1) I done the practice essay today and I didn't finish all my sections. What's weird is that I started with section c and didn't manage to finish it in an hour, and I didn't want to go over. I was trying to analyse the whole piece but couldn't finish in time. Are we expected to analyse the whole piece or just aspects we think are important espically the accompanying image. What parts of a piece/how much should I analyse (please, I'm not expecting the perfect response, just a rough guide and then I can practice and find what works for me 
I finished section a and b however.
Okay, there are a whole bunch of sub-concerns here, so I'll try and break this down.
For starters, not finishing essays at this stage of the year is totally fine. You wouldn't expect to be able to sit a Maths or Science end-of-year exam in August and score as highly as possible, right? Of course not - you wouldn't have covered much of the Unit 4 content, and you probably would have been focusing more so on SACs than exam revision. Assuming you came close to finishing the L.A. piece (like - you'd written at least two and a half decent body paragraphs by the one hour mark) then you should be fine. Timing is only a huge concern at this stage of the year if it takes you a whole hour just to plan, write an intro, and do one body paragraph
But you did the right thing moving on to the other sections - a lot of students screw up in the exam by spending way too long on a single section (- I nearly did this for Text Response, and a lot of people in my year level did so for L.A.) to the detriment of their other two pieces.Keeping yourself to relatively strict one hour cut-offs for each section is a pretty good plan as it's better to have three essays that are really high quality, but missing the end of a body para or a conclusion, as opposed to two complete, polished essays and one mangled half essay. The assessors marking your work know nothing of how well you did in other sections, so there's no chance of things 'balancing out' just because one essay was brilliant and the other one was barely an essay.
With regards to whether you need to cover
everything in Language Analysis... short answer:
no.Long answer: no, because they're testing your ability to be selective, and they don't actually want students to comment on EVERY SINGLE TECHNIQUE they find because that would get really tedious. More to the point -
that's not the focus of the task! Your job is to comment on
how language is used to persuade readers. Pointing out seven different rhetorical questions, nine examples of inclusive language and six instances of appeals to fear doesn't help you do that. You might analyse some of those things, but you have to contextualise them by linking them to what the author intends for readers to think or feel. VCAA are way more concerned with your capacity to demonstrate an understanding of arguments than how many bits of 'emotive language' you can point out.
Assessors do not have a list of features you must mention - there's no one particular quote or technique that must be mentioned - it's all up to you to select what you believe to be most important in the construction of the author's argument.The only exception to ^that rule is that you
do have to analyse the visual material at least once. Rumour has it that you can't score about a 7/10 without doing this, and whilst I don't know how stringent the assessors are about this, you're at a definite disadvantage if you don't even acknowledge or pick apart any of the images. (& if you really want to be sure,
link the visual to the written material! <--That's usually something only high-range essays are able to do, so forging those connections can help bump up your mark in the assessor's mind, albeit only slightly... the quality of the rest of your analysis plays a bigger role, obvs.)
Simply put:
- Student A, who can only find 5 language features to comment on out of the whole material, has to analyse all 5, and is probably going to have a fairly weak essay lacking in breadth.
- Student B, who can find 25 language features and feels the need to comment on all of them, is probably going to have an essay that's choppy and unfocused with too much breadth and not enough quality analysis.
- Student C, who can also find 25 features but selects the 17 BEST and MOST RELEVANT ones to include and dissect, is going to have a much more precise, much more impressive piece.
(note: 17 should not be your ultimate goal, that was a very arbitrary choice for the sake of this example. In fact, you shouldn't really know how many language features you're commenting upon; it should be second nature to you over the course of your analysis. If you can very quickly tell how many techniques you're dealing with in each paragraph or over the course of your essay, it probably means your piece isn't as well integrated as it could be.)
So be like Student C and ensure you're whittling down the material to find the most essential and analysable components! The best way to do this is to practice annotating and planning essays - go through some exam material and highlight absolutely everything you think you COULD analyse. Then, go back through and isolate the stuff you think you SHOULD analyse.
My question is if I start doing practice exams (3 hour sessions, but not too much that it kills me) can I increase my speed? I really want my exams to be of good quality but not take forever to write.
That's a very valid concern; you don't want to focus so much on timing that you end up getting your average down to 55 minutes (yaay!) but the quality has dropped down into the D+ range (
) Instead, try to
gradually decrease your time! Let's say it takes you 90 minutes to write a good Text Response piece right now. The next one you write has to be done in 80. Then 75. Then 70. Then 65. You get the idea.
You may run into a hurdle at some point with a particular Area of Study (e.g. I could never manage to write a Context piece in under 65 minutes) which means you'll then have to work on strengthening your other essays even more (e.g. get L.A. under an hour to give you extra time to work on Context, or vice versa).
But it's way better to go for this gradual approach that ensures you maintain the same level of quality than to go 'alright, one essay in one hour, no notes, exam conditions, cold turkey, let's go!'
2) What are the features of a well written essay in the exam? General stuff will do because I know they're not expecting perfection with the sentence structure etc.
This is a bit tough to answer outside of just saying that a well-written essay is one that fulfils the criteria for each section, as FallingStar has already noted. If you're talking about what level of imperfection they're willing to accept (as in, how many ungrammatical sentences, word choice errors, spelling mistakes, etc.) then the answer is:
so long as your mistakes don't impact the clarity of your work, you'll be fine. They're not going to instantly penalise you for every word you misspell - they're aware that your exam pieces are unpolished first drafts done under time constraints with unseen material - that's the point! But they do have to split the state somehow, and imposing time limits is often the easiest way for them to break apart those who can write decent essays from those who can do so quickly.
However, if your sentences are so wacky that they have no clue what you're trying to say, or if your handwriting is all over the place and they'd need a rosetta stone to decode it... you may not get the mark you're capable of. If some of these small things are worrying you, then it's worth spending some time fixing them sooner rather than later.
3) In LA, when we analyse the authors use of language, will everyone have a different effect on the reader? Nothing too extreme though. Also, will people have slightly different tones?
Not every tone/technique needs to be linked explicitly to the reader. It's good to do this often, but your focus is always on the author's intention, remember. That said, of course different students will comment on different tones, or use slightly different vocabulary in order to do so. Again, it's not like the assessors have a conclusive list of 'stuff you're allowed to talk about' or that if you don't say the tone is 'aggressive' and instead say it's 'hostile' or 'antagonistic,' they won't give you the credit. The way you actually analyse tone is far more important. There is some leeway with interpretation (à la 'if you can justify your answer, then it's right') but if you've radically misunderstood the argument or the tone, then you run the risk of assessors not recognising the underlying analysis skills you're demonstrating. Try to play it safe, and if identifying/analysing tone or linking it to the author/audience is something you're unsure of, then that'd be a good place to start with your revision
Home
Help
Search
Login
