information to an audience. Therefore, reading off of PowerPoint slides is a big NO.
Using Cluttered Infographics
The point of focus of your oral presentation should be on YOU – your words, your stance on the issue. This ties into the PowerPoint criticism I made above, but using a cluttered infographic takes away from your well-written speech. Below is an example of an overly cluttered infographic:
If your speech was on renewable energy, your audience would be detracted from your stance, and too focussed on reading the information from the visual. If you have any key information that needs to be explained, it is better to embed this into your speech than rely on an infographic.
5. Disregarding the Statement of Intention
If you’ve finished writing your speech, you may have let out a big sigh of relief. But don’t get too comfortable yet – you still have to write your statement of intention (SOI). This piece of writing is supposed to accompany your speech, and it’s worth 25% of your SAC mark. Do not waste all your hard efforts by not taking the SOI seriously.
I like to think of an SOI as a language analysis of your own speech. Essentially, you should be explaining your choice of language, tone, and rhetoric, and justifying why that would make a profound impact on the audience. Make sure you understand what an SOI is.
I like thinking of this as a three-step approach:
Quote my own speech
Explain why and how my language would impact the audience
Link back to my overall contention of the issue
How to Write a Killer Oral Presentation outlines exactly what is expected of you in this section of your SAC. If you’d like to see an annotated A+ statement of intention, be sure to check it out!
I hope that going through these mistakes will help you when writing your own oral presentation! It’s always best to ask your teacher or English tutor for advice if you’re unsure of where to start. Happy writing!
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Be able to successfully identify language techniques in articles and images
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You will be able to accurately describe HOW an author uses language to persuade
You will be able to plan and write a language analysis essay structure (single article/image)
You will be able to plan and write a language analysis essay structure (2 or more articles/images)
You will understand common pitfalls and how to avoid these in language analysis
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The life of an
English teacher during assessment time is miserable. This is great for us! If
you know how to use their misery to your advantage.
Hello, I am here
to teach you how you can claim some easy English points off these poor, poor,
professors. Let’s begin 😊
1. Engage with the historical context
This should be a
baseline expectation! Yet, if I had a dollar for every student I see launching
into an essay not even considering the socio-cultural context in which their
book was written, I’d have enough to purchase the VCAA institution and have historical
context made mandatory with the punishment being immediate expulsion from VCE.
Just put some
historical context into your introduction, it’ll make it beefier and add some
spice to your essay. Historical context generally entails listing the form
(novella, play, etc…) of your text; the time period in which it was written
(Victorian, 20th century, etc…), its genre (Gothic, biographical,
etc…), and finally, any of the relevant literary titles it could be classed
under (Romantic, Feminist, post-colonial, etc…)
For example: “Mary
Shelley’s Victorian Gothic Romantic novella Frankenstein…”
Bonus points if
you can actively engage in a set of philosophical ideas that were present at
the time, eg: “Age of Enlightenment values”, or the “Feminist movement”.
2. Write a strong introduction
You must impress
an assessor within two minutes. With this in mind, what do you think looks
better: a little five-line intro vaguely outlining your points and just barely
tickling on the structure and context of the texts; or a sprawling introduction
which hits the historical context on the head and articulates beautifully the
direction your essay is going and how it plans to get there. It’s a simple
Virgin vs Chad dichotomy, be a chad, write a strong introduction.
3. Clear and concise topic sentences
Your topic
sentences NEED to be easy to read and easy to follow. Apply the K.I.S.S rule
here (Keep it Simple, Stupid). State the point of your paragraph with clarity,
there should be nothing too complex or vague about it. For example: “The
architecture of Frankenstein enables the story to act as a cautionary
tale”. If you feel you cannot encapsulate your topic within a single sentence,
then I suggest dialling back the complexity of your paragraph topic. Remember,
text response is a process of stating a concept, then proving it – nothing
more, nothing less.
4. Grammar
You know
‘Grammar Nazis’? Well English assessors are Grammar Hitler’s. Make sure your
expression is on point. Avoid run on sentences, break them up with full stops,
a comma is not a substitute for a period.
5. Understand language
I’m hoping we
all know what verbs, adjectives, adverbs, nouns, conjunctions and etcetera are
here? This kind of rather basic English knowledge can seriously pepper up your
analysis once you understand how language works. Begin by simply noting how an
adjective modifies a verb within a sentence and what affect that has. Once you
master this, you can move onto actually classifying the language under specific
tones; for example: a pejorative verb, or a superlative adjective of degree. I’ll
throw a few free ones your way! A pejorative verb is a doing word with negative
connotations, such as: “penetrate” or “molest”. Whilst a superlative adjective
is a describing word of the highest degree, for example: “grandest” or
“calmest” (as opposed to simply “grand” or “calm”. Although this language seems
complex, it’s deceivingly simple once you understand some basic English rules.
6. Write about structure
Structure is the
‘secret high scoring English students don’t want you to know!!’ If you aren’t
writing about structure, then you are missing out on an absolute gold mine of
analysis. If you understand how structure works within a text and can write it
out coherently you’re essentially guaranteed a 40+. Y’all may call that an
exaggeration, but knowing how to write about structure in an essay is like
crossing the threshold, your eyes become open – you attain nirvana. Structure
is the Bifrost which separates the land of Gods from the land of mortals. Some
good ways to begin thinking about structure include: pondering how the text
begins and ends, does it begin as a jovial and upbeat story and end as a
depressing mess, why might the author have structured the text this way? Or,
think about which characters we follow throughout the text and what journey
they undergo, are their multiple narrators? Why might this be relevant or what
may the author be trying to emphasise? Another great one is just looking for
recurring themes and motifs across the text, such as a repeated phrase or
similarities between characters. The key to writing on structure is
understanding how the text has been structured, and then connecting that to a
meaning or using it to support your contention.
7. Structure your essays
PSYCHE I’M STILL
NOT DONE TALKING ABOUT STRUCTURE. Structure. Your.
Essays. I cannot stress
this enough, use TEEL (topic sentence, evidence, elaboration, link), use
whatever your teacher taught, but use it! This one is especially important in
language analysis, legit, lang anal essays are almost 100% structure, just WHW (what,
how, why) your way through that essay. Once you understand how to structure an
essay, everything else improves. So, structure your essays!!
8. Write about allusions
Now we’re
getting into the big boy material. An allusion is any reference within a text
to another text. So when Peter Griffin from Family Guy pokes fun at the
Simpsons, he is making an allusion to the Simpsons. Or when your protagonist
happens across a bible verse, that is a biblical allusion. Whenever I hear a
student mention a literary allusion, my day improves and so does their mark.
Most every text has allusions in it somewhere, do your research. Frankenstein
has Rime of the Ancient Mariner, about half the books on the planet have
biblical allusions, just ask your teacher or research online and you’re bound
to come up with some excellent analysis material. Bonus points for allusions to
classic texts such as: the Faust mythos, Greek/Roman tales such as Prometheus,
the Bible, Paradise Lost, etc…
9. Reference influential philosophical
ideas
This one is
eating from the tree of knowledge. Including a philosophical concept in your
essay immediately places you in the upper echelons. It separates plebs from
patricians. You’ll have to do a bit of research here, but it is well worth it.
Once you can mention that an idea is “characteristic of the Romantic period”,
or that a concept is “Lockean (referring to John Locke)”, you’re balling,
you’ll be hustling A+s in no time. Bonus points for philosophical ideas that
were relevant to the time period (historical context, remember).
10. Authorial Agenda
Referencing the
authorial agenda is just minty fresh, it demonstrates a clear understanding of
concepts even beyond just the text itself. Guaranteed to put a sparkle in your
teachers’ eye. Although adding authorial agenda augments your essay
extraordinary, don’t overdo it.
If you made it
to the end of this then great work! Proud of you <3. Including these tips in
your essays is a surefire way to push them to the next level. For sticking
through, I’ll give you a few quick bonus tips. Have pre-prepared zingers: you
should write out and memorise a few bits of analysis that are intensely high
quality, (do it in your own writing) this not only helps with ironing out your
language, it also ensures you’ll have some mic drops in your essays. Analyse
all included images and titles: this one’s just for language analysis, but you
should analyse everything, including logos! And finally… RESPOND TO THE ESSAY
QUESTION, this should be a given but there are hordes of people just spewing
out words which are absolutely irrelevant to the actual essay topic.
Thanks again for
getting this far, unless you just scrolled to the bottom hoping for a TLDR. I
wish you all best of luck in your VCE and the exam season, try to make it
enjoyable 😊
If you are anything like me, the thought of standing up in front of a classroom, or even a small panel of teachers, having to hold the floor for five minutes, and being assessed on your performance is just about as terrifying as it gets. Where other students thrived on the oral presentation SAC, embracing its change of pace in comparison to the other written tasks, I dreaded it. I knew the feeling all too well: legs jelly-like and quivering, breath short and rapid, palms sweating, tongue uncomfortably heavy as the words tumble out too fast to keep up with…essentially (as I, a true master of the English language, would put it) the absolute worst.
Fast forward to the present day and, I hate to break it to you, I am still not a fan of public speaking. But guess what? I did my oral presentation and I’m still alive to tell the tale. Plus, as a bonus, it did not involve me passing out, and as a double bonus, I still ended up with a great result. So I am here, my fellow members of the ‘Might Go Ahead and Drop Out of VCE so I Don’t Have To Do My Oral’ club, as proof that it can be done and to help you get through it.
What Do We Mean by ‘Overcoming’?
As I have already mentioned, emerging triumphant from your oral does not require you to magically become a public speaking fanatic. Let me manage your expectations right now: that probably isn’t going to happen overnight, and likely never will. But you can still be good at public speaking, perhaps great at it, even if it scares you. Trying to figure out a magical formula of preparation that will have you breezing through the oral in total zen-mode is not only going to waste your time, but will likely also make you more frightened when you realise that you can’t completely shake the nerves. So, by accepting the reality that the fear probably isn’t going to go away any time soon we can start to learn how to manage it, at least succeed in spite of it, and hopefully even use it to our advantage.
Selecting a ‘WOW’ Topic
Arguably the best way to improve the delivery, and overall quality, of your oral presentation is to choose a topic and contention that you actually care about. In our eBook How to Write a Killer Oral Presentation we cite the first pillar of the process as being to choose a ‘WOW’ topic and contention. As Lisa says,
“an inherently interesting topic means that you’ll showcase your opinions in an authentic way, which is incredibly important when it comes to presentation time.”
This becomes particularly significant for someone dealing with a fear of public speaking because of this basic principle: when you care about something it is easier to talk about, even in front of other people. This means that you don’t just need to choose a topic that will engage your audience, but also one that you yourself find engaging.
Fear is an intense emotional response to a situation, and as we know it can easily consume us in the moment. If your oral topic is boring and does not interest you on a personal level then what is going to be the strongest emotion you feel when delivering it? Fear. However, passion is another intense emotional response, and so if you are passionate about the arguments you are making then, although your fear will still be there, you will feel another strong emotion that can balance it out.
So how do you find a contention that you care about? Often the best place to start is to think about the things that affect your life. We know that your topic has to have been in the media since September of last year, but lots of things are on the news and they don’t only matter to the older generations. Think about issues that relate to schools, jobs, climate change, animals, drug-taking, fashion – these are all aspects of our lives that you might be able to form a personal connection to, and that personal connection will help you find the passion you need to get through the speech, and also get through to your audience. Check out our 2021 Oral Presentation Topics for some topic inspiration, and then learn how to create a killer contention here.
More About the Voice, Less About the Words
It is quite likely that if you know you struggle with the delivery of oral presentations, you might try to compensate by overreaching with your script. For someone who feels more comfortable with written assessments, it can be easy to try to make the oral as close to one as possible by writing it almost as you would an essay – using lots of impressive vocabulary, complex sentences and a formal structure. This approach is all well and good until you try to say it all out loud. This isn’t to say that your command of language isn’t important to the oral, but by trying to craft a safety net of eloquent, written words you are simply distracting yourself from what makes this SAC unique; you can’t avoid the fear by avoiding the task altogether. So, you need to write a speech that you can say, not just one that sounds good on paper. Writing with the wrong sense of tone is one of the points we touch on in 5 Common Oral Presentation Mistakes.
During the writing process, you need to make your speech work for you rather than make yourself work for it. This means constantly thinking about what the words will sound like in front of an audience, and not making the performance unnecessarily hard for yourself before you even start practicing. When you’re already nervous about speaking in front of other people, the last thing you want to have to worry about is tripping over difficult language to make convoluted arguments. So, simplicity and punch is always better than verbosity and pretence. Here are some ideas of how to use this strategy:
Make your arguments short, sharp, and to the point. Avoid going off on any tangents, and just stick to the main points you need to get across. You are trying to persuade your audience, not confuse them.
Use a mixture of long and short sentences, because a script that uses varied sentence structures is easier to say out loud without stumbling due to nerves. Short, bold statements are both less prone to being mangled by nerves and more memorable for your listeners – just make sure you don’t only use short sentences and prevent your oral from flowing.
Think about where you can schedule in pauses for emphasis, because these will give you space to stop and catch your breath without revealing your nervousness.
Write like you speak! Of course you want your tone to be assertive and intelligent, but it is possible to maintain this whilst also incorporating some relaxed language. You are allowed to use the first person in this task, so take the opportunity to personalise what you say, which will help you appear more comfortable and also form a personal connection with your audience. Remember that an oral is essentially a conversation with your audience, even if they don’t get to speak back, and this means that as long as you don’t use slang you can have some fun with your delivery.
Don’t rely on an essay-like structure. Your audience won’t know when a paragraph ends, so the way the script looks on the page is largely irrelevant. Make it easy for yourself to follow.
Remember, when you struggle with a fear of public speaking it is difficult to make what you say in the spotlight sound natural. To overcome this, you want to prepare yourself to almost sound unscripted (as ironic as that sounds). Without slipping into an overly casual or informal voice, it is best if you sound comfortable and relaxed when addressing your audience. This is of course the exact opposite of how you might feel going into the assessment, so you write a speech that will make you seem like you aren’t worried about passing out. The ancient adage ‘fake it ‘til you make it baby’ definitely rings true here. However, that said, really believing what you are saying and caring that the audience believes it too, as we advised earlier, will also help you avoid sounding forced and uncomfortable.
Preparation and Memorisation
Another mistake often made when attempting to compensate for a fear of public speaking is to rely too heavily on cue cards in the oral. Having your entire speech on hand when you complete the assessment just in case you get lost might seem like a good idea, but it is most likely actually going to hold you back from giving your best performance. Ideally, you want to have done enough preparation so that you do not need to look at your notes at all. As we discussed earlier, having a script that is as simple as possible, and that mimics your speech patterns, will help you sound less fearful – and will also be easier to memorise.
Memorise your speech by practicing it as much as possible. Make sure to get your script written as far in advance as you can, so you have plenty of time to practice without stressing yourself out further. When you do practice, do so standing up, envision an audience in front of you (or practice in front of friends or family), and rehearse how you might move around the space as you talk. You can start by having your whole script with you, but eventually you should work up to only needing a few dot points for each section that can jog your memory if you forget. This strategy might seem to make the speech even scarier, but in reality not reading off a script will help you relax into the performance, and allow you to focus on your movements and voice. Practicing enough to have the speech memorised will also help build your confidence.
Making the Most of Your Nerves
As much as I would love to tell you that you can be ‘cured’ of your fear of public speaking, it is best to accept that the nerves are going to be there and learn how to succeed in tandem with them, rather than just hoping that they go away. Instead of being convinced that fear is going to be your downfall, try to think about how, as impossible as it sounds, you can use the nerves to your advantage. Apart from making you jittery and uncomfortable, nerves also boost your energy and adrenaline, and with the right attitude you can turn this energy into confidence. Instead of letting your nerves cause you to close up, you can use them to help you open up. Often those of us who fear feeling exposed in front of a crowd have quiet, reserved personalities that we might think of as preventing us from being able to perform. However, when our bodies are flooded with nerves this ‘wired’ feeling can be used to help us project our voices and to take up space, therefore driving us to appear more outgoing. Instead of just making you feel ‘on edge’, a manageable amount of nervous energy can give you an edge that will amp up your performance.
Even if all of this sounds completely different to your experience of fear, what I am trying to communicate is that the way you frame the oral, and the nerves that come with it, in your mind makes all the difference. If you convince yourself that you are too scared of public speaking to ever succeed with this task, you are severely limiting your chances of achieving a positive outcome. So, focussing on retraining your mindset in the lead up to delivering your speech is very important. Try not to think of this one assessment task as being a make or break five minutes, and instead view it as a learning experience that you can use to your advantage. After all, public speaking is something most of us will have to deal with multiple times over the course of our lives, so you may as well work on getting better at it. That said, my number one piece of advice about the oral presentation is to…*drumroll please*...not take it too seriously! This might sound unrealistic, and I am definitely not telling you to put in less effort, but the more pressure you put on yourself the more nervous you are going to be. Choose a topic that interests you, believe in your contention, make use of humour and personal anecdotes, and just have fun with what you say! Your fear is probably going to be your biggest obstacle, so make it as easy as you can on yourself and the rest should fall into place…as long as you put in the work.
Measure for Measure is currently studied in VCE English under Area of Study 1 - Text Response. For a detailed guide on Text Response, check out our Ultimate Guide to VCE Text Response.
INTRODUCTION
Ahh William Shakespeare. That guy. You’re probably thinking, “Great. More fancy language. Hasn’t he been dead for centuries? Why does he keep popping up in our English curriculum?”
At least, that’s how I reacted.
Shakespeare is actually a huge figure in the history of the English language, and really no high school English curriculum is complete without a mandatory dose of him. In fact, the current VCAA study design demands that one of his texts must be on the text list. What a legend.
Shakespeare doesn’t only influence our world in the classroom. The Bard coined many words and phrases that we use today. We can thank this playwright for “be -all, end-all”, “good riddance”, and my personal favourite, “swagger”.
The Bard’s play “Measure for Measure” was first performed in 1604; over 400 years ago. So why do we still study his works today? In fact, the ideas and themes that are evoked in his plays are universal and timeless; pertinent to his contemporary counterparts, as well as today’s audience. Shakespeare’s plays are like soup (bear with me, this is going somewhere). One could say the playwright is a master chef; he mixes tales of the human condition and experience and asks us to question people and ideas. Everyone, regardless of their time, will gobble up the story.
So, what is this soup- I mean ‘Measure for Measure’ about? The play is known as a “problem play” and/or “tragicomedy”. That’s right, it’s both a tragedy and a comedy. Dire trials and tribulations are intertwined with humorous gags and jokesters. I guess Shakespeare couldn’t choose just one.
‘Measure for Measure’ is also a problem play. Critic W.W Lawrence defined a problem play as one in which "a perplexing and distressing complication in human life is presented in a spirit of high seriousness ... the theme is handled so as to arouse not merely interest or excitement, or pity or amusement, but to probe the complicated interrelations of character and action, in a situation admitting of different ethical interpretations".
Ok, crazy, but he also said that "the 'problem' is not like one in mathematics, to which there is a single true solution, but is one of conduct, as to which there are no fixed and immutable laws. Often it cannot be reduced to any formula, any one question, since human life is too complex to be so neatly simplified.”
In short, a problem play presents lots of complications and issues that are open to different ethical interpretations. As in “Measure for Measure”, the “problem(s)” is/are not always solved.
So, what actually happens in this play that is problematic? What are our ingredients in this problem soup?
P(L)OT SUMMARY
Get it? Cause soup is cooked in a pot. Sorry.
The Duke of Vienna appoints his deputy, Angelo, as the temporary leader. This Duke then pretends to leave town but instead dresses up as a friar to observe what happens in his absence. Angelo, strict and unwavering in his dedication to following the rules, decides to rid Vienna of all the unlawful sexual activity; including shutting down the brothels. Prostitutes like Mistress Overdone (pun alert) and her pimp Pompey are poised to lose their livelihoods. Laws against this activity exist, but they’ve gotten lax over the years. Angelo, a stickler for the rules, has Claudio arrested because young Claudio has gotten his engaged wife-to-be (Juliet) pregnant before they were officially married. Claudio is to be executed.
The virtuous Isabella, Claudio’s sister, is poised to enter a nunnery. Upon hearing of her brother’s arrest and sentence, she goes to Angelo to beg him for mercy. He hypocritically, in an absolutely dog move, propositions her, saying he’ll pardon her brother if she sleeps with him (with Angelo, not Claudio). She immediately refuses, being the religious and chaste woman that she is. At first Claudio is upset because he wants to live, but then he calms down and accepts death.
Luckily, the Duke (secretly dressed as a friar) helps in their sticky situation. He brews up a plan; Angelo’s former flame Mariana was engaged to him, but he broke off their engagement after she lost her dowry in a shipwreck. The Friar (Duke) plans to have Isabella agree to sleep with Angelo, but then send Mariana in her place. In theory, Angelo would pardon Claudio and be forced to marry Mariana by law.
The old switcheroo goes off without a hitch. But come morning, Angelo refuses to pardon Claudio, fearing he will seek revenge. The Duke, in collaboration with the Provost, send Angelo the head of a dead pirate (Ragozine) who died of natural causes. They claim that it’s Claudio’s head, and Angelo is satisfied, thinking him to be dead. Isabella is also told that her brother is dead and is encouraged by the Friar (Duke) to complain about Angelo to the Duke, who is returning home.
The Duke makes a grand return to Vienna, saying he will hear any complaints immediately. Isabella tells her story, and the Duke feigns disbelief, despite having orchestrated the plan himself. In an act filled with more twists and turns than a Marvel movie, everything comes out; the Duke reveals he was a friar all along, Angelo is forced to confess, and Claudio is pardoned amongst other things. To top it all off, the Duke proposes to Isabella. Crazy!
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
It’s important to acknowledge what was going on in the world during the writing of a text. This may help give insight into why the author has included (or not included) some aspect of their work.
The Divine Right of Kings
This holy mandate states that a monarch derives his right to rule from the will of God and is not subject to earthly authority. The “king” or monarch is hence practically divine, and questioning his orders is also questioning god; blasphemy.
The Great Chain of Being/Class divides
This chain is a hierarchy of all life forms and matter in the following order:
God
Angels
Kings & Royalty
Nobles
Commoners (Gentry, Merchants, Yeoman, Laborers)
Slaves
Animals
Plants
Non-living things
Hence, alongside The Divine Right of Kings, this ideal gave monarchs huge power over their subjects.
In early 1600s England, there was a defined social hierarchy and class system. Everyone had a place in the hierarchy, and there was little movement between the classes. Within each class, men were considered superior to women.
Shakespeare encourages us to ask a few questions of our supposedly holy leader and his actions. According to the Divine Right of Kings, the Duke is god’s right-hand man, and thus all his decisions are holy and backed by heaven. However, the Duke is pretty shady when he plots his bed-trick plan with Isabella and Mariana. Is this deceptive behavior still holy? Furthermore, is it not sacrilege to pretend to be a holy friar when one is not truly a holy man?
Moreover, when the Duke assigns Angelo as his deputy, would this transform Angelo into a divine ruler too? Could he be divine, considering his cruel rule and despicable request to Isabella?
Women
Women were considered subservient, lower class citizens then men. Alliances were forged between powerful families through arranged marriages of daughters. These girls may have received an education through tutors attending their homes (there were no schools for girls), but their endgame would be marriage, children and maintaining the home. Women and girls of a lower class did not receive any formal education but would have learned how to govern a household and become skilled in all housewifely duties. Impoverished and desperate women (Mistress Overdone) would turn to prostitution to stay alive.
Shakespeare perhaps highlights the struggle of women in his female characters; Isabella, Mistress Overdone, Juliet, and Kate Keepdown. Their futures appear bleak; Isabella is poised to enter a nunnery, Juliet’s husband (her only source of income and protection) is to be executed, while the brothels that facilitate Mistress Overdone and Kate Keepdown’s livelihoods are being closed down by Angelo.
Jacobean Audience
It was a tumultuous time when Shakespeare penned ‘Measure for Measure’ in 1604. A year earlier came the end of the 45 year long Elizabethan era and began the Jacobean era under the rule of King James. Since the late Queen Elizabeth had no direct heirs, King James of Scotland (a relative) took to the throne. Little was known by the English people of this foreign king.
Perhaps, as Shakespeare portrays the ruler in ‘Measure for Measure’ as clever and good-hearted, the Bard sought to appease the king by calming the people and encouraging them to trust in their new monarch.
The playwright characterizes the Duke as loving his people, but not enjoying being before their eyes and in the spotlight; much like King James, a quiet ruler who relished studying privately in his great library.
Playhouses and Brothels
The general public (commoners) paid a penny (could buy you a loaf of bread back in the day) to see Shakespeare’s plays, standing in the “yard”; on the ground, at eye-level of the stage. The rich (gentry) paid 2 pennies for seating in the galleries, often using cushions. The really rich (nobles) could watch the play from a chair set on the side of the stage itself. Shakespeare’s plays were performed at the Globe Theatre. Playhouses in Shakespeare's time were often close to brothels, both in terms of their physical locations in the suburbs and the way they were viewed by some of polite society. Thus, Shakespeare's relatively sympathetic portrayal of sexual deviance in ‘Measure for Measure’ may also constitute a defence of other suburban entertainment—his plays—and a way to humanize lower classes who patronized them.
WRITING ABOUT 'MEASURE FOR MEASURE'
If you’re lucky enough to study this interesting piece, the study design requires you to prepare “sustained analytical interpretations…discussing how features of the text create meaning and using textual evidence to support (your) reasons”. Basically, you’ll be given a topic; this topic could surround themes, characters, etc., and you must write analytically.
While you may choose to structure paragraphs around themes, ideas or characters, make sure to embed some historical context in there; that’ll show the examiner that you’ve done your research and have a thorough and deeper understanding of why Shakespeare put this or that in. Talking about authorial intent in your analytical essay leads to a more in-depth analysis.
“Shakespeare portrays characters that are flawed as a result of pre-destined circumstances. These characters, such as bawd Pompey and prostitute Mistress Overdone, lived in a time when there existed strong class divides, and movement within the social hierarchy was rare. As per the “Great Chain of Being”, a contemporary religious dogma, there was a hierarchy of all living things and matter, from lofty God and his angels down through the ranks of men and finally to animals and non-living things. In some cases, attempting to move up the social ranks was even considered a blasphemous rejection of the fate chosen by God.”
- embedding historical context (The Great Chain of Being) into a paragraph that discusses characters being flawed because of their circumstances
“Shakespeare offers characters such as Isabella and The Duke who strive for self-improvement through understanding and temperance. Perhaps the playwright suggests that perfection is very difficult if not impossible to attain, even for a ruler like the Duke and a pure soul like Isabella. However, he posits that it can be strived for and that perhaps this attempt to become better is what truly matters.”
- talking about authorial intent - what is Shakespeare trying to tell us?
Think of it as an opportunity to make your very own soup! Add some themes, stir in character analysis, sprinkle in some quotes and serve with historical context and authorial intent. Just like with a soup, there’s got be a good balance of all your ingredients; test out different structures during the year to find what works for you. (Just try not to overcook it, like I have done with this soup metaphor). If you need more help, How To Write a Standout Measure for Measure by William Shakespeare Essay is for you!
So, you see, there’s more to Shakespeare and ‘Measure for Measure’ than just fancy old language and iambic pentameter (What’s that? Well...). Keep on reading this blog post, where we’ll delve into themes, characters and symbols/motifs. In the meantime, let’s have a break. Grab a snack, a drink, and enjoy this tasty Shakespeare meme.
...Aaaaand we’re back!
Are you ready for part 2 of the Shakespeare train? Hop on board as we explore themes, characters and symbols/motifs.
THEMES
These are the major themes in ‘Measure for Measure’.
As you can see, the themes are interconnected. (Do you like the diagram? Made it myself :)) Why does this matter? Well, if you get an essay topic about Justice, for instance, you can also link it to Sexual and Gender Politics as well as Social Decay/Cohesion.
So, why is any one theme an important theme?
Which moments and characters are these themes related to?
Is there a link to historical context?
What are some key quotes?
What could be Shakespeare’s potential message? (Keep in mind that depending which pieces of evidence you look at, the Bard could be saying something different. In this piece, we’ll only discuss one or two authorial messages. The beauty of Shakespeare is that much is open to interpretation. You can interpret characters and ideas in so many different ways!)
Those are some great questions. Let’s explore some of the biggest themes...
Power and Authority
Power not only dictates the Viennese society, but we see it is a basis for moral corruption (I’m looking at you, Angelo!). The Duke is the leader of Vienna, ordained by God. He hands this power to his deputy Angelo, who misuses it in his request of Isabella. Now consider Isabella - she has power too, but a different kind… Also consider characters who have little to no power - Mistress Overdone, Pompey etc.
This theme could be linked to the Divine Right of Kings, the Great Chain of Being and Women.
“O, it is excellent to have a giant’s strength, but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant” - Isabella when she pleads to Angelo to not kill her brother (Act 2, Scene 2, Line 130-132)
“He who the sword of heaven will bear should be as holy as severe” - The Friar (Duke) to himself, not happy with Angelo’s dog move (Act 3, Scene 1, 538-539)
“When maidens sue, men give like gods” - Lucio to Isabella, encouraging her to convince Angelo not to kill Claudio (Act 2, Scene 1, Line 87-88)
"Hence we shall see, if power change purpose, what our seemers be.” - The Duke lowkey suggesting that once Angelo gets power, he’ll change into something evil (Act 1, Scene 4, Line 57)
“Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.” - Escalus is sneakily hating on Angelo. This quote shows that power and authority often involve corruption (Act 2, Scene 1, Line 41)
Perhaps Shakespeare is suggesting that power is a dangerous weapon and that in the wrong hands, it could be deadly.
Morality and Sin
This is an interesting theme. What defines sin? For instance, if Isabella sleeps with Angelo she’s sinning before God. But if she doesn’t, then she’s letting her brother die, which is not good either. Bit of a pickle that one. Some characters to consider include Isabella, Angelo, The Duke, Claudio, Lucio, the Provost…. jeez just about everyone! So many of the characters take part in questionable deeds. Was it immoral for the Duke to pretend to be a holy friar? Is Claudio’s sin of impregnating Juliet really punishable by death if both parties were willing, and no one else has been punished for the same “crime”? Are Pompey and Mistress Overdone being immoral in being in the prostitution business, if it’s the only way to survive?
Deep stuff man. This can be linked back to class divides, women and the contemporary playhouses/brothels.
“What sin you do to save a brother’s life, nature dispenses with the deed so far that it becomes a virtue” - Claudio begs his sister to sleep with Angelo (immoral, especially since she’s poised to enter a nunnery), saying that it’s for a good cause, and will actually be a virtue/good deed (Act 3, Scene 1, Line 146-148)
“Might there not be a charity in sin to save this brother’s life?” - Angelo asking Isabella to sleep with him and trying to paint the act as a charitable deed (Act 2, Scene 4, Line 65-66)
“I am a kind of burr, I shall stick” - Lucio, who represents sin and immorality in Vienna (we’ll talk more about this later in symbols/motifs) (Act 4, Scene 3, Line 182)
“To bring you thus together ‘tis no sin, sith that the justice of your title to him doth flourish the deceit.” - The Friar (Duke), encouraging Isabella and Mariana to do the dodgy bed-trick and trick Angelo (Act 4, Scene 1, Line 79-81)
Perhaps Shakespeare tries to tell us that there is a fine line between something moral and something sinful. Maybe he’s asking, “who are we to judge?”, since we all do questionable things sometimes. Everyone from the almighty Duke to a lowly prostitute has committed potentially immoral acts. Perhaps audiences are encouraged to be more understanding of others, and their reasons for these deeds.
Justice
Mmm, this theme ties in nicely with just about all of the others. How does one define justice? The play explores this idea; does justice mean punishment? Or mercy? How do we balance the two to deliver the right punishment/lack thereof? Characters that dispense justice include The Duke, Angelo (although they have differing ideas of justice) and Isabella. Since Vienna is a religious place, consider the divine justice system (ie. a perfect, flawless system meted out by God) and the earthly one (ie. the flawed, human justice system). Laws exist in an attempt to ensure justice. But does it always work? Consider also the Old and New Testament ways of thinking - the former strict and punitive, while the latter is more measured and merciful (see symbols/motifs below for more info).
This theme can be linked to the Divine Right of Kings, Great Chain of Being, Women, and Jacobean Audience.
“Justice, justice, justice, justice!” - (Wait, are you sure this quote is about justice?) Isabella pleads for (you guessed it) justice to the Duke (no longer dressed as a friar), thinking Angelo has, in fact, killed her brother (Act 5, Scene 1, Line 26)
“The very mercy of the law cried out… ‘An Angelo for Claudio, death for death!’ Haste still pays haste, and leisure answers leisure, like doth quit like, and measure still for measure” - The Duke, explaining that it’s only fair that Angelo die for “killing” Claudio. (Act 5, Scene 1, Line 437-441)
“liberty plucks justice by the nose” - The Duke tells Friar Thomas that the laws have slipped over the years, and the citizens of Vienna are not being punished for immoral deeds (prostitution, sex before marriage etc)
Perhaps Shakespeare says that since we humans are inevitably flawed, that any justice system created by us will too be imperfect. Who are we to decide the fates of our fellow man? Furthermore, the Bard may be encouraging us to be kind when dispensing justice, leaning more to mercy than punishment.
Sexual and Gender Politics
Who run the world? Gir- no it’s a bunch of men. This theme contributes to why ‘Measure for Measure’ is a problem play. The exploration of the female characters in this play are very interesting, and kind of sad. Of 20 named characters, only 5 are women. Together, their lines make up only 18% of the play. Yikes! There is a lot to unpack here. Our female characters are Isabella, Mariana, Mistress Overdone, Juliet, Francisca (a nun who speaks twice) and Kate Keepdown (who we never meet). Their situations: a maiden poised to enter a nunnery, a prostitute, a pregnant girl about to lose her husband, a nun, and another prostitute. Quite gloomy, isn't it? Meanwhile, the men are leaders (The Duke, deputy Angelo, and ancient lord Escalus) and gentlemen (Lucio, Claudio, and Froth). Over the course of the play, our female characters are put into worse situations by men. Their experiences are dictated by men. Consider taking a “feminist perspective” and exploring ‘Measure for Measure’ from a female point of view.
This theme links to the Great Chain of Being, Women and Playhouses/Brothels.
“see how he goes about to abuse me!” - These are the last words we hear from Mistress Overdone, as she calls out Lucio for betraying her even though she kept secrets for him. All this happens while she’s being carted off to prison in only Act 3! What do you think Shakespeare is saying to us? (Act 3, Scene 1, Line 481)
“Then was your sin of heavier kind than his” - The Friar (Duke) says to Juliet that she sinned more than Claudio, even though their sin was “mutually committed”. Even though they were both consenting, the woman is blamed more. Consider what would become of Juliet if Claudio was executed. She’d probably end up like Mistress Overdone... (Act 2, Scene 3, Line 31)
“Who will believe thee, Isabel?” - Angelo says this after Isabella threatens to reveal his disgusting request. Ouch. It really goes to show how untrustworthy women are deemed. (Act 2, Scene 4, Line 163)
“Why, you are nothing then: neither maid, widow, nor wife?” - The Duke says this to Mariana. Basically, he says a woman can only be those 3 things. Jeez. (Act 5, Scene 1, Line 196-197)
“When maidens sue, men give like gods” - Lucio to Isabella, encouraging her to convince Angelo not to kill Claudio. So, perhaps women do have some power. But, it’s due to their sexuality; something evaluated by men. Peachy. (Act 2, Scene 1, Line 87-88)
Perhaps Shakespeare suggests that women are treated unfairly in society. Maybe he posits that women are afforded so few opportunities in a man’s world. The Bard potentially says that such sexual and gender politics do not create a cohesive and just society.
Mercy
This theme, again, connects to many others. It can link to all groups of people (The wealthy, the poor, women, criminals etc). Most of the mercy is dispensed at the end of the play when the Duke does his grand reveal. Characters who choose to mete out mercy over punishment include The Duke and Isabella. Also consider Angelo, who instead of choosing to spare Claudio, decides to kill him to uphold a law that hasn’t seen anyone punished for the same deed. We might think this is harsh, but it a legal and lawful decision.
Connect this idea with historical context, specifically Jacobean audience and playhouses/brothels.
“I find an apt remission in myself” - Apt remission = ready forgiveness. The Duke says this after pardoning Angelo (Act 5, Scene 1, Line 539)
“pray thee take this mercy to provide for better times to come” - The Duke pardons murderer Barnadine, asking him to use it to do better. How lovely! (Act 5, Scene 1, Line 525-526)
“let us be keen (shrewd/sharp), and rather cut a little than fall and bruise to death” - Escalus says this to Angelo, who wants to enact all strict laws immediately. The ever-reliable Escalus advises Angelo to be lenient and merciful. (Act 2, Scene 1, Line 6-7)
“Mercy is not itself that oft looks so, pardon is still the nurse of second woe” - Escalus says this, defending Angelo’s decision to punish Claudio. He suggests that sometimes being merciful can encourage further wrongdoing. (Act 2, Scene 1, Line 282-283”)
“I show it (pity) most of all when I show justice” - Angelo says to Isabella that he is showing Claudio pity/mercy by punishing him. A firm believer in the law, Angelo thinks he’s doing the right thing and teaching Claudio a lesson by punishing him. (Act 2, Scene 2, Line 123)
Perhaps Shakespeare encourages us to look at mercy and punishment from different perspectives. Angelo believes he is punishing Claudio for his own good, and cleaning up Vienna of lechery too. Maybe we ought to be merciful in our opinion of the deputy. Nonetheless, the Bard shows that in the case of young Claudio, mercy and forgiveness is the right path to choose. Finally, consider why Shakespeare may have portrayed a merciful leader to his Jacobean audience. Maybe if he were to portray a leader as fair and merciful, the Jacobean audience would trust that their new king (a man similar in character to the Duke) could be kind and merciful too. Earning the favour of the king and writing a killer play? He’s killed two birds with one stone.
Human Frailty & Fallibility
I’ve encountered many essay topics about how humans are flawed and imperfect. It’s a pretty big theme in many texts, not just in our friend William Shakespeare’s. Human fallibility is to blame for a lot of the going-ons in ‘Measure for Measure’. Angelo takes the law too seriously, he gets heart eyes for Isabella and kills Claudio even though he thinks he’s slept with Isabella. Why? He wants to save his own ass, fearing Claudio will seek vengeance. The Duke is flawed too. He’s a leader, but he just avoids his problems, leaving Angelo in charge to deal with them. Then he plans to swoop in and look like a hero. Kinda dodgy. Consider Claudio and Juliet too. They, like Angelo, succumbed to lust and slept together before they were officially married. (Sigh, humans just can’t get it right.) It’s also worth thinking about the “low-lives” and poorer characters. Are the poor frail in a different way? For example, Mistress Overdone keeps Lucio’s secrets for him. In that way she is virtuous. However, she sells her body to survive. Perhaps she is not prone to desire like Angelo, but serves another desire - a desire to survive?
In terms of historical context, consider the Divine Right of Kings, the Great Chain of Being and Playhouses/Brothels.
“They say best men are moulded out of faults, and for the most become much more the better for being a little bad” - Mariana pleads to Isabella to support her in begging the Duke to pardon (her new husband) Angelo. She is optimistic for man, believing our bad deeds can lead to self-improvement. (Act 5, Scene 5, Line 473-475)
“Why, all the souls that were were forfeit once” - Isabella pleads to Angelo to pardon Claudio. She states that all souls were flawed before Christ offered redemption. (Act 2, Scene 2, Line 93)
“I speak not as desiring more, but rather wishing a more strict restraint” - Isabella is speaking to a nun as she is poised to enter the ranks of the nunnery. We usually think of a nun as living a very strict life, but Isabella wants it even stricter! Here we see her flaw is that her thinking is too singular and blinkered. (Act 1, Scene 5, Line 3-4)
“Lord Angelo is precise, stands at guard with envy, scarce confesses that his blood flows, or that his appetite is more to bread than stone.” - The Duke talks about how unhuman Angelo is. The deputy follows rules very closely, almost to the point where he’s like a machine. His nature is too strict. (Act 1, Scene 5, Line 53-56)
“I love the people, but do not like to stage me to their eyes” - The Duke says this to Angelo and Escalus as he hands over power to his deputy. Even the Duke is not perfect, in that he does not like being before crowds of his people (Act 1, Scene 2, Line 72-73)
Perhaps Shakespeare suggests that no one is truly perfect, not even a leader supposedly ordained by God, a law-abiding deputy, or a maiden who is poised to enter a nunnery. Yet while Angelo is overcome by his lust and emotion, the Duke and Isabella attempt to better themselves by showing mercy and temperance. Maybe Shakespeare suggests trying to improve one’s flawed self is most important.
God, Religion and Spirituality
Phew, we’re at our last theme. So, society in Vienna is very much religious. Their beliefs dictate actions and laws within the city. Some very religious characters include Isabella and Angelo. However, our novice nun, who is obsessed with virtue and chastity, agrees to and takes part in the bed-trick, a deception that is not particularly Christian. Our lusty deputy also succumbs, hellishly propositioning a maiden to sleep with him in exchange for her brother’s life. Even The Duke, supposedly semi-divine, makes some dubious choices. He spends most of the play posed as a holy man, even though he is not. He plans the bed-trick to deceive Angelo and lets poor Isabella think her poor brother is dead, instead of saving her so much pain. Furthermore, the title of the tale, ‘Measure for Measure’, comes from the Gospel of Matthew. (See symbols/motifs for more deets). The question of how much we should let religion dictate us is another reason this piece is a problem play.
The theme of God and Religion can link to historical context such as the Divine Right of Kings.
“more than our brother is our chastity” - (Act 3, Scene 1, Line 194) and “Better it were a brother died at once, than that a sister by redeeming him should die forever” - (Act 2, Scene 4, Line 111-113) show that Isabella values her chastity and virtue over her brother!! Damn girl!
“Ay, but to die, and go we know not where, to lie in cold obstruction and to rot” - Claudio tells Isabella that he fears the uncertainty of death. Perhaps his belief in a heaven has left him in the wake of his impending death? (Act 3, Scene 1, Line 129-130)
“Let’s write good angel on the devil’s horns - ‘tis not the devil's crest” - Angelo is talking to himself about his lust for Isabella. It’s an appearance vs reality (ooh another theme!) kind of idea, where you can try to pretend something is something else (ie. Angelo doesn't lust after Isabella), but it doesn't change the thing (ie. he’s still keen). The deputy is comparing his emotions to these religious extremes. (Act 2, Scene 4, Line 16-17)
Perhaps Shakespeare criticises religious extremism in his portrayal of characters like Isabella and Angelo. Or maybe he just wants us to remain open-minded about ideas and our spirituality.
Yikes, there are so many themes in this play! Let’s move it along, and talk a little bit about characters.
CHARACTERS
Each character can be viewed in different lights, even more so than themes can be. We’re going to discuss characters very briefly because it’s up to you how you want to read them.
Here are the characters, in order of how much they speak in the play. To keep things short, let’s pretend these are all tinder bios. Who would you swipe right on? (Hint: not Lucio)
The Duke
super chill (the benevolent ruler of Vienna who’s let the laws slip a little)
loves dressing up (actually spends most of the play disguised as a friar)
clever/cunning (secretly counteracts the injustices decreed by Angelo)
Isabella
strong morals (would rather her brother die than she lives in shame)
can get wild (conspires with the Duke to complete the bed-trick)
holy gal (poised to enter a nunnery)
Lucio
a gentleman (well, his title is. He’s rude about the Duke and abandoned a prostitute that he got pregnant, so maybe he’s not that kind of gentleman)
loves attention (legit! He’s a minor character but he has the third most lines of them all! Lucio loves to stir the pot!)
loves some symbolism (Lucio represents all the bad stuff in Vienna…..see symbols/motifs)
Angelo
plays by the rules (a little too much)
hypocrite (Sentences Claudio to death for sex before marriage, while asking the same thing of Isabella…. wow we’ve found our antagonist)
Deep (Angelo is a bit of a complex character. He seems aware of his misdeeds and struggles to deal with these desires. It’s hard not to pity him at times)
Escalus
reliable (consistently counsels Angelo against acting too harshly)
virtuous (he’s merciful, lets Pompey go with a warning in Act 2 Scene 1)
loyal (trusts in the Duke)
Provost
hard worker (he’s a prison ward)
virtuous (does what’s right by him, disobeying Angelo’s orders to behead Claudio)
magician (not really, but he makes Angelo believe that pirate Ragozine’s head is Claudio’s)
Pompey
clever (philosophically debates whether prostitution is worse than murder)
funny (his character is the clown, and he’s got some sassy comebacks)
poor (Pompey is a bawd employed by Mistress Overdone. Not the best dating bio)
Claudio
down for a good time ;) (impregnates Juliet before they are officially married)
cool family (he’s Isabella’s brother)
good hearted (initially is horrified at Angelo’s request of Isabella, saying she shouldn’t do it. Unfortunately, his fear of death get’s to him. After he’s calmed down, he’s accepting of death)
Elbow
a man in uniform (a policeman)
a little dumb (he speaks a lot of malapropisms - hilariously using similar but incorrect words)
not like Pompey (Pompey is a clever poor man, while Elbow is a policeman who’s a little bit all over the place)
Mariana
dedicated (still in love with Angelo even though he called off their engagement because her dowry was lost)
a willing accomplice (participates in the bed-trick)
Mistress Overdone
poor (she’s a prostitute, who fears for her livelihood when Angelo announces he’s destroying all the brothels)
good hearted (kept Lucio’s secret. What secret? Read on…)
Abhorson
works for the Duke (as an executioner…. there’s no way to make that sound nice)
doesn't have a great name (c’mon it’s true)
Juliet
also likes to have a good time ;) (pregnant before official marriage)
dependent (if Claudio dies she will probably end up as a prostitute to survive)
Boy
can sing (Mariana asks him to sing a sad song about how she lost her beloved Angelo)
Francisca
holy gal (she is a nun)
Kate Keepdown (we never actually meet this character)
a colleague of Mistress Overdone (a prostitute)
single mum (Lucio got her pregnant and then ran away. He thinks marrying a prostitute is akin to whipping and hanging)
Ragozine (we never actually meet this character)
dies (legit that’s all he does)
SYMBOLS & MOTIFS
These are people, objects, words etc that represent a theme or idea. For instance, the fact that I’ve used a bad soup metaphor AND a tinder reference means I need to go outside more. But let’s move on…
Title
The title, “Measure for Measure” draws from the gospel of Matthew. The idea of heavenly justice vs earthly justice is prominent throughout the text. Moreover, it’s worth exploring the Old Testament ways of “an eye for an eye” and “measure for measure” in comparison to the New Testament teachings which lean towards forgiveness and mercy. Now, where do the Duke’s actions fit in? Is he harsh and equalising? Is he just and sympathetic?
New Testament vs. Old Testament
When the Duke sentences Angelo to death, he makes a fancy speech which includes the play’s title.
“‘An Angelo for Claudio, death for death!
Haste still pays haste, and leisure answers leisure.
Like doth quit like, and measure still for measure.”
Act 5, Scene 1, Line 439-441
This mimics the Old Testament views, which famously states “eye for eye, tooth for tooth” (Exodus 21:24). These ideals teach that the person who committed a misdeed shall have the same misdeed done unto them. (For example, if you don’t like my new Facebook profile picture, I’m not liking yours…..but way more severe.)
In comparison, the New Testament states that we “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.” (Luke 6:36-37)
So, when sentencing Angelo the Duke employs the words of the Old Testament. However, he doesn’t go through with Angelo’s execution, instead showing the mercy encouraged by the New Testament. He’s not really following either way. Perhaps he’s instead choosing a middle road; one of temperance and justice.
Lucio
Wait, who? We haven’t mentioned the “gentleman” Lucio much in the plot and in this blog post. That’s because he doesn’t really do that much other than buzz around and annoy everyone. Maybe that’s why his name rhymes with mosquito….
Regardless, we do see enough of Lucio’s character to learn that he’s not a very nice person. He treats Mistress Overdone and Pompey poorly, makes visits to the brothel, doesn’t take responsibility for his actions (getting Kate Keepdown pregnant) and bad-mouths the Duke. So yeah, we don’t like Lucio, what’s the big deal? Well, in Act 4, Scene 4 Line 182, Lucio says something very intriguing.
“I am a kind of burr, I shall stick.”
Burr - those little brown prickly things that get stuck to you.
We can think of Lucio as representing all the sins and misdeeds in Vienna - lechery, immorality, lack of justice, selfishness etc. Hence, Lucio is saying that these shortcomings and flaws will always be present to people and in Vienna, sticking to the city like a nasty burr. Damn, that’s deep.
Prose/Verse
The metre of the verse (ie. the classic Shakespeare writing) in ‘‘Measure for Measure” is iambic pentameter. This means that each line is divided into 5 feet. Within each foot, there is one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one.
Consider:
I’ll TELL him YET of ANgelO’S reQUEST, And FIT his MIND to DEATH, for HIS soul’s REST. (Act 2, Scene 4, Line 195-196)
Verse does not have to rhyme, as the above lines do. Shakespeare often employs a rhyming couplet to close a scene and add some drama.
Verse is usually reserved for the higher class citizens, with those who are less fortunate speaking in prose.
Prose is language in its ordinary form, with no metre.
Certain characters, such as Lucio, switch between verse and prose depending on who they are speaking to. This could allude to Lucio’s duplicity, or perhaps a deep understanding of class divides in Vienna.
Names: Escalus and Angelo
Escalus is the ever reasonable and loyal lord and close confidant of the Duke. His name gives connotations of scales and balance - characteristic of the rational man.
Angelo’s name has connotations of “angel”. If we judge him only by his name, he should be a pure and heavenly being. Bah! That’s so fake! We can see that appearance is very different from reality. Isabella notices this too, stating that “this outward-sainted deputy...is yet a devil” (Act 3, Scene 1, Line 95-98).
Angelo’s Words/Actions
There is so much to unpack about this douchebag. Let us briefly consider 2 ideas. When he propositions Isabella to sleep with him, he requests that she “lay down the treasures of (her) body” (Act 2, Scene 4, Line 100).
Firstly, that’s weird. Perhaps Angelo can be seen as someone who is obsessed with the physical - Isabella’s body and treasure. Maybe this obsession leads to his immorality and poor leadership.
Secondly, Angelo struggles to directly say, “hey, let’s sleep together”. He weaves his way around the request, propositioning Isabella so indirectly that at first, she does not even seem to understand his request! However, once she threatens to tell everyone about his vile demand, he speaks bluntly; “Who will believe thee, Isabel?” (Act 2, Scene 4, Line 163). Perhaps this shows Angelo is self-aware that he’s being an ass. Or maybe this scene is yet more evidence of a patriarchal society, with the men knowing very well the power they hold.
Ragozine
We never actually meet this fellow. Ragozine is a pirate who dies in jail while “Measure for Measure” unfolds. His head is used in place of Claudio’s to convince Angelo of the former’s execution. Fascinatingly, Ragozine is the only person who dies in the entire play. ALSO, he dies of natural causes. Interesting. It feels like the play is full of death, grief and many heads on the chopping block. But curiously, there is only one death, of a minor character, of natural causes. Perhaps this says something about fate and justice or offers some commentary on life and hope.
Elbow vs. Pompey
Elbow is a silly policeman who speaks in malapropisms (using a similar but incorrect word for humorous effect). Pompey is a clever pimp who seems to have a deep understanding of justice and the Viennese people. The comparison of these characters, fortunate and dumb to unfortunate and clever, perhaps serves to show that the law is not always apt and that sometimes those who break the law are more clever than it.
Mistress Overdone (or lack thereof)
Mistress Overdone is a pitiable prostitute. She worries for her survival when Angelo begins pulling down the brothels, and she keeps Lucio’s bastard child a secret, only for him to throw her under the bus to save his own skin. The last we see of Mistress Overdone is her getting carted off to prison, crying “See how he goes about to abuse me!” (Act 3, Scene 1, Line 481) Yes, the last we witness of one of five speaking female characters is of her imminent incarceration. Furthermore, this happens in Act 3 of 5, around halfway through the play! The audience never hears from Mistress Overdone again, and her future is left uncertain. Even Barnadine, a convicted murderer, is given freedom and a happy ending.
Consider writing a few sentences of your essay from a feminist’s perspective. Think about the events of the play from the female characters’ points of view. What is Shakespeare saying by portraying Mistress Overdone (and other women) in such a way? Perhaps he is pointing out the injustices of the patriarchal system, or how uncertain a woman’s life was in his contemporary time.
“Measure for Measure” truly is an incredible text. This blog post is by no means an exhaustive list of all its quirks and complexities. This play’s relevance has survived centuries, and I believe it will continue to be pertinent to audiences well into the future. You are very lucky to be studying a text with such universal themes and ideas that you can carry with you even after high school.
Oral Presentations - fun and full-scoring. Bet you’ve never heard those words in the same sentence before! As much as the Oral is a SAC that is often feared by many English students, I managed to come out of my presentation not completely terrified - I was actually able to somehow enjoy myself a little up there, and I might have even had a smile on my face when it was all done. And, what’s even better is that I managed to score full marks!
In this blog post, I’m going to be guiding you through how I approached the Oral Presentation in Year 12 to achieve full marks. I’ll be breaking down my Oral Presentation script as well as giving some pointers about giving the Oral Presentation on the day.
Scroll down to the bottom to read my full Oral Presentation script!
The Topic I Chose and How I Chose It
You’ve probably heard a million times before to choose an issue that you’re passionate about. This can often leave you thinking, I don’t know what I’m passionate about! or I’m not passionate about anything in the media right now! I was one of those students in the beginning, but this is how I chose an issue that I ended up loving.
Taking Inspiration From My Other Year 12 Subjects
The subject I enjoyed the most in Year 12 was Legal Studies, and my love for this subject guided me in choosing an issue that I genuinely wanted to speak about. I was lucky to have a Legal Studies teacher who was a big nerd in everything law-related, and he often liked to update us about recent and ongoing legal cases that he found interesting. One case that he told us about that I became very interested in was the Ben Roberts-Smith defamation case against Nine Entertainment where some journalists called out Ben Roberts-Smith (a war veteran) for committing war crimes. Roberts-Smith sued these journalists, alleging that this wasn’t true.
I knew I wanted to speak about this case, but I also knew that I had to argue an opinion, and not just provide an overview of the case. So, I began my research into the views of the stakeholders in the case. Something that was very useful to me in my research was news podcasts! In particular, I came across a podcast episode from a podcast called Please Explain(as of 26/02/2024 it seems to have been rebranded and is now called The Morning Edition) by The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, where the actual journalists that were getting sued in the case talked about their experiences. After listening to this podcast episode on the way home from school, I found myself really sympathising with the journalists and that’s how I knew that I wanted to speak about this defamation case from the journalists’ perspective.
After some thinking, the contention that I arrived at was this:
More should be done to protect public interest journalism.
So my advice for choosing an Oral Topic that you love is to take inspiration from other subjects you’re studying and enjoying, and to pick up on and research anything that your teachers tell you about that piques your interest!
Breaking Down My Script
The Introduction
A Hook Start
Let me take you back in time. Six years ago, in 2017, many of us in this classroom were in Year 6, probably sitting in a primary school classroom, learning what an isosceles triangle is. And obviously, we had all been paying attention because now everyone’s thinking, “Oh yeah, I remember what an isosceles triangle is!” and we’re all imagining a tall triangle that looks like this.
Grabbing the audience’s attention from the very start of your speech is key! To do this, I tried to open up my speech in an interesting way by encouraging the audience to do something - to reflect on what their lives looked like six years ago. Hook starts such as the one I used (which establish a common ground with the audience) were commonly used among my classmates - they quickly grab the audience’s attention and are relatively easy to implement!
In my Statement of Intention*, I wrote that ‘I initially engage[d] my audience with a hook start, encouraging them to cast their minds back to 2017, and through the imagery of a primary school classroom, I aim[ed] to establish relatability and common ground with the audience, positioning them to be more agreeable to my arguments later on.’
*Statement of Intention - a written statement accompanying my Oral Presentation, where I explained the choices I made in my presentation. As of 2024 and with the implementation of the new study design, students are no longer required to submit a Statement of Intention with their Oral Presentations. However, if you’re curious to know more about Statements of Intention, check out this blog.
Providing Context
Now, while our Year 6 teachers were providing us with the life-changing information that is the different types of triangles, something bigger was happening on Collins Street. A huge news sausage was in the making. Picture this: a conversation between two passionate and overworked journalists, working for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. One of which had heard whispers from his contact book of Australian military circles that our most decorated living soldier was not the person that everyone thought he was, and that he had in fact been involved in war crimes like the killing of unarmed civilians. A shared desire to put these rumours to the test, with an open mind, wanting to disprove them as much as to prove them.
This marked the start of a 4-year long legal battle in the form of a defamation lawsuit lodged by decorated war vet Ben Roberts Smith against two investigative journalists, Chris Masters and Nick McKenzie. And, after more than 100 days of hearings, this battle recently ended, with the judge ruling overwhelmingly in favour of Masters and McKenzie that what they had reported about Roberts Smith was substantially true, hence the two had not defamed him.
I spent a fair bit of time explaining the issue of protections around public interest journalism in the context of the Ben Roberts-Smith defamation case because it was a bit of a niche issue and I thought that my audience of Year 12 students were unlikely to have known too much about it. To keep this explanation engaging, I tried to explain the case in a descriptive and dramatic way, as if the events were unfolding in front of their eyes, and I tried not to make it sound like I was just listing background information. To do this, I used phrases like ‘A huge news sausage was in the making’, ‘Picture this’, to really set the scene in a dramatic way!
A side note on choosing niche topics for the Oral Presentation: I know it’s often NOT recommended to choose topics that are unlikely to be well-known by your fellow students. This is because it can be disengaging when a student goes on a 5-minute tangent using complicated jargon on a topic that none of the other students know anything about. And… I guess I kind of turned that rule on its head! But this was precisely why I wanted to spend a chunk of my speech explaining the context of my issue - so that my speech would be accessible to my audience, so they wouldn’t be bored, and so we would all be on the same page.
At the end of the day, it’s all about finding a balance between choosing a topic that you love and a topic that is easy for the audience to understand. So, if the topic that you would love to present to the class might be a bit less well-known, my advice would be to make sure to provide adequate context and spend a bit of time explaining key information at the start so that your speech is more accessible to the audience!
Stating Contention
ABC News called it a win for public interest journalism. So why have I brought up this case today to highlight that not enough is being done to protect public interest journalism?
After my explanation section, I smoothly slid into contention territory. Even though I didn’t directly state my contention (i.e. I didn’t say “I believe that more should be done to protect public interest journalism”), through the question, ‘Why have I brought up this case to highlight that not enough is being done to protect public interest journalism?’, I implied that my contention was exactly that - that not enough is being done to protect public interest journalism.
The Supporting Arguments
I actually only had one supporting argument throughout my whole Oral Presentation, and although this might be an unusual way to do it, it worked well for me since I needed to spend quite a bit of time introducing the issue at the start. My one supporting argument was bulky enough that I had a complete speech with just a long introduction, bulky argument and conclusion.
Work out what might work best for you in your presentation. If your issue needs a bit of breaking down like mine did, it might be easier to stick to a very simple structure.
Outlining the Supporting Argument and Providing Evidence
Legal battles in general are a huge issue for journalism because they can be used as a threat to journalists. This defamation lawsuit was only the tip of the legal iceberg for Masters and McKenzie. They also faced challenges to source protection and Roberts-Smith’s numerous attempts to silence the two and other witnesses by sending them legal letters telling them to shut up, to suppress the truth about his actions from coming to light.
I then went on to explain my supporting argument - that legal battles such as defamation cases put public interest journalism at risk (which is why, going back to my overall contention, more should be done to protect public interest journalism). As you can see, I constantly linked back to the Roberts-Smith defamation case because that’s what I wanted to speak about, but I did not have to do this and you absolutely don’t have to - a general explanation would have gotten the job done just as well.
You might be wondering why I didn’t signpost at the start of my supporting argument - in other words, why I didn’t include a sentence like “My first supporting argument is that legal battles such as defamation cases put public interest journalism at risk”. Some teachers love signposting and encourage students to do so. If your teacher seems to prefer clear signposting, go ahead and do that!
TIP: Keep in mind that for anything internally marked, it is important that you keep your teacher/school’s preferences and requirements in mind.
My teacher wasn’t as insistent on signposting, and I personally didn’t like how clear signposting made my speech sound a bit robotic, so to keep the flow of the speech I decided to fluff it out and start my argument the way that I did. You’ll also notice a lack of signposting throughout my speech in general for the same reasons.
The biggest issue about the Ben Roberts Smith defamation case for journalists and news corporations has been costs. Their win has come with a hefty price tag estimated to be around $25 million, and even though the majority of this is to be borne by the loser of the trial, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald newspapers will still end up losing millions of dollars, just for defending themselves and their journalists in court.
I backed up my supporting argument with some evidence. To quote my Statement of Intention, ‘I went on to use numerical statistics like “4 year[s]” and “100 days of hearings” to emphasise that much of Masters and McKenzie’s time and energy was taken by BRS’s claim, aiming to evoke sympathy for them and positioning readers to agree that more protections are needed to prevent journalists from being involved in these time-consuming legal battles. I also established costs as another major issue using the statistic of “$25 million” to emphasise that not only are these legal battles time-consuming, but also expensive, and through connotations of immensity when describing this as a “hefty price tag”’.’
Explaining the Argument and How It Is Relevant to the Audience
But why exactly is this our issue? It’s not like we’re the ones having to pay millions of dollars.
But it becomes our issue when this financial burden creates a chilling effect on public interest journalism. Fear of bankruptcy or crippling financial strain forces journalists to retreat, self censor or settle for silence. This financial issue for news organisations becomes our issue as the quality of our public interest journalism deteriorates and we are deprived of vital information.
Throughout my speech, I made an effort to constantly tie it back to the audience and explain why exactly this issue was important and relevant to them. This was important for me to do because the issue I chose was relatively niche so I felt like I had to prove to them that this issue was worth presenting. Even if the issue you’re presenting isn’t exactly niche, it’s important to link back to the audience every now and then and to remind them why it’s important to them. In my case, I explained that defamation cases like the Roberts-Smith case against journalists and news corporations were a threat to high school students having access to information that they should be aware of!
Something else that I attempted to do here was to include some persuasive devices! To quote my Statement of Intention, ‘having established costs as a major issue, I segued into the effect that these costs can have on journalists, listing these effects as causing journalists to “retreat, self-censor or settle for silence”, and through listing and sibilance in the latter half of this phrase, I aimed to make these effects memorable to listeners, emphasising the consequences of the costs of legal battles on journalists and public interest journalism.”’
Evidence
Masters and McKenzie talked about the pressure that was put on them to leave the rumours about Ben Roberts Smith be. Chris explained that his colleagues tried to convince him not to fight with Ben Roberts Smith by telling him that it was like shooting Bambi. Well, I guess in that case, he would have been shooting Bambi for shooting unarmed civilians, which sounds pretty fair to me. Nick explained that convincing their bosses to publish the story was an exhaustive process, and even after successfully having their story on Roberts Smith published, Chris said there was a propaganda war waiting for them, with their former colleagues being hired by other news corporations to criticise them and disassemble their work, with their story being put on the cover of a rival newspaper, as an attack on Chris, accusing him of smearing the memories of dead soldiers, and it was designed to intimidate and hurt him and his biding relationships with people in the military who consider him a deep friend. These attempts of BRS to silence the two are not just unfair - as students, we want to grow up in a world where people are held accountable regardless of their connections or wealth.
After explaining my argument, I backed it up with evidence by going back to the defamation case and giving practical, real-life examples of how this case may have worked to hinder the quality of public interest journalism. I took much of the information in this section from the podcast that I talked about earlier (where Masters and McKenzie talked about their firsthand experiences) - for example, the so-called “propaganda war” that Masters faced after having the story published, rival news outlets who were on the side of Roberts-Smith publishing articles attacking Masters - and explained that this was designed to intimidate the two investigative journalists and deter them from exposing controversial stories against prominent figures. I not only told but also showed my audience that legal battles were a very real threat to journalism. I referred to this section of my speech as ‘personal anecdotes’ in my Statement of Intention and I wrote that I hoped to make my speech more convincing by illustrating the consequences of legal battles that Masters and Mckenzie experienced firsthand.
I tried my best to not make this section sound too much like a “he said, she said” situation by slipping in some of my own commentary. My tutor at the time (yes, I also had an LSG English tutor!) gave me the idea of mirroring ‘shooting Bambi’ with ‘shooting unarmed civilians’, and it was so brutal but I liked it so much that I decided to implement it as part of my commentary. In my Statement of Intention, I wrote that this comparison ‘aims to portray Masters and McKenzie as merely holding him accountable for his actions rather than bullying him, encouraging audiences to view journalists as necessary whistleblowers that require protections.’
My final sentence in this section worked to link all of this back to the audience and remind them, again, why all of this was relevant to them!
The Conclusion
It’s obvious that in the end, it didn’t really matter that, this time, the courts sided with the journalists and news corporations in this legal battle. Because the reality is that the fact that this legal battle existed in the first place has been enough of a threat to public interest journalism, with cover up attempts and pressures to retreat, and may be a sign of many other stories being covered up. If two journalists, working for big news companies, felt the chilling effect of the legal battles that they came across, how much worse is it for smaller news organisations or independent journalists, who don’t have the deep pockets that The Age, Masters and McKenzie had in withstanding these challenges? This is only the tip of the iceberg of other stories that need to be broken and known by the public. We can’t continue to allow the law to be weaponised against journalists and against democracy. Thus, the recent conclusion of the Ben Roberts-Smith defamation case is a sign that more should be done to protect public interest journalism.
In my concluding paragraph, I did three things:
I wrapped up
I aimed to evoke a sense of urgency on the issue (the bolded part)
I restated my contention at the very end to seal the deal
I didn’t exactly include a call to action in the part where I evoked a sense of urgency, but you totally could if that would work for your speech!
It’s optional to restate your contention as your final sentence, and I opted to do this. I wanted to emphasise the point of my speech again so that my conclusion didn’t sound like it was straying away from the actual contention. I’d say do it if it flows well with the rest of your conclusion because when it’s done right, it really is like ending your speech with a bang!
I’ve Finished Writing a Killer Oral Script. What Now?
When you’ve perfected your speech script, it’s practice time! The way you present the speech is arguably as important, if not even more important than the script itself - presenting your speech in an engaging way can really make your script shine while presenting it in a dull way can make even the best script sound unappealing.
Practice saying your speech out loud as early as possible and work towards having at least 85-95% of your speech committed to memory (especially if you’re paranoid and get anxious about public speaking like me). By the time I presented my Oral, I had memorised about 95% of my speech and the fact that I knew it off by heart gave me confidence and helped me feel less paranoid that I would mess up. This being said, I would definitely recommend having cue cards with dot points of your main ideas or little prompts with you in the presentation (which I also did), just in case you suddenly blank out!
I spent a week memorising my speech, reciting it out loud over and over again in my bedroom. In doing this, I pretty intuitively found the spots where I wanted to include pauses, change up my intonation or emphasise certain words or phrases - I committed these things to my muscle memory. If public speaking doesn’t come naturally to you, it might be a good idea to highlight and annotate your script and physically write in the parts where you want to include pauses or emphasise words. Practice with that script in front of you until you’ve memorised those things.
I also generally focused on my projection making sure to speak loudly, and I paid attention to my speed and diction. I tend to speed up and start rapping my speech when I’m nervous, so I made a conscious effort to speak slower and steadier in my practice runs, trying to engrain the perfect speed in my muscle memory (to varying levels of success haha). I also tried to make sure I was pronouncing everything clearly and that I wasn’t mumbling.
Before I started my presentation, I took a moment to take a deep breath, shake out my nerves and fix my posture. Good posture is the first step to feeling confident or faking confidence (which we all are when we’re up there)!
What I Wish I Had Done Before I Did My Oral Presentation
If I could go back and give my Year 12 self advice on the Oral, it would be this:
Practice saying my speech in front of someone.
I was pretty shy about my speech - you might relate - so I was very reluctant to practice my speech in front of my peers and even my friends. Unfortunately, this meant that I never practised it in front of another person at all, not even once. This is something that I really regret because I didn’t get to practice keeping a good balance between holding eye contact and looking at my cue cards. This ended up being a criticism from my teacher when she assessed my presentation! My teacher also criticised the fact that I didn’t hold an equal amount of eye contact throughout the whole classroom - she wrote that the right side of the classroom must have felt left out because I barely looked in their direction, haha! So, if you can, I really recommend getting out of your comfort zone and practising presenting your Oral in front of your friends or family members… and practice holding eye contact!
If you’ve made it to the end of this blog post, I’m assuming you’ll be having your Oral Presentation soon. Good luck, and try to enjoy presenting your speech if you can, because it’s the first and last time you will ever have the opportunity to present it!
My Full Oral Presentation Script: More Should Be Done To Protect Public Interest Journalism
Let me take you back in time. Six years ago, in 2017, many of us in this classroom were in Year 6, probably sitting in a primary school classroom, learning what an isosceles triangle is. And obviously, we had all been paying attention because now everyone’s thinking, “Oh yeah, I remember what an isosceles triangle is!” and we’re all imagining a tall triangle that looks like this.
Now, while our Year 6 teachers were providing us with the life-changing information that is the different types of triangles, something bigger was happening on Collins Street. A huge news sausage was in the making. Picture this: a conversation between two passionate and overworked journalists, working for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. One of which had heard whispers from his contact book of Australian military circles that our most decorated living soldier was not the person that everyone thought he was, and that he had in fact been involved in war crimes like the killing of unarmed civilians. A shared desire to put these rumours to the test, with an open mind, wanting to disprove them as much as to prove them.
This marked the start of a 4-year long legal battle in the form of a defamation lawsuit lodged by decorated war vet Ben Roberts Smith against two investigative journalists, Chris Masters and Nick McKenzie. And, after more than 100 days of hearings, this battle recently ended, with the judge ruling overwhelmingly in favour of Masters and McKenzie that what they had reported about Roberts Smith was substantially true, hence the two had not defamed him.
ABC News called it a win for public interest journalism. So why have I brought up this case today to highlight that not enough is being done to protect public interest journalism?
Legal battles in general are a huge issue for journalism because they can be used as a threat to journalists. This defamation lawsuit was only the tip of the legal iceberg for Masters and McKenzie. They also faced challenges to source protection and Roberts-Smith’s numerous attempts to silence the two and other witnesses by sending them legal letters telling them to shut up, to suppress the truth about his actions from coming to light.
The biggest issue about the Ben Roberts Smith defamation case for journalists and news corporations has been costs. Their win has come with a hefty price tag estimated to be around $25 million, and even though the majority of this is to be borne by the loser of the trial, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald newspapers will still end up losing millions of dollars, just for defending themselves and their journalists in court.
But why exactly is this our issue? It’s not like we’re the ones having to pay millions of dollars.
But it becomes our issue when this financial burden creates a chilling effect on public interest journalism. Fear of bankruptcy or crippling financial strain forces journalists to retreat, self censor or settle for silence. This financial issue for news organisations becomes our issue as the quality of our public interest journalism deteriorates and we are deprived of vital information.
Masters and McKenzie talked about the pressure that was put on them to leave the rumours about Ben Roberts Smith be. Chris explained that his colleagues tried to convince him not to fight with Ben Roberts Smith by telling him that it was like shooting Bambi. Well, I guess in that case, he would have been shooting Bambi for shooting unarmed civilians, which sounds pretty fair to me. Nick explained that convincing their bosses to publish the story was an exhaustive process, and even after successfully having their story on Roberts Smith published, Chris said there was a propaganda war waiting for them, with their former colleagues being hired by other news corporations to criticise them and disassemble their work, with their story being put on the cover of a rival newspaper, as an attack on Chris, accusing him of smearing the memories of dead soldiers, and it was designed to intimidate and hurt him and his biding relationships with people in the military who consider him a deep friend. These attempts of BRS to silence the two are not just unfair - as students, we want to grow up in a world where people are held accountable regardless of their connections or wealth.
It’s obvious that in the end, it didn’t really matter that, this time, the courts sided with the journalists and news corporations in this legal battle. Because the reality is that the fact that this legal battle existed in the first place has been enough of a threat to public interest journalism, with cover up attempts and pressures to retreat, and may be a sign of many other stories being covered up. If two journalists, working for big news companies, felt the chilling effect of the legal battles that they came across, how much worse is it for smaller news organisations or independent journalists, who don’t have the deep pockets that The Age, Masters and McKenzie had in withstanding these challenges? This is only the tip of the iceberg of other stories that need to be broken and known by the public. We can’t continue to allow the law to be weaponised against journalists and against democracy. Thus, the recent conclusion of the Ben Roberts-Smith defamation case is a sign that more should be done to protect public interest journalism.
The Erratics is usually studied in the Australian curriculum under Area of Study 1 - Text Response. For a detailed guide on Text Response, check out ourUltimate Guide to VCE Text Response.
Setting is a literary element that refers to the context of where a story takes place, usually alluding to the time and location. Your expectations of a story that takes place in Victorian England would differ greatly from a story set in late 2000s Australia, showing us that the historical, social and geographical aspects of the setting shape the meaning of the text.
In the memoir The Erratics, the setting plays a vital role in Vicki Laveau-Harvie's storytelling. From the beginning of the novel, Laveau-Harvie uses both the title and prologue to foreground the importance of the Okotoks Erratic (a geographical phenomenon in Alberta, Canada) to establish the role that place and belonging have played in her life. Further reinforcing the importance of the setting, the memoir’s narrative follows Laveau-Harvie’s experience flying back to Alberta, Canada (her hometown), after having moved to and started a new life in Australia.
Why Focus on Setting When Writing a Text Response?
The setting can be useful evidence to have in your repertoire as it helps you show that you not only have an understanding of the ideas of the text but also how those ideas are constructed. When looking at the criteria you will be marked against in the end-of-year exam you will see that to score a 7 and above in Section A you need to consider the ‘construction’ of the text (read more here). Construction refers to your ability to discuss the parts that make up a text through the use of metalanguage as evidence to support your views. The setting is just one of the ways you can address construction in The Erratics, but, as a text so focused on physical environments, it’s a good type of metalanguage to start with.
Canada
Famous for producing Justin Bieber and maple syrup, Canada has a similar history to Australia. Canada has an Indigenous population who inhabited the land for thousands of years before British and French expeditions came and colonised the land. In the 1700s, due to various conflicts, France ceded most of its North American colonies while the United Kingdom stayed. Over time the country gained greater autonomy and, like Australia, it is now a constitutional monarchy with a prime minister but recognises the British royal family as its sovereign. Further mirroring Australia, Canada also has a colonial past that it is still reckoning with as recent headlines about the human remains of hundreds of Indigenous people at a residential school reminds us.
Vicki is specifically from Alberta, and the majority of the novel is about her experiences returning there after having moved to Australia (at the start of the memoir she had been estranged from her parents for 18 years). Known for its natural beauty and its nature reserves, Alberta is a part of Western Canada. Alberta is one of only two landlocked provinces in Canada which is interesting considering that Vicki leaves it for a country famous for its beaches and coastal cities.
When annotating the text, highlight the descriptions of the setting. You’ll notice that when Laveau-Harvie describes Alberta or Canada as a whole she presents the country as being dangerous and hostile. An example of this is the blunt statement that the ‘cold will kill you. Nothing personal’. However, Laveau-Harvie does find some solace in the landscape, observing the beauty of the ‘opalescent’ peaks and the comfort in predictable seasons.
Vicki’s Parent’s Home
The first description Laveau-Harvie gives us of her family home is to call it ‘Paradise, [with] twenty acres with a ranch house on a rise, nothing between you and the sky and the distant mountains.’ The idyllic image foregrounds the natural landscape but is then immediately juxtaposed with the description of the home as a ‘time-capsule house sealed against the outside world for a decade’. This description heightens Vicki’s mother and father’s isolation from the outside world and alludes to the hostility of the home that is reaffirmed with the doors that ‘open to no one’. The family home becomes an extended metaphor for Vicki’s parents themselves, with the description of it as a ‘no-go zone’, hinting at the sisters’ estrangement from their parents who have shut them out.
Moreover, the land the house sits on does not produce any crops despite it being such a large expanse of land, heightening the home’s disconnect from the natural world. This detachment from the natural world is furthered by her labelling her parents as ‘transplants from the city’ and contrasting them to locals who ‘still make preserves in the summer’. Vicki’s mother in particular is at odds with nature due to materialism, such as her wardrobes being full of fur coats.
The Erratics + Napi
In the prologue we are introduced to the Okotoks Erratic as being situated in ‘a landscape of uncommon beauty’ with the Erratic itself being something that ‘dominates the landscape, roped off and isolated, the danger it presents to anyone trespassing palpable’. The memoir then immediately shifts to Vicki’s experience in the hospital trying to convince the staff that she is her mother’s daughter, drawing a parallel between the dominating and dangerous landscape to the dominating and dangerous mother. In the memoir, the Erratic is an extended metaphor for the mother with both the land and the mother being described as ‘unsafe’, ‘dominat[ing]’ and a ‘danger’. Moreover, the structural choice of opening the novel with the Erratic makes its presence felt throughout the novel even though it is not mentioned again until the end of the text.
In contrast to the prologue, the epilogue has a feeling of peace and reconciliation as the mother and what she has represented to her family is reconciled with the landscape. This is particularly pertinent as the geographical and spiritual origins of the rock revealed in the epilogue is a story of stability after a rupture. This alludes to the ability of Vicki’s family to heal after the trauma inflicted on them by the mother. The epilogue could also be understood as a reminder of humanity's insignificance in the face of nature and larger forces, as represented by Napi.
While Laveau-Harvie does not directly address Canada's colonial past in her memoir outside of the inclusion of Napi, the colonial presence is felt throughout the memoir through the setting of both Australia and Canada. These settings allude to how living on stolen land means that while individuals - particularly middle-class, white individuals - may not always recognise and address the colonial history of the land they live on, the fact that land was never ceded is still felt.
Australia
As discussed before, Canada and Australia are similar as they are both former British colonies that are now constitutional monarchies, so why would Vicki want to move to a place that is similar to where she already lived and experienced trauma?
There are a few potential answers, the first being the geographical distance. There are over 1300kms between Sydney and Alberta and, considering the trauma Vicki and her sister have experienced, it stands to reason that she would want to put distance between her childhood home and her adult life. This leads to the second reason, travelling to ‘Far flung places’ as a method to deal with trauma. While in Canada, Vicki reminisces about the ‘boozed-up Brits on Bondi’ that embodies her life in Australia. The evocative, alliterative image creates a stark contrast between warm and carefree Australia and cold and emotionally taxing Canada, reinforcing how travelling provides individuals with a means to survive their traumatic childhoods and create new lives for themselves.
When writing about setting you do not need to be an expert in geography. As this blog post has shown, to understand Laveau-Harvie’s use of setting in The Erratics you only need to know about two countries, so next time you write a text response, consider using your understanding of setting to show your teacher or examiners that you’ve thought about the text’s construction.
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If you'd like to dive deeper into this text, Zac breaks down key themes and quotes in The Erratics over on this blog.
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