Go ahead and tilt your mobile the right way (portrait). The kool kids don't use landscape...
Authorial intent is without a doubt one of the most important parts of any analytical essay in VCE English because talking about it is what offers the deepest level of analysis and shows the examiners that you have thought deeply about the text at hand. If you can discuss authorial intent effectively, you’ll be able to show that you have a solid understanding of what you are talking about and that you’re not working exclusively with surface-level ideas.
What Is Authorial Intent?
When we talk about authorial intent, what is really being referenced is the author’s reason for writing their piece in the way that they have and what messages they are trying to convey. Essentially, it’s what your teacher wants you to think about when they ask you things like “why is the door red?”. More generally speaking, why has the author made a point of telling us as readers the weather at that time? Why has that character been given that particular line of dialogue? Why have they brought in that specific tone for this part of the text? These are all the kinds of questions that you should be asking yourself when you’re reading through material that you have to analyse.
You might also hear authorial intent talked about as the writer’s ‘views and values’. If you’re unsure what views and values actually mean, you can kind of think of it as though the ‘views’ are how the author sees something and the ‘values’ are how the author thinks about something. Essentially, their opinions and perspectives are their views, whereas their morals and principles are their values. These two elements will often be central to the overall intention behind writing their text.
Why Is Authorial Intent Important?
Authorial intent plays a major role in your interpretation of the text; if you can’t figure out what the intent is, you will often miss out on key points and messages throughout the text. If you are lucky, the author will make it really clear to you as a reader what their intent is; however, this often is not the case. That being said, whether their intent is stated or implied doesn’t matter - there will always be something there for you to talk about.
How To ‘Find’ Authorial Intent in the Text: Key Identifiers To Look Out For
If you come across a text that makes it a little bit more difficult to discern what the author is actually trying to say, a good place to start is to look at the context behind the piece of writing.
The time period the novel/movie/play is set in is often a good indicator of what the author is saying. The author will often be using their text as a means by which they can comment on or critique one or more elements of that society, or perhaps as a metaphor for events that are occurring at the time the text is/was written. Alternatively, they may be portraying their view about the events that actually occurred during that time. For example, if you have a text that is set in the Georgian era, it is likely that the author’s message has something to do with colonialism or imperialist mindsets (zeitgeists) because this was a very dominant theme in that society.
Some other reasons you might consider an author having could include:
to highlight the importance of something
to criticise a behaviour or mindset
to ridicule certain actions
to warn against something
to discourage people from doing something
to convey certain political messages or controversial opinions
Realistically there is a broad range of things that the author could be saying, it's your job to pinpoint what that really is.
Once you’ve determined what it is the author is generally talking about, you then need to start thinking about the way that this has been represented. This is where you start to bring in the characters, the events, the dialogue, the inner monologues. Basically, you start looking for the elements that the author has added, not necessarily for a story-telling purpose but, more so, to convey their views and values through the text. This isn’t always going to jump right out at you so there may be a bit of deeper thinking involved.
Another good place to start is to try to identify the central themes of a text. This might be something like ‘Judgement’, ‘Redemption’, ‘Guilt’, etc. The author wouldn't have made these themes so relevant if they didn't have anything to say about them. Once again, this is where you look at the quotes, the setting, the characters and other features (as mentioned before) just with a more theme-focused approach.
Useful Vocabulary & Sentence Examples
When you come to actually putting together a paragraph, it is really important that you don’t forget to include authorial intent at some stage (at least once per paragraph). If you work with a TEEL structure (watch from 05:10) as the baseline, these kinds of comments about the author’s intent would usually be located within the ‘explanation’ section. A good way to double-check that you’ve incorporated authorial intent is to go back through your paragraph and make sure that the author’s name is in there somewhere. If you’ve talked about authorial intent you likely will have said something like:
‘In doing so, (Author) condones the (whatever it is they condone).’
Sentence Templates
Below are some sample sentence structures that you might think about using throughout your essays. Obviously, the particular vocabulary will vary depending on what your text is and which message you are talking about, but these are good as a guide.
Through (example from text) AUTHOR (offers, provides, asserts) a (condemnation, evaluation…) of (idea, theme, concept, action…)
E.g. Through emphasising the internal struggle faced by Rooke during the floggings, Grenville offers a condemnation of the Empire’s heinous approach to loyalty, as the threat of ‘wirling at the end of the rope’ essentially forces individuals to value duty over conscience. (The Lieutenant)
In doing so, AUTHOR (establishes, condemns, reveals…)
E.g. In doing so, Miller reveals the self-destructive nature of religious extremism in breeding instability and conflict. (The Crucible)
(scene, event…) allows AUTHOR to (suggest, convey, assert,…) that
E.g. Her sorrowful pleas that ‘she beg me to make charm’, fraught with grammatical errors, allow Miller to saliently illustrate the gulf that exists between the vulnerable outcasts such as Tituba and more privileged individuals within a community, in this case, Reverend Parris. (The Crucible)
AUTHOR’s depiction of (character) as (courageous, morally conscious, selfish…) emphasises their belief that…
E.g. Ham’s depiction of Teddy as a morally conscious and genuine individual emphasises her belief that it is possible to transcend the social codes enforced by one’s community.(The Dressmaker)
AUTHOR’s suggestion that… (serves as a reminder, highlights, emphasises the importance of…)
E.g. Euripides’ blatant suggestion that the fate of most of these women is in servitude and sexual slavery is a damning reminder that the victims of war are not just those killed during the conflict. (Women of Troy)
(Hence, thus, as a result…) AUTHOR asserts that…
E.g. Thus, Euripides asserts that victory in war ultimately proves futile as loss will inevitably be suffered somewhat equally by both sides. (Women of Troy)
Evident through AUTHOR’s (characters’ actions/dialogue/section of text…) is the idea that…
E.g. Evident through Miller’s depiction of the struggles faced by Goody Osburn and Goody Good is the idea that where geographical isolation and strict moral codes render a community intolerant, the marginalisation and ostracisation of those who do not fit the societal mould is inevitable. (The Crucible)
Through (action, quote, scene…) AUTHOR seeks to…
E.g. Through highlighting the harm which can result from individuals utilising their power to manipulate situations, Ham seeks to expose the damages caused by ignoring the truth, particularly when done so for personal benefit. (The Dressmaker)
---
If you’ve gotten to this point then hopefully that means that you are starting to get a better understanding of what authorial intent actually is, the thought processes that go into finding it and why it is such a useful and important element to analyse. Most importantly, I hope that you can at least start recognising the way that the author’s voice comes through in the particular texts that you are studying, and that you can start looking at including some of those observations and ideas when you're writing your responses.
Authorial Intent is an aspect that's going to be relevant to Text Response & Comparative for the most part, but it's also handy to understand for Language Analysis!
Get our FREE VCE English Text Response mini-guide
Now quite sure how to nail your text response essays? Then download our free mini-guide, where we break down the art of writing the perfect text-response essay into three comprehensive steps.
Station Eleven is usually studied in the Australian curriculum under Area of Study 1 - Text Response. For a detailed guide on Text Response, check out our Ultimate Guide to VCE Text Response.
Summary
“Twenty years after the end of air travel, the caravans of the Travelling Symphony moved slowly under a white-hot sky.”
When you think about post-apocalyptic science fiction stories, what kind of thing comes to mind first? Maybe an alien invasion, Pacific Rim style monsters perhaps, and almost always the mad scramble of a protagonist to stockpile resources and protect their loved ones from the imminent chaos and destruction—these are tropes which are tried and tested in this genre.
What mightn’t come to mind as immediately is a story about a travelling Shakespeare troupe wandering the North American continent decades after the actual apocalypse has struck, which is exactly the story that Mandel tells in Station Eleven.
While post-apocalyptic tales tend to focus on the action around the impact of a fictional disaster, Mandel’s novel speaks to the attitudes and characteristics of people which drive any action that occurs. She interrogates central questions about human society, inviting readers to consider what human qualities can endure even an apocalypse, what qualities are timeless.
Characters
A tale of two timelines: part one
“…once we’re seen, that’s not enough anymore. After that, we want to be remembered.”
Part of the novel’s ambition is that while it’s set 20 years after the apocalyptic Georgia Flu, it constantly reaches decades into the past to search for meaning. In particular, the novel’s central character is Arthur Leander, an actor whose death coincides with the breakout of the Flu. Tracing his origins from obscurity to fame, Mandel juxtaposes his philandering and untrustworthy behaviour with repeated attempts to be a better person, or perhaps just be more true to himself, before his death. We’ll eventually see that many of his actions have consequences years into the future.
Arguably equally important in legacy is his first wife, Miranda Carroll, whose comics lend the novel its title. Take this with a grain of salt—she’s kind of my favourite character—but the time and energy she invests in the Station Eleven comics are arguably the most valuable investment of the novel. Her comics survive her in the years following the Flu, and are a source of escape and purpose for others just as they had been for herself.
Both of these characters come into contact with Jeevan Chaudhary, a paparazzo and journalist who regularly follows Arthur though his career, photographing Miranda in a vulnerable moment before her divorce, and booking an interview with Arthur years later as he plans to leave his second wife Elizabeth Colton. We see Jeevan struggle with his purpose in life throughout the novel, though it can be said that he ultimately finds it after the Flu, when he is working as a medic.
Finally, there’s Clark Thompson, Arthur’s friend from college who remains loyal, though not necessarily uncritical, of him all throughout his life. As the Flu first arrives in America, Clark is just leaving for Toronto, but a Flu outbreak there causes his flight to be redirected to Severn City Airport, where he and others miraculously survive in what will become a key setting of the novel.
A tale of two timelines: part two
“I stood looking over my damaged home and tried to forget the sweetness of life on Earth.”
All of this finally puts us in a position to think analytically about characters in the ‘present’ timeline, that is, 20 years after the Flu. We experience the present mostly through the perspective of Kirsten Raymonde, a performer who survived the Flu as a young child. Because she was so young when it happened, many of the traumas she experienced have been erased by her mind, and she struggles to piece together what she lost in a quest for identity and meaning, largely driven by her vague memories of Arthur. She travels with the Travelling Symphony with others such as Alexandra, August and the conductor—they have collectively adopted the motto, “survival is insufficient.”
Through the story, they are pursued by the prophet, later revealed to be Tyler Leander, the child of Arthur and Elizabeth who survived and grew up in the decades following the Flu outbreak. A religious extremist, he becomes the leader of a cult of fanatics who amass weapons and conquer towns by force. Both Kirsten and Tyler pursue the Station Eleven comics, quoted above—they each possess a copy, and resonate strongly with the struggles of the characters created by Miranda.
(CW: suicide) Also important is Jeevan’s brother, Frank, a paraplegic author who was writing about a philanthropist in the last days before his death, whereby he kills himself so as to give his brother a better chance of surviving. While he isn’t a particularly major character, his writing on morality and mortality (quoted with the first batch of characters) are symbolically and thematically important.
______
By the way, to download a PDF version of this blog for printing or offline use, click here!
______
Themes
Part 1
“That’s what passes for a life…that’s what passes for happiness, for most people…they’re like sleepwalkers…”
These characters already speak to some of the major themes that formulate the novel. On one hand, Mandel explores various meanings of contemporary or modern civilisation. We live in a technology-driven age where constraints of time and space mean less than ever before. For example, people are mobile through space thanks to airplanes and telephones, and the internet means that any and all information is available to anyone, all the time. Mandel constantly looks back at this society and describes it in terms of our technology: for example, “the era when it was possible to press a series of buttons on a telephone and speak with someone on the far side of the earth.” On one level, she comments on how many of these minor miracles are taken for granted in our every day lives.
On another level, these elements of society also give rise to the culture of celebrity in our lives, as high-profile figures are put under increasing pressure to maintain appearances at all times, and lead increasingly ‘perfect’ lives as a result. These were pressures that Arthur struggled to live up to, and his “failed marriages” accompanied his career at all stages. The flip side of this is that people who follow celebrities, such as Jeevan, lead increasingly emptier and more vacuous lives—and Jeevan is well-aware of this, telling Miranda that he doesn’t seek a greater purpose in life beyond making money. This lack of purpose, this ennui, is something that tints much of society through the eyes of Mandel.
Another major theme which the lives of these characters start to explore is the value of art as a source of purpose. While civilisation is portrayed as fragile and meaningless, art—in all its forms, including creating, reproducing, performing and consuming—is a way for people such as Miranda to understand, process and escape their lives. This theme is arguably the most important, as it tethers different parts of the novel together; even after the apocalypse, people turn to art as a way of understanding and connecting to others as well as to themselves.
Part 2
“The more you remember, the more you’ve lost.”
Inevitably with this genre, survival and mortality are major themes, as massive populations of people have died and continue to die due to the impacts of the Georgia Flu. To some extent, survivor’s guilt motivates many to search for a deeper meaning to their survival, hence the motto of the Symphony. It also drives them to turn to art as we’ve explored, since bare subsistence isn’t enough to give their lives the meaning they desire. Maybe this is what it means to be human.
On the other hand, the Flu also turns others to religious extremity, as is the case with Elizabeth, Tyler and the rest of their cult. This speaks to broader ideas about faith, fate and spirituality—are there greater forces out there who manipulate events in our world? Certainly, there are enough coincidences in the novel for this theory to be valid; even just Kirsten and Tyler both having copies of Station Eleven and both acting under the influence of Arthur is so coincidental.
However, perhaps the most important theme here is memory. Mandel ultimately puts this as the central question to readers: is memory more of a blessing or a burden? Is it preferable to remember everything you’ve lost, or be ignorant of it all? I’m not sure she really answers this one, to be honest. Various symbols—and even the constantly shifting narrative perspective—evoke the epic sense of loss in the apocalypse, and yet encountering characters like Alexandra, who never really knew what the internet was, makes you rethink that loss; perhaps it is better to have experienced the internet at all.
Symbols
“People want what was best about the world”
There’s a category of symbols in the novel that represent memories of technology. Consider the discarded phones and credit cards in the Museum of Civilisations, all mementos of what the world lost. Note that, given Mandel’s ambivalent commentary about modern society, not all that was lost is bad—the credit card embodies the materialism and consumerism that drive our world today, and shedding it may be construed as a form of liberty, in fact.
It is airplanes, however, that serve as the greatest reminder. Their sudden disappearance from the sky becomes a constant reminder of how the world changed, and people still look up in the hopes of seeing an airborne plane; they cling onto the hope that maybe, just maybe, all of this can somehow be reversed. The last flights of the human race—pilots attempting to return home to be with their loved ones—are also made in hope, though their outcomes are consistently unclear.
In this sense, airplanes can also be seen as a source of fading hope, or rather, despair. For one, it was the very mobility afforded by planes which caused the Flu to spread around the world so rapidly. Now, confined to the ground forever, they represent the immobility of humans in the present. They also take on meanings of death, and in particular, the final airplane that landed at Severn City Airport, quarantined with people still on board, represents the difficult decisions that have to be made in order to survive. The mausoleum plane also pushes Tyler further into religious extremism, as he reads the bible to the now-artefact in an attempt to justify the deaths of everyone on board.
These symbols highlight the jarring difference between the world before and after the Flu, but on the other hand, there are also symbols which connect the two worlds; the importance of print cannot be underemphasised here. Anything that was printed—photographs, comics, TV guides, books—are all enduring sources of knowledge and comfort for Flu survivors, and basically become the only way for children born after the Flu to remember our world, a world that they never actually lived in.
“First, we only want to be seen, but once we’re seen, that’s not enough anymore. After that, we want to be remembered.” Characters from Station Eleven who die with the Georgia Flu are immortalised in memories, also greatly influencing events two decades later. Discuss.
Explore the perspectives offered in Station Eleven regarding survival.
How does St John Mandel highlight the degree of losses caused by the Georgia Flu?
Kirsten and Tyler are more similar than they are different. To what extent do you agree?
The use of shifting narrative perspective in Station Eleven is crucial to its storytelling effect. Discuss.
Station Eleven suggests that beauty can be found in unlikely places. Do you agree?
Some forms of technology have been rendered unusable in Station Eleven’s Year Twenty—discuss the new purpose/s of these forms of technology.
The memories of characters in Station Eleven’s Year Twenty have been distorted over time. Is this true?
It is impossible to feel any sympathy for the prophet. To what extent do you agree?
“God, why won’t our phones work? I so wish I could tweet this…just chilling with Arthur Leander’s kid at the end of the world.” Station Eleven is a critique of modern society’s obsession with celebrity. Discuss.
How do various forms of art play a central role in Station Eleven?
Fame and anonymity are shown to be equally intoxicating in Station Eleven. Do you agree?
Station Eleven demonstrates that events that seem insignificant can have remarkable consequences in the future. Discuss.
Throughout Station Eleven’s various timelines, innocence is always inevitably lost. Is this a fair statement?
Arthur Leander and his son are equally contemptible yet tragic at the same time. Do you agree?
Head over to our Station Eleven Study Guidefor more sample essay topics, so you can practice writing essays using the analysis you've learnt from this blog!
A+ Essay Topic Breakdown
Whenever you get a new essay topic, you can use LSG’s THINK and EXECUTE strategy, a technique to help you write better VCE essays. This essay topic breakdown will focus on the THINK part of the strategy. If you’re unfamiliar with this strategy, then check it out in How To Write A Killer Text Response.
Within the THINK strategy, we have 3 steps, or ABC. These ABC components are:
Step 1: Analyse
Step 2: Brainstorm
Step 3: Create a Plan
Have a watch of this video to see how we broke down an essay topic:
[Video Transcript]
Although this is something that might be a little more text-specific, the main takeaway of today’s video is to be flexible in how you mentally arrange a text’s plot. This is especially handy in stories that are non-linear, so stories that flip between perspectives or timelines, as this one does. Being across a text like this will give you greater flexibility in putting together your ideas. I think this might be clearer if I just show you!
In the meantime though, let’s have a bit of a chat about the text.
Station Eleven is Emily St John Mandel’s take on the tried-and-tested sub-genre of post-apocalyptic science fiction. Only, her attempt doesn’t actually explore new forms of technology, nor the immediate action-packed grab-and-dash that we normally associate with an apocalypse. Instead, she takes us two decades down the track to look at how human society has changed as a result. She also highlights some elements of society that are eternal and timeless, that survive and persevere no matter what.
Today’s topic is:
Despite his virtues, Arthur Leander is essentially a bad man. Do you agree?
If you’re familiar with what we do at LSG, you might be familiar with our Five Types strategy. Basically, it’s a method for students to group categorise prompts into types, and by doing so, you get an immediate idea of how to approach an essay question and some things that you must include, along with things you mustn’t.
And out of the 5 types, this prompt is character-based, through and through. It poses us the difficult task of deciphering the ethics and morality of an individual in the text. Immediately, if you write on this prompt, you must know Arthur pretty damn well! It pays to be strategic — if you don’t know Arthur all that in a SAC or exam, pick another question if possible.
The key words in this one are fairly self-explanatory. You’ve got “virtues” on the one hand, which basically refers to being good or having good morals, and “badman” on the other. What’s important is how we define them in the context of the essay, so we need to consider the ways in which Arthur is both virtuous and bad and make sure these are clear in our intro.
Also, the prompt is suggesting that Arthur Leander is ‘bad’ at his core, because of the word “essentially.” This is the part where there’s a little bit of room to challenge, since there is a lot of evidence that might suggest he isn’t all bad.
Before we dive into the plan, you might want to pause here for a minute and write down what you find to be Arthur’s top two virtues and worst two flaws. Go on, do it!
For me, I think that he’s ambitious and determined in his career, and he can be kind to others in his personal life. However, he also has a philandering or womanising side, and can be neglectful of his family and friends. I would also consider whether or not his legacy was favourable, unflattering, or mixed. Did he leave behind more positivity in the world, or less, when he died?
Let’s arrange this into paragraphs.
Paragraph one
Arthur is flawed in the way he treats others, manifested in his inconsiderate actions, misogynistic tendencies and raising of Tyler.
I think it’d be hard to argue that Arthur is a flawless character whom it would be unfair to call “bad.” We know that Arthur was unfaithful, and many saw his life as being “summed up in a series of failed marriages.” We know that he treats women as interchangeable objects rather than as people, not only his wives but also his childhood friend Victoria. We also know that he neglects his children, missing Tyler’s birthday for work, as well as his friends, with his increasingly disingenuous and strained relationship with Clark.
In terms of mentally rearranging elements of the story, it might be worth noting here how his bad traits manifested in his son, Tyler. Making a connection between these two timelines may help us realise that in many ways, Tyler is just a more perverse version of his father—he too treats women like possessions, and doesn’t really have a family so much as a community of followers.
Paragraph two
Arguably, Arthur’s selfish traits stem from his Hollywood fame, career and lifestyle.
Fundamentally, he was never this flaky, unreliable person before he was swept away by fame. From a young age, he was determined that he was “going to be an actor and…going to be good,” and the drive with which he pursues this career is undoubtedly virtuous and admirable. Along the way, he offers Miranda a way out of her abusive and one-sided relationship, validating her own “pursuit of happiness.”
So looking at the ‘bookends’ of Arthur’s life, it can be argued that he’s actually essentially a good person. Before Hollywood taints him, and after he realises how much he has been tainted, Arthur does actually demonstrate a lot of virtue.
Paragraph three
However, overall, Arthur leaves behind a positive legacy that reflects that despite his shortcomings, he is fundamentally a good man who has been tainted by immoral habits and attitudes.
Here, the discussion surrounds Arthur’s legacy—is he remembered as a good person? In what ways does Arthur live on? The photographs that Kirsten finds along her journey depict Arthur shielding Miranda from the paparazzi and spending time with his son, and these are lasting memories of his virtues which haven’t been destroyed by the Flu. Consider also the “whispers” and “glances” that plagued him during his life, and we can’t help but wonder what kind of man he would’ve been in a world with less people and less scrutiny.
And there you have it! Hopefully, you can see what I meant at the start about rearranging bits of the book. For example, these photographs belong in Kirsten’s timeline and are discovered through her point of view, but there isn’t any reason why you can’t connect them to elements of Arthur’s character more broadly. Also, even just by looking at the start and end of Arthur’s life without the middle changes how we interpret him as a character. It’s this kind of flexibility that will serve you well in this text study.
If you'd like to see an A+ essay on the essay topic above, complete with annotations on HOW and WHY the essays achieved A+ so you can emulate this same success, then you'll definitely want to check out our Station Eleven Study Guide: A Killer Text Guide! In it, we also cover themes, characters, views and values, metalanguage and have 4 other sample A+ essays completely annotated so you can smash your next SAC or exam! Check it out here.
For more Station Eleven writing samples, you might like to take a look at this blog post, which compares three different paragraphs and analyses how they improve upon one another.
1.'The fantasy never got beyond that—I didn't let it—and though the tears rolled down my face, I wasn't sobbing or out of control. I just waited a bit, then turned back to the car, to drive off to wherever it was I was supposed to be.'
Compare how a perceived sense of control shapes characters in both Never Let Me Go and Stasiland.
2. Compare how the texts explore the importance of memory in defining identity.
3. 'To conform is to be safe and to survive.'
Compare how this idea is examined in both texts.
4.'I'll have Hailsham with me, safely in my head, and that'll be something no one can take away.' (Never Let Me Go)
Compare how these texts explore the consequences of denying history for affected individuals.
5. Compare how Never Let Me Go and Stasiland examine what it means to be human.
6. Compare how both texts explore the influence of being an outsider on one's understanding of society and their place in the world.
7.'This society, it was built on lies – lie after lie after lie.' (Stasiland)
Compare what the two texts say about wilful ignorance in society.
8. 'It is impossible to be free when you are unaware of your confines.'
Compare how the two texts explore freedom and confinement.
9. 'When I got out of prison, I was basically no longer human.' (Stasiland)
'Poor creatures. What did we do to you?' (Never Let Me Go)
Compare how Never Let Me Go and Stasiland explore how humanity can be irreparably broken.
10. Compare how these texts examine the sacrifices required for societal progression and change.
11. Compare what the two texts say about the inevitability of change and being forgotten.
12. Compare the ways these texts explore the influence of different types of human relationships on the individual.
13.'Things have been put behind glass, but they are not yet over.' (Stasiland)
Compare how Never Let Me Go and Stasiland demonstrate differing attitudes towards reality and the past.
14. Compare what the two texts suggest about the factors which shape an individual's world view.
15. 'We took away your art because we thought it would reveal your souls. Or to put it more finely, we did it to prove you had souls at all.' (Never Let Me Go)
'...a soul buckled out of shape, forever.' (Stasiland)
Compare how Never Let Me Go and Stasiland explore the concept of souls in relation to one's identity.
We've curated essay prompts based off our The Golden Age Study Guide which explores themes, characters, and quotes.
Before getting started on your own essay writing using our essay topics, feel free to watch the video below where Lisa brainstorms and breaks down the topic:
"The Golden Age is primarily a tragic tale of isolation. Discuss"
If you're looking for more support, including a sample The Golden Age essay, Vindhya (English study score of 46) offers her take on how to write an essay in Dissecting an A+ Essay.
LSG-curated The Golden Age essay topics
1. “Being close made them stronger.” In The Golden Age, adversities are tempered by camaraderie. Do you agree?
2. Despite the grim context, The Golden Age highlights and celebrates the potential of life. Discuss.
3. Memories of past successes and failures have significant lingering effects on characters in The Golden Age. Is this an accurate assessment?
4. “[I would be] a fox, following a Palomino.” How do animals such as these contribute symbolically to The Golden Age?
5. It is largely loneliness which defines the struggles of the children in The Golden Age. Discuss.
6. In what ways is The Golden Age a novel of displacement?
7. Fear of the unknown is something which permeates The Golden Age. Is this true?
8. What is the role of family in Joan London’s The Golden Age?
9. Isolation in The Golden Age exists in many oppressive forms. Discuss.
10. Throughout The Golden Age, London draws attention to beauty rather than to suffering. Discuss.
11. In spite of their youth, it is the children of The Golden Age who understand best what it means to be an individual in the world. Do you agree?
12. How do characters from The Golden Age learn, grow and mature as the novel takes its course?
13. Due to the range of different onset stories, each of the children and their families in The Golden Age face a different struggle with their identity. Discuss.
14. “Home. She hadn’t called Hungary that for years.” In spite of all their struggle, the Golds never truly feel any sense of belonging in Australia. To what extent do you agree?
15. Explore the factors which drive Joan London’s characters to persevere.
The Golden Age is usually studied in the Australian curriculum under Area of Study 1 - Text Response. For a detailed guide on Text Response, check out our Ultimate Guide to VCE Text Response.
Maxine Beneba Clarke’s seminal novel, The Hate Race, follows the childhood and adolescence of its author, who is the main protagonist. The book is a memoir, meaning that it is based around a recollection of her life and filtered through her psyche and experiences.
The book begins with Clarke’s family, British citizens of Afro-Carribean descent, moving to Sydney, New South Wales. They settle in the town of Kellyville, which is known as a ‘white picket’ community. Although these communities largely don't exist anymore, what they once described was suburban environments where only Anglo-Australians lived. As you can probably imagine, this immediately caused problems for Clarke’s family, with suspicion from neighbours and racist interactions with other kids in the neighbourhood.
Clarke initially focuses on her experiences in kindergarten, revealing how prejudice and discrimination can be inculcated (meaning, ‘taught to’) in children even from such a tender age. Clarke meets her first tormenter - Carlita Allen. Carlita makes every effort to exclude Clarke from participation in usual preschool activities, hurling insults across playgrounds and calling her ‘dirty’. Literally, of course, Carlita is referring to Clarke’s black skin colour, but, metaphorically, it reflects the deeply hateful implication that anyone with a dark complexion is inherently inferior and lesser than white Australians.
The bullying doesn’t stop by the time Clarke reaches primary school. In fact, it intensifies, aided and abetted by teachers who consistently turn a blind eye to the constant, gut-wrenching racial abuse. One of the most salient (meaning, ‘important’) scenes arises when Clarke is asked by a teacher what her parents do for a living. Upon informing the teacher that her mother is an actor, and her father is a Mathematics Professor - the first British citizen of Afro-Carribean descent to attend a British university - she is met with the patronising assumption that she must be lying. Surely black people wouldn’t have the emotional and intellectual intelligence to perform such high-powered jobs? Clarke also develops eczema during her primary school years, leaving patches of lighter-coloured skin covering her face, and a newfound hope that, bit by bit, God is answering her prayers and making her white.
In high school, the racist rot sets in even further. Clarke develops a new habit for scratching her skin at night to the point of bleeding and bruising. Looking back at this experience, Clarke theorises that this was her body’s way of expressing her extreme discomfort with being black. It gives us a picture of how horrific racism can truly be, and the ways in which it forces minorities into believing that there’s something wrong with them, instead of there being something wrong with the people hurling abuse in the first instance!
It is this stage of her life when Clarke deals with one of the most difficult parts of being a minority in a majority white country. Through her interactions with teachers, friends and boyfriends alike, she becomes deeply angry at those people who abhor racism themselves, but seem unable to step in when racist events are actually occurring. Clarke also deals with more nuanced experiences of racism - people who don’t intend to be racist, but end up making insensitive comments anyway. Whether intentional or not, these comments still hurt, and are still part of the challenges of growing up black in a white country.
Nonetheless, Clarke continues to rise above the odds, becoming a prolific high school debater, maintaining her position at the top of the academic cohort, and forming a small but tight-knit group of friends whom she can trust.
Clarke’s recollection of her childhood ends on a relatively abrupt note, with Clarke returning home to realise that her father has left the family for another woman. In a note to the family, he provides no explanation other than that he had a secret affair for many years. Suddenly, Clarke, her brothers, sisters and mother are left to pick up the pieces.
In the epilogue, Clarke is now an adult with a child of her own. Walking down Melbourne’s North Road, she reflects on the challenges and opportunities to which her child will be witness. Clarke portrays it as the dual sadness and happiness of knowing that, in Australia, her children will surely have access to more opportunity than in most parts of the world - but it will come at a cost. Namely, they will also have to contend with the remaining undercurrent of racism that, even now, still seeps through Australian society.
The unsatisfying end to the novel reflects the nature of racism and the experience of a minority growing up in a white country itself: there is no happy ending. Rather, life becomes a series of painful incidents interspersed with minor victories; those who stand up against racism, those who fail to do so and the hundreds of thousands of Australians who will forever grapple with a society that sees them as ‘lesser than’ due to the colour of their skin.
Summary - Charlie’s Country
Charlie’s Country, an Australian movie directed by Dutch-Australian Rolf De Heer, follows the story of Charlie, a First Nations man living in late-2000s Australia.
The movie is set in the wake of the 2007 Northern Territory Intervention. As a bit of quick context, this was an action taken by the Commonwealth Government under Coalition Prime Minister John Howard to send Australian Defence Force troops into the Northern Territory. It came in response to the ‘Little Children are Sacred’ report, which raised allegations of child sexual abuse and neglect of children in Aboriginal communities. The intervention also involved restricting alcohol consumption, quarantining a portion of welfare payments to Indigenous residents (with the justification that this would prevent it being spent on alcohol, pornography, cigarettes, etc.) and hefty fines as well as jail sentences for those forced to comply.
It is important to note that, throughout the whole intervention, not a single person was prosecuted for child sexual abuse or any related offence. Nonetheless, this intervention had real world, drastic consequences - and that’s exactly what Charlie’s Country explores.
At the time of de Heer’s film, Charlie lives in a remote Indigenous community. Signs of the intervention are all around - alcohol is banned from most communities, many individuals face personal bans on procuring alcohol, police officers dot the streets and citizens live under constant watch. Charlie, on a surface level, is a fairly happy-go-lucky individual; he exchanges jokes with police, is friendly with other elders and people in his community and doesn’t seem to do much else.
As always with a movie like this - there’s a bigger story behind this all! Rolf de Heer takes us through an increasingly concerning image of Aboriginal communities in the wake of the intervention. Charlie visits his local housing officer and is unable to obtain a house. Here, we see that Charlie is willing to work and wants stable accommodation, but the government is unwilling to provide.
Going on a hunting trip with his friend, ‘Black Pete’, the two are stopped by police and have their guns, as well as the water buffalo they killed, confiscated. Yet again, two Indigenous men try to provide for themselves - but are stopped by a legal system more concerned with rules and procedure than listening to First Nations communities themselves. Charlie decides he’s had enough of having his every move and action monitored, and takes a stolen police car into the bush.
Abandoning the car, he tries to live amongst nature for an unidentified amount of time. Cooking fish, performing traditional First Nations dances, painting on the bark and looking for shelter, Charlie finally appears to be home. Yet, as usual, it’s too good to be true - the extreme cold makes Charlie incredibly sick, and, before we know it, he wakes up in a Darwin hospital.
After refusing further treatment from the white doctors who fail to understand Charlie’s situation and why he is so angry at what’s happened to him, the predictable cycle begins again: Charlie returns to his community, they all share alcohol as a way of coping with their current situation and flee when the police come running to confiscate the liquor.
Charlie isn’t civil with the police this time. In a fit of anger - an outburst of emotion after decades upon decades of control and being denied access to any opportunity - he picks up a bat and smashes the police officer’s car window. Brutally beaten into submission, Charlie is imprisoned as the police officer remarks that he should never have 'gone soft on a blackfella’.
Dragged before the courts, Charlie is imprisoned for assault. When the judge asks him to make a comment, he gives a lengthy speech in his native language. For de Heer, this acts as a symbolic assertion of the First Nations’ rights to their own culture, and a proud statement against the many governments that have continually placed barriers in the way of Indigenous Australians having the same opportunities as any one of us.
Eventually, Charlie is released on parole. He expresses a deep desire to go home - but also a sense of defeat. He resolves, in the end, to believe that even if he will always live under the watchful eyes of the Australian Government, he can at least fight back and contribute by doing his bit to maintain the many cultures of our First Nations Peoples. Charlie teaches young Indigenous boys traditional dances, speaking proudly of when he performed a dancing ceremony for Queen Elizabeth in 1973 at the Sydney Opera House.
The movie ends with Charlie staring mournfully into the camera, almost looking at the audience themselves. There seems to be no happiness in his eyes - nothing left but a sense of sadness and resignation. I know that, upon approaching the end of the film, I started to feel the same sadness that Charlie so evidently shows us. It’s a different type of emotion; one centered around the pain of knowing that we live in a country that still has not made peace with its past, and refuses to listen to the First Nations Peoples who know it best.
Charlie’s Country exposes to us that Australia isa country where, even today, our First Nations citizens are not treated as equals. As such, de Heer’s film is a stark reminder that this state of affairs is not good enough - and that the responsibility for change doesn’t just lie with politicians and decision-makers. It’s our job too:and failure is not an option.
2. Themes, Motifs and Key Ideas
Through discussing Themes, Motifs and Key Ideas, we’ll gain a clearer understanding of some super important ideas to include in your essays. Remember that, when it comes to themes, there’s a whole host of ways you can express your ideas, but this is what I’d suggest as the most impressive method to blow away the VCAA examiners. We’ll be adhering to the CONVERGENTand DIVERGENTstrategy. While we don’t go into detail into how to use LSG’s CONVERGENT and DIVERGENT strategy in this guide, I’d highly recommend you get familiar with it by reading How To Write A Killer Comparative.
Connection to Culture (CONVERGENT)
Both de Heer and Clarke offer a unified idea around culture: that being connected to one’s culture is inherently good and positive, and should be encouraged. Let’s break this down.
The Hate Race and Charlie’s Country are both works that explore the challenges of individuals maintaining their culture in surroundings which would otherwise see them revert to the ‘standard’. In this case, because we’re talking about Australia, de Heer and Clarke take us through the same story of an overarching, implicit acceptance that the Christian, Anglo way of life is the norm. This standard has deep roots in the colonisation of Australia, and the resulting claim of sovereignty by the Crown. Even as this country has evolved into a multicultural land, it still bears the marks of a ‘European’ country; whether that be our British legal system, Anglo-American democracy or any of the other institutions we have taken from the Western world.
It is in this context that de Heer and Clarke go to special lengths to explain why people should be empowered to connect to their culture. To our author and director, culture is an essential element of who you are, and it is this identity which carries people through life. For Maxine, the shock of realising that she may be the descendant of African slaves, and had lived so many years without having any idea this may be the case, is drawn from the fact that she, as a child, feels incredibly disconnected to who she is. Clarke’s memoir thus reminds us that ‘growing up black in a white country’ is an experience that often results in minority children not truly learning about who they are. Travelling through life, Maxine is continually disconnected from her culture, to the point where performing ‘African tribal dances’ to the school is nothing more than a joke. Even in her own estimation, Maxine has internalised (meaning, she’s adopted it herself) the view that her culture is irrelevant, and there’s no real reason for her to properly engage with all its complexity and beauty.
If we consider Charlie’s perspective, his involuntary burst of tears at the hospital stems from a recognition that his people have been denied the free opportunity to embrace the world’s longest-surviving culture; the First Nations traditions that date back 40,000 years. With his friend slowly dying of lung cancer, at that moment, the old man is more connected to the cigarettes that slowly sapped his life away than he is to the First Nations way of living. Unable to hunt, gather as a community, work the lands as the First Nations traditionally would or embark on any other activity that would keep them connected to their culture, this country’s first inhabitants are instead told to abandon ‘the old ways’ and embrace Anglocentric standards of life.
It is a shocking reminder that, without culture, people are left like driftwood swimming through a vast ocean. By that, I mean that people are left without an anchor through which they can independently experience the world. Instead, their understanding of themselves, their sense of self and their actions in life are all filtered through the preferences of the dominant majority.
Intergenerational Disadvantage (DIVERGENT)
Whilst Charlie’s Country and The Hate Race share many similarities in terms of the negative impacts of racism and prejudice, the texts carry different connotations when it comes to the notion of intergenerational disadvantage.
To explain this idea, let’s first define and unpack ‘intergenerational disadvantage’. We could spend days talking about this, but, simply, intergenerational disadvantage refers to cycles of poverty and criminality that pass from generation to generation, worsening with time. Think of it this way: assume you’re a teenager - or at least still financially reliant on your parents. If your parents were to lose everything they owned today in a massive financial crisis, you’d be in big trouble too, right? Suddenly, that part-time job you had that was helping you save money might be the only income for the entire family. You might even have to drop out of school, TAFE or university to care for everyone, denying you a higher paying job in the future.
You’ll have to work your tail off for years on end. Since you’re supporting an entire family, say goodbye to saving up for a house or to pay for your kid’s education in future. Your kids now have to start from square one with less opportunity than the people around them, meaning it’ll be harder for them to succeed in life.
When we apply this to Charlie’s Country, the analogy becomes quite clear. Charlie lives in a community where there is no opportunity. Because there are no jobs - and no real way to gain steady, meaningful employment - people fall into alcoholism, marijuana and anything else that’ll help them cope. Lung cancer and alcoholism shorten lifespans for people like the old man with failing kidneys, while no employer is going to waste a chance on those still living. There is simply no ability to ‘succeed’ here, because the local residents don’t see that there’s anything worth working towards. Hopeless, unheard and disillusioned, it becomes easier for Charlie’s community to just accept their sorry lot in life than futilely work towards changing it.
We aren’t made witness to this same cycle in The Hate Race. Instead, Bordeaux Clarke is the epitome of someone who has broken the cycle of intergenerational disadvantage; becoming the first individual in his community to attend a British university. Marrying a high-powered Guyanese actress in Cleopatra, the married couple represent success and a defiance of racist stereotypes, not the grinding poverty and disadvantage we see in Charlie’s Country. Although Maxine experiences terrible discrimination and prejudice as a child, there is always a sense that she will academically remain on top. Maxine uses the prejudice with which she’s faced as a motivator, giving her the impetus to consistently emerge successful; whether that be in her schooling, cross-country running, as a debater or any other academic endeavour. Sure, she faces racism that inhibits her from always succeeding - the Lions Club competition is a great example of such - but this isn’t so much about intergenerational disadvantage as it is about racism, plain and simple.
Ultimately, the difference between the two is a matter of emphasis. It’s not that intergenerational disadvantage doesn’t exist in The Hate Race, but more so that Clarke is choosing to focus on how even the most successful individuals can suffer from prejudice and racism. This in turn helps us to understand that racism impacts everyone, and we should never pretend it isn’t a massive problem. Conversely, Charlie’s Country is all about social disadvantage, and explores how prejudice can prevent oppressed individuals from becoming successful in the first place.
3. LSG’s Bubble Tea (BBT) Strategy for Unique Strategies
Why Is an Interpretation Important?
Your interpretation is what English is all about; it’s about getting you to think critically about the essay topic at hand, to formulate a contention (agree, disagree, or sit on the fence) and argue each of your points with the best pieces of evidence you can find - and it’s something you might already be starting to do naturally.
In this section, we aim to help you develop your own interpretation of the text, rather than relying on your teacher, tutor or even a study guide (including this one) author’s interpretation. By developing your own interpretation, you become a better English student by:
Writing with meaning. For a text to be interpreted, you need a text and an interpreter (i.e. you!). Whenever we read a new text, our interpretation of a text is shaped by our pre-existing beliefs, knowledge and expectations. This should be reassuring because it means that you can leverage your own life experiences in developing a unique interpretation of the text! We’ll show you how this works in the next point.
Remembering evidence (quotes or literary devices) more easily. If you know you admire a character for example (which is in itself an interpretation 😉), you can probably remember why you admire them. Perhaps the character’s selflessness reminds you of your Dad (see how you’re using real life experiences mentioned in Point 1 to develop an interpretation of the text?). You will then more easily recall something the character said or did in the text (i.e. evidence) that made you admire them.
Having an analysis ready to use alongside the evidence. As a result of Point 2, you’ll be able to write a few sentences based on your own interpretation. Rather than memorising entire essays (we’ve talked about this before) and regurgitating information from teachers, tutors, study guides and other resources - which can be labour intensive and actually detract from the originality of your essay - you’re approaching the essay with your own thoughts and opinions (which you can reuse over and over again across different essay topics).
Let’s look on the flip side. What happens when you don’t have your own interpretation?
When you don’t take the time to actively think for yourself - i.e. to think through your own interpretations (we’ve talked about the importance of THINK in the THINK and EXECUTE strategy here) - when it finally comes to writing an essay, you may find it difficult:
a) to get started - formulating a contention in response to the essay topic is challenging because you have no strong opinion about the text,
b) complete the essay - writing up arguments and using evidence in paragraphs becomes challenging because you have no strong opinion about the text,
c) to score higher marks - ultimately, you end up regurgitating other people’s ideas (your teacher’s, tutor’s or from study guides) because you have (you guessed it) no strong opinion on the text.
Having your own interpretation means that you’ll eliminate issues a, b and c from above. Overall, you’ll have opinions (and therefore contentions) ready for any prompt when you go into your SACs or exams, which means it’ll be easier not only to write a full essay, but an original and insightful one as well.
Your Goal
To overcome the issues above, you need to be confident with your own interpretation of the text. This doesn’t come naturally to a lot of students, and it makes sense why. After all, so many subjects reward specific answers (2 + 2 = 4), whereas English is tricky because there’s so much more flexibility in what constitutes a ‘correct answer’. It’s scary treading the sea of different possible interpretations because you’ll ask yourself questions like:
How do I know if my interpretation is correct?
How do I know if my evidence actually backs up what I’m arguing?
What if I disagree with my teacher, and they mark me down for a differing opinion?
Or worse - I’m not smart enough to come up with my own interpretation!
Let me say that you are absolutely smart enough to develop your own interpretation, and I’ll show you how to do so in A Killer Comparative Guide: The Hate Race & Charlie’s Country with LSG’s unique strategy - the BUBBLE TEA (BBT) strategy. By following our step-by-step framework, you can be confident that your interpretation is valid, that it backs up your argument, and that most importantly, you won’t lose marks for it!
4. Structural Features Analysis
In How To Write A Killer Text Response, we cover Metalanguage. A Structural Features Analysis and Comparison goes over a lot of the same material, and will help elevate your essays to the next level. Knowing quotes and themes is essential, but being able to pair that with analysis of the title, setting, narrator and overall structure - we'll cover title here - shows the examiner that you really know exactly what you’re talking about. This section will be especially crucial for metalanguage topics that are all about how Charlie’s Country and The Hate Race are structured, so, enjoy!
Title
The title of a text is always significant - and this text pairing is no different. First, of course, please do keep in mind that there is no universally accurate interpretation of what a title means. I’m giving you my assessment, but the author and director could very well disagree themselves! That’s okay, because as long as we back it up properly, your interpretation is as valid as any. As always, that’s the beauty of English.
Let’s first unpack The Hate Race. What this title signifies is that, for minorities in Australia, life is constantly akin to a race. There is no rest, no comfort and no sense of home when your mind is preoccupied with all the ways you don’t belong. Australia, as a colonial outpost representing the Crown in a region that is overwhelmingly non-white, was once proud of its discriminatory stances; holding itself as the 'White Man’s Paradise'. It is in this context that racism, for Clarke, is not just a reality that lurks beneath the surface, but rather, a guiding tenet of Australia since 1788. With this overarching narrative, it is also important to acknowledge that the mere experience of racism is immensely emotionally, physically and mentally taxing for Clarke, and all people of colour. Being denied a firm sense of self, and constantly being forced to justify one’s own existence isn’t easy, and becomes a ‘race against time’ to see who can cope and rise above, and who will be swept away along with the tide. This sorrowful reality is what engenders the never ending race against being consumed by such hatred, because, for non-white Australians, there simply is no other choice. If they stop running, they run the risk of being consumed by the hatred themselves and becoming so cynical and disillusioned that they forget their culture and accede to the Anglocentric, white majority.
Moving to de Heer’s film, Charlie’s Country, the title reflects a simple reality: this is Charlie’s country. However, when de Heer speaks of ‘country’, he is really talking about ‘Country’; the Indigenous notion of connection to and respect for one’s traditional lands. Nurturing this connection is a sacred responsibility, and the film reminds us that, despite Charlie’s many trials and tribulations, the land on which he lives is truly his own. Throughout the film, Charlie maintains a keen awareness that what is happening to him is unjust, and, unlike Maxine, he doesn’t need someone to convince him that he belongs. Whatever Anglo Australia does, it cannot change the continuing legacy of his people and their sovereignty. To Charlie, it is laughable to think that his Country - which the First Nations have nurtured and kept in common use for 40,000 years - could suddenly become someone else’s property in less than 200 years. He may not have any legal authority under the Crown, and his people may be dispossessed of their sovereignty and authority, but this cannot and will not change the remaining truth of First Nations sovereignty. De Heer’s film title thus challenges us to confront our own perceptions of Australia and remember that we all live on stolen land.
Essay Topic Breakdown
As with all our essay topic breakdowns, we'll follow LSG's THINK and EXECUTE strategy, as taught in our How To Write A Killer Text Response study guide. The LSG's THINK and EXECUTE strategy follows three steps in the THINK phase - Analyse, Brainstorm, and Create a Plan. Learn more about this technique in this video:
'I’m free now!' (Charlie’s Country) 'My children are the descendants of the unbroken.' (The Hate Race) Compare the characters’ understanding of freedom in the two texts.
Step 1: Analyse
Let’s break down the prompt. This is a quote-based prompt, meaning the quote must feature somewhere in your essay. Ensure that you have a good understanding of the place from which the quote is drawn. In this case, Charlie’s exclamation of joy features when he escapes to the wilderness and is able to cook, dance and provide for himself. The quote from The Hate Race is the last line of the memoir, with Clarke expressing the sentiment that her children belong in Australia and will be as strong as their parents.
Step 2: Brainstorm
The next part is to establish the link between the quote and the topic. The essay topic at hand asks us how 'freedom' is understood, so we need to actually understand freedom itself in relation to the quotes provided.
For de Heer and Clarke, freedom isn’t an abstract concept relating to rights, liberties and responsibilities. Rather, freedom is found when people have the ability to be themselves, own their culture and live their truth. For Charlie, that mainly relates to his right to live in his country and maintain the traditional ways of the First Nations Peoples. Clarke, however, is more focused on the balancing act of finding freedom through a multicultural society that includes all, and in doing so celebrates the contribution that all cultures make into the melting pot that is Australia.
Step 3: Create a Plan
There’s no one correct way to structure your paragraphs for Charlie’s Country and The Hate Race. However, I find it consistently helpful to follow a chronological structure. This refers to going through events of the memoir and film in the order they actually occur, and finding unique points of analysis based around these chronological groupings.
We also need to think of examples and points of comparison. Base these around the themes we’ve gone through, so you can easily identify DIVERGENT and CONVERGENT points of comparison. I’ll walk you through my thinking.
Paragraph 1 – unable to experience freedom because systems exist to stop individuals from embracing their own culture
Kellyville and Alice Springs are immediately established as communities where rules and standards of association are both made and enforced by white authorities. The types of authorities and the prevalence of this overarching system of control differs between The Hate Race and Charlie’s Country, but are not any less harmful.
Paragraph 2 – attempts at pushback are rebuffed, resulting in further punishment for the simple crime of failing to conform
Anglo Australia maintains its dominance through an assumption that minority Australians and First Nations Peoples will not question their place. Thus, when there is even the smallest semblance of resistance, punishment is the only solution.
The difference here is that while Charlie wages an active resistance against white authorities, Maxine is moreso placed into submission by the repeated failure of her pleas to be heard by anyone in a position to change what is occurring. At the centre of both situations, though, is a desire to break free of white Australia’s chains.
Paragraph 3 – finding cultural freedom is a slow process of change, but one that begins with self acceptance
There is no happy ending to either The Hate Race or Charlie’s Country. Freedom does not suddenly spring forth. Instead, our author and director elucidate that cultivating freedom is a slow process. For Charlie, that begins with embracing his culture again and seeking to keep it alive. On Maxine’s part, it is about refusing to be broken by her past, and instead using her trauma as a motivator to build a better future.
Written expression is often overlooked in our essays. Often, if we are made aware of clunky or awkward expression, we are also not quite sure how to go about improving it. Although sophisticated and pertinent ideas serve as the foundation of a successful essay, how we construct our sentences and express these ideas may be what distinguishes a good essay from a great essay.
These differences can be rather subtle, but the small things can and do matter.
1) USE YOUR VOCAL CHORDS
(to read out loud, not sing… unless you really want to)
Take your essay and read it out loud. Let your own conscience guide you in terms of whether a particular sentence flows well, is complete and makes sense. Keep your eye out for these small errors in particular: Grammar:Does your sentence actually make sense? Let’s have a look at an example:Although Funder suggests that the act of telling one’s story, especially one of victimisation, can catalyse the internal confrontation and healing required to move on.
?!?
(This is not grammatically correct! This is because this example only contains a subordinate clause and is lacking a main clause.)
But wait… what is this ‘subordinate clause’ and ‘main clause’?
A clause includes a subject and a verb.
Melissa ate an apple.After Wendy ate an apple.
What is the difference between the two clauses above?
‘Melissa ate an apple’ makes grammatical sense on its own. This is what we call a main clause (or an independent clause). On the other hand, ‘After Wendy ate an apple’ is an incomplete sentence as it does not make sense. What happened after Wendy ate her apple? This is the information that is missing from the latter clause, making this a subordinate clause (or a dependent clause).
So now let’s try again…
Although Funder suggests that the act of telling one’s story, especially one of victimisation, can catalyse the internal confrontation and healing required to move on, ultimately, these individuals can never be truly free from the past that has irrevocably defined them.
(Hooray! This is a complete sentence now.)
Spelling: Are the title of the text, the author or director’s name, characters’ names, publisher’s name, etc. all spelt correctly (and capitalised, underlined, and italicised appropriately)?
Did you use the correct there, their and they’re? How about it’s and its? (and so on).
Sentence length: Did that sentence just go on for 5 lines on a page and you are out of breath now? You can most probably split that overloaded sentence into two or more sentences that make much more sense. Check whether you have a clear subject in your sentence. If you have three different ideas in one sentence, give each idea its own opportunity (ie. sentence) to shine. The opposite also applies: if it is for a very short sentence, did that sentence pack enough content or analysis?
One spelling error or half-finished sentence in an essay will not severely affect your mark, but they can easily add up if they occur often enough. Consequently, this will distract the reader from engaging with your ideas fully and thus disrupt the flow of your essay.
By being aware of these aspects, you are now able to easily fix them and boost your writing.
2) BE SUBTLE
Try not to be casual or overt in your writing as it can be quite jarring to read and unfortunately give readers a potentially negative impression of your piece.
Try not to use phrases such as:
- In my opinion… (You do not need it as your entire essay should be your implicit opinion!)
- This quote shows that… (Embed the quote and link to its implication instead)
- This technique is designed to… (Identify the technique and be specific, especially in Language Analysis)
- I think that…, I believe… (Avoid using first person in a formal essay. Use of first person in creative writing is fine though if required)
They are redundant and do not add much to your ideas and analysis. Try omitting them and see whether that helps your sentence flow better and seem more formal.
3) LINK ‘EM UP
Sentences that seem disjointed or a clear connection can make it difficult for your teacher or the assessor to join the dots between an idea and an implication or consequence. Use linking words as they are fantastic for explicitly showing the reader how your ideas are related and thus allow your writing to proceed smoothly.
Therefore, hence, thus, thereby, consequently, subsequently, in addition, additionally, furthermore, moreover, on the other hand, on the contrary, however, henceforth, and so on… The list is endless!
4) ADD OOMPH (through vocabulary)
In general, having a wide vocabulary will allow you to express your ideas and analysis more accurately as you are likely to have access to a precise word that can capture the essence of your idea. Make a vocabulary list for a particular text or for Language Analysis (such as tone words) and aim to use varied language to convey yourself well.
If you’d like to see a list of sentence starters and essay phrases to help you get a headstart on expanding your vocabulary, check out this blog.
Focus on verbs and expanding your list of synonyms for words such as shows, demonstrates, highlights, emphasises, suggests and so on. An individual, character, author or director may not only be conveying but also denigrating or remonstrating or bolstering or glorifying or insinuating. Adding precision to your writing through careful vocabulary choice will distinguish your writing and also add complexity.
BEWARE! There is a fine line to tread with sophisticated vocabulary - do not overload your writing as you can risk writing convoluted sentences that hinder the reader’s ability to understand your piece. Also make sure that you understand the nuances of each synonym and that they are used in the correct context! (They are synonyms after all - not the same word!)
If you are debating whether to use a word, ask yourself: do you know what it means?
If yes: Go for it!
If no: Do not use it until you know what it means.
5) READ
Reading sample essays, The Age Text Talks, reviews and more of the texts you are currently studying will expose you to not only a multitude of interpretations of your text, but also to different sentence structures, writing styles or vocabulary that you could incorporate into your own writing.
I would also highly recommend that you read outside of the texts you are studying if you have time, whether that may be novels by the same author or even newspapers. Your written expression will only benefit from this exposure as the ways you can express yourself through writing continue to increase upon seeing others’ eloquence.
6) GET WRITING
If you do not write, you will never be able to improve your written expression. Put pen to paper (or hands to keyboard) and start constructing that essay. You can only fix your writing once you have writing to fix.
I am Malala and Made in Dagenham is usually studied in the Australian curriculum under Comparative (also known as Reading and Comparing). For a detailed guide on Comparative, check out our Ultimate Guide to VCE Comparative.
Compare the importance and role of idols and role models in I am Malala and Made in Dagenham.
Describe the role of fear and obligation as an obstacle to progress by comparing I am Malala and Made in Dagenham.
‘As we change the things around us, the things around us change us’. Discuss the extent to which this is true by comparing I am Malala and Made in Dagenham.
Discuss the benefit of adversity in strengthening one’s will to persevere by comparing I am Malala and Made in Dagenham.
Resilience is more important than success. Discuss whether this is true within the texts I am Malala and Made in Dagenham.
Compare the role and importance of family within the texts I am Malala and Made in Dagenham.
Compare both I am Malala and Made in Dagenham in relation to the importance of language as a device (spoken and written).
Compare the forms of resistance displayed by protagonists Malala Yousafzai and Rita O’Grady in texts I am Malala and Made in Dagenham and decide why they chose these methods.
Analyse the effectiveness of small triumphs creating ripple effects in wider communities by comparing I am Malala and Made in Dagenham.
Discuss whether support networks are intrinsic for a single figure to create positive change by comparing I am Malala and Made in Dagenham.
The main protagonists are galvanized by the people they wish not to be like rather than their role models. Discuss to what extent this is true by comparing the texts I am Malala and Made in Dagenham.
Made in Dagenham and I am Malala explore the vices of deceit, appeasement and scapegoating. Discuss these by comparing both texts, commenting on how they pose a threat to the causes of both protagonists.
What role do interpersonal relationships play in the texts I am Malala and Made in Dagenham? Can these relationships be both positive and negative? Discuss.
Change cannot be immediate but gradual. To what extent is this true in texts I am Malala and Made in Dagenham.
Examine the role of the media in driving social change by comparing texts I am Malala and Made in Dagenham
A patriarchal society is invariably one that is repressive. Discuss this statement and its truths or falsities by comparing texts I am Malala and Made in Dagenham.
Discuss solidarity in relation to social, historical and cultural progress and whether it can be both positive and negative by comparing texts I am Malala and Made in Dagenham.
Examiners and teachers love nuanced responses. The key to developing a complex response is by reading your text several times (at least three times before the exam). Each time you read it you should annotate, take notes down and you’ll notice more elements and recurring themes. Every student has a different interpretation to an essay question. As long as you justify your arguments (using quotes, meta-language etc), there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ interpretation in English.
Do not retell the story & integrate meta-language
Your teachers and tutors harp on this for a reason! Examiners have read the texts before, so you must assume that they know the plot inside out. Text response is an analysis of how the author (or director) constructs a text and the ways they imply a point of view or values. You will analyse the ideas, cultural references, context, narration explored in the text and answer some of the following questions: Why has the author included specific recurring motifs or portrayed the protagonist in a particular manner? What is the author suggesting? How does the author explore the theme of ‘x’?
For example, the themes of love and death are explored in Burial Rites by Hannah Kent. Think about how it is explored and what the author is attempting to do or convey. Include meta-language (language that describes language) such as ‘imagery’, ‘motif’, ‘juxtaposition’ etc.
E.g ‘Agnes’ crave for love influences her path to execution (idea and exploration of themes). All her life, she had lacked love. She recounts through her first-person narrative that ‘everything I love is taken from me’, such as her beloved foster mother, Inga (evidence). Kent uses Agnes’ retrospective narrative (how) to allow readers to empathise (why) with Agnes’ ……
Quote banks
Allocate quotes to specific themes, and memorise them. Have at least 20 quotes up your sleeve! Pick quotes that aren’t the stock-standard and obvious ones as seen in study guide books so that you stand out amongst your peers. You should also be aware of how to embed and integrate them into an essay, as well as picking quotes that aren’t too long.
Mind maps
If you are a visual learner, mind maps are a great tool for any subject you are studying and particularly useful for English. Collate all your notes, sort them into sub-categories such as THEMES, CHARACTERS, ELEMENTS and you’ll find overlaps between all sorts of elements.
Are you a slow writer who struggles to write down all of the information that you hear in the listening audio clip? Have you ever been in a situation where the next sentence in the audio comes up way before you finish writing down information from the previous sentence? If yes, then this blog is for you!
You want to write down as much useful information as possible in a short period of time during your VCE EAL exam, so it is very useful to implement a system of techniques that works well for you personally. Here are some ideas and suggestions that you may want to use to increase the speed of your note-taking.
1. Use Different Coloured Pens or Keys for Different Speakers
Under the stress of exams/SACs, you might lose track of which speaker is talking. This is likely to happen if the speakers are of the same sex or they sound similar to each other (from personal experience, I had a listening task with 3 female speakers!) A simple way to remind yourself of who is speaking is to take side notes with different coloured pens and/or symbols for different speakers.
For example:
If in the audio: Lisa says, ‘The weather is lovely’ and Cici replies ‘Let’s go for a run’. We can write side notes using L (for Lisa) and C for Cici, which may look like:
L ‘weather is lovely’
C 'Let's go for a run’
Or, you could use a red pen for Lisa and blue pen for Cici.
2. Use Signs & Symbols to Replace Words
Using symbols is an efficient way to increase the speed of writing and ultimately increase the amount of information that you can record. Here are some examples of symbols I have used in the past and the meanings I gave them.
→ Leading to/Stimulate/Result in
↑ Increase
↓ Decrease
$ Money
↔ Swap
⇆ Exchangeable
☓ Cross/Incorrect
& And
@ At
= Equal
/ Or
∵ Because
∴ Therefore OR Consequently
? Uncertain/Possibly/Disapprove
> Greater than/More than
< Less than/Fewer than
# Number
~ Approximately OR Around OR Similar to OR Not Equal OR Not the same as
∆ Change
◦ Degree
c/b Could be
- Negative/Before
+ Positive/Plus
3.Use Abbreviations
Use abbreviations that work for you. There is no right or wrong here as the ‘blank space for scribbles’ will not be marked. Abbreviations can take the form of short notes or letters...you get to be creative here!
You can also choose to keep only the essential vowels and consonants in words. Or, leave out the double consonants and silent letters. The following list contains some abbreviations for common words or phases:
Answer = answ
About = abt
Morning = am
Afternoon = pm
As soon as possible = asap
Before = bef/b4
Between = bt
Because = bc
Common = com
Condition = cond
Diagnosis = diag
Regular = reg
You = u
Notes = nts
To = t
Take = tk
Very = v
With respect to = wrt
With = w/
Will be = w/b
Within = w/i
Without = w/o
Here are some examples of how you might use abbreviations and symbols:
Example 1
‘You should remember to take notes in classes’
Can be abbreviated as:
‘U shld rmbr t tk nts in cls’
Example 2
‘Gidon has a rare blood condition which means he visits the hospital quite regularly. Since his diagnosis, Gidon’s family paid more than ten thousand dollars just to visit the hospital. Gidon initiated a petition that advocates for lowering the fees for parking in hospitals and putting a limit on how much the hospital can charge.’
Can be abbreviated as:
G has rare blood condi → he visits hosp. v. reg.
I've used G as an abbreviation for Gidon, and the arrow here represents that the stuff on the left side of the arrow (i.e. his rare blood condition), led to the events on the right side of the arrow (i.e. regular hospital visits).
Since his diag. → G’s fam paid >$10K to visit hosp.
Here I’ve also used the arrow, indicating that the stuff on the left side of the arrow (i.e. his diagnosis), led to the events on the right side of the arrow (i.e. Gidon's family paid more than 10 thousand dollars). I’ve also used >$10K to indicate that the amount Gidon’s family paid is more than 10 thousand dollars.
G → petition → advocates for ↓ $ parking & limit how much hosp. can charge
Using my symbols and abbreviations above, it’s your turn to work out how I’ve abbreviated this ;)
---
I hope these tips and tricks will assist you with note taking during the EAL listening SACs and exam. If you would like more practice on the listening section, check out the following blogs!
The most overlooked aspect of English is probably the actual reading of your English novel. Shockingly, there are some students who believe that they can still do well in English without reading their texts – but that’s a topic for another blog post. Since VCE is about strategy, you should think about how you can maximise your learning while minimising the time spent reading. Some students only read their text once, while others read up to 5 or 6 times! For some one reading may be sufficient but in most circumstances it is definitely not enough. Conversely, reading more than 5 times might be a bit excessive. After asking ex-VCE students who have excelled in English, the overall consensus is that you should read your text 3 times before the English exam. Here’s why:
Reading 1 : The first reading should be done in the holidays prior to your school year. Yes, it is during the holidays but you will be thankful you started early when you’re in the middle of numerous SACs, assignments and homework during the year. You should take your time with the first reading in order to let the information soak in. Focus on exposing yourself to the characters and themes. Since many essay topics are based on characters or themes, this will help you foresee the types of prompts you’ll be asked. If it is a more difficult text to understand (such as Shakespeare), rather than pushing through your reading and trying to understand the plot, have a look at study guides first in order to gain a better understanding from the outset.
Reading 2 : This should be done while you are studying your text at school. Using the new information taught in class (such as character, theme, context and metalanguage analysis), a second reading will help you build on the knowledge from your first reading. During the reading, you should start to take note of key passages and draw out important quotes. This will set you up for the SAC and mean that you have read your text twice before your SAC.
Reading 3 : Your third and final reading is to be completed before your English exam. An ideal time is the term 3 holidays. Since it may have been a while since you studied the text, the third reading is crucial for knowledge consolidation. You should watch out for things that you missed during first two readings – usually small pieces of information that are unique and when used in essays, will separate you from other students. These include: not-so-popular quotes, passages that haven’t been discussed in class, fleeting descriptions of characters etc. Remember that the best essays involve interesting and original discussion of the text.
Summary
Reading 1 : Initial exposure to the text and an idea of what prompts may be asked in SACs and the English exam.
Reading 2 : Essential for identifying key details for SAC preparation.
Reading 3 : Vital for consolidation prior to the English exam and finding information that will distinguish yourself from other students.
So with this in mind, figure out how you will approach your readings throughout the year, and most importantly – get started early!
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!!
We’ve all been doing Text Response essays from as young as Year 7. At this point in VCE, we should be feeling relatively comfortable with tackling themes and characters in our essays. However, the danger with just discussing themes and characters is that we often fall into the trap of simply paraphrasing the novel, or retelling the story. So how do we elevate our essays to become more sophisticated and complex analyses that offer insight?
An important distinction to be aware of is that the expectation of Year 11 English was geared more toward themes and characters. However in Year 12, teachers and examiners expect students to focus on the author’s construction of the text. By keeping in mind that the text is a DELIBERATE CONSTRUCTION, this can help eliminate retelling. A good guideline to follow is to include the author’s name at least once every paragraph.
Some examples are:
- (author) elicits
- (author) endorses or condemns
- (author) conveys
Move beyond talking about character and relationships. How are those characters used to explore ideas? How are they used to show readers what the author values?
To explore the text BEYOND characters, themes and ideas, tackle the following criteria:
Social, cultural and historical values embodied in text
In other words, this means the context in which the text was written. Think about how that influenced the author, and how those views and values are reflected in the text. How does the author create social commentary on humanity?
These involve the author’s use of symbols, metaphors, subtext, or genres. Consider why the author chose those particular words, images or symbols? What effect did it evoke within the reader? What themes or characters are embodied within these literary devices? Metalanguage is essential in VCE essays, so ensure you are confident in this field.
If the text is a film, it’s important to include why the director chose certain cinematography techniques. Comment on the mise-en-scene, camera angles, overview shots, close ups, flashbacks, soundtrack, to name a few. Or if it’s a play, examine the stage directions. These contain great detail of the author’s intentions.
How text is open to different interpretations
“While some may perceive… others may believe…” is a good guideline to follow in order to explore different angles and complexities of the text.
Skilful weaving in of appropriate quotes
This is how to create a well-substantiated essay. To weave in textual evidence, don’t simply ‘plonk’ in sentence long quotes. Instead, use worded quotes within your sentences so the transition is seamless.
Do you know how to embed quotes like a boss? Test yourself with our blog post here.
Strong turn of phrase
Ensure your essay is always linked to the prompt; don’t go off on an unrelated tangent. Linking words such as “conversely” or “furthermore” increase coherence within your essay. Begin each paragraph with a strong topic sentence, and finish each paragraph with a broader perception that links back to the topic and the next paragraph. To see what this looks like in practice, check out What Does Improving Your English Really Look Like? for multiple sample paragraphs.
This is also where having a wide range of vocabulary is crucial to presenting your ideas in a sophisticated manner. Create a word bank from assessor’s reports, sample essays, or teacher’s notes, and by the end of the year you’ll have an extensive list to choose from. Also, referring to literary devices contributes to a great vocabulary, exhibiting a strong turn of phrase!
Consider the topic
What does it imply? Find the underlying message and the implications behind the prompt. There is always tension within the topic that needs to be resolved by the conclusion of your essay. A must-know technique to ensure you actually answer the prompt is by knowing the 5 types of different essay topics, and how your essay structure changes as a result. The How To Write A Killer Text Response ebook is a great way to learn how to identify the type of essay topic you have in front of you immediately, and start writing an A+ essay.
Finally, simply enjoy writing about your text! It will help you write with a sense of personal voice and a personal engagement with the text, which the teachers and assessors will always enjoy.
Compare how the conflict between illusion and reality is explored in these texts.
'Uncertainty breeds fear, and fear breeds further uncertainty.' Compare how this idea is demonstrated in The Crucible and Year of Wonders.
Compare how secrets and superstition affect the characters in both texts.
Compare how The Crucible and Year of Wonders explore issues of human fallibility and deception.
Compare the ways these texts examine the preservation of morality amidst accusation and condemnation.
'Humans are ultimately inclined towards evil rather than good.' Compare how the two texts explore this inclination.
Compare how The Crucible and Year of Wonders examines the strength of one's faith during hardship and conflict.
“How little we know, I thought, of the people we live amongst.” (Year of Wonders) Compare what the two texts say about community and one's understanding of reality.
"Here we are, alive, and you and I will have to make it what we can.” (Year of Wonders) 'It is only possible to discover what it means to live when faced with death.' Compare the ways these texts explore this possibility.
“It is the essence of power that it accrues to those with the ability to determine the nature of the real.” (The Crucible) Compare the ways the two texts demonstrate the connection between power and controlling the truth.
Compare how truths and falsehoods shape the lives and societies in The Crucible and Year of Wonders.
Compare how The Crucible and Year of Wonders shows that conflict can cause both regression and strengthening of integrity and humanity.
Compare how women are perceived in both The Crucible and Year of Wonders.
Compare the ways morality is examined and determined in these texts.
"Man, remember, until an hour before the Devil fell, God thought him beautiful in heaven?" (The Crucible) Compare how the two texts explore the repercussions of disillusionment.
The Crucible and Year of Wonders is usually studied in the Australian curriculum under Comparative (also known as Reading and Comparing). For a detailed guide on Comparative, check out our Ultimate Guide to VCE Comparative.
Get exclusive weekly advice from Lisa, only available via email.
Power-up your learning with free essay topics, downloadable word banks, and updates on the latest VCE strategies.
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.
latest articles
Check out our latest thought leadership on enterprise innovation.