Week Four – Its all in the question.

Hi everyone,

I want to ask you two questions: what is it that, over the past four weeks, you think we have been doing? Why do you think we have been doing what we’ve been doing? These are not trick questions.

There is no point in simply viewing two documentaries, learning and then retelling them (when the time comes) in the hope of scoring some marks. When are not testing your knowledge of texts in and of themselves.

What we are doing is learning about concepts to do with:

• readings and reading practices (the meaning making process)
• communication and culture
• critical thinking and engagement
• the power and purpose of language

The way we explore these concepts and, in turn express our understanding of them is through the analysis and evaluation of texts in different modes – written, visual, and aural – produced at different times (context), for different reasons (purpose), for different people (audience) by different people (author), that may be categorised into different categories (genres).

In this way, the documentaries–and all other texts–serve as vehicles for communication.

Now, please understand something, an assessment like an in-class essay or an exam can only ever assess part of the syllabus. It cannot assess it all. This means you need to consider the many things that a question might ask of you, the many things that your learning has prepared you to answer.

One of, if not, the biggest mistakes made by WACE candidates is that they DO NOT ANSWER THE QUESTION. They just talk about the text (retell) or they talk about everything they know (i.e. they throw everything they know at the question and hope something ‘sticks’).

Consider the concepts below; to some degree we have covered all of these over the last four weeks:

1. CONTEXT
2. CONVENTIONS
3. GENRE
4. REPRESENTATION
5. COMPARISON
6. IDEAS
7. RESPONSE
8. VOICE
9. PERSPECTIVE
10. VERSION OF REALITY

However, we have not studied them in isolation and they are not mutually exclusive. That is, we discuss, analyse and think about them as being in relationship to one another. For example, the question you have been asked looks at the relationship between genre (documentary), conventions (language, visual, generic), ideas, and comparison. At the moment, these are the things we want you to focus on. But, we could have asked you a whole range of questions on the work we have just done.

Before I give you some of these questions, I want to remind you of one vital factor, NOT ALL TEXTS FIT ALL QUESTIONS. That is, question choice is as much about text choice as it is about knowing what the question is asking of you. You need to choose the right texts for the right questions.

Sample Questions

For each of these questions, write an introduction and a thesis.

For one of these questions, develop a marking key, using the grade descriptors (on the cover page), the sample marking keys and the marking key you have used for the most recent essay.

Write an essay for this same question.

Post the essay and the marking key on your blog.  

Due by the end of Week 8 (December 1)