ATAR Notes: Forum
VCE Stuff => VCE English Studies => VCE Subjects + Help => VCE English & EAL => Topic started by: hollyoconnor on June 22, 2014, 11:47:24 am
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Hey, so i am writing some practice text response essays for Twelve Angry Men and the prompt i am working on is
“Why is it so difficult for the jury in Twelve Angry Men to reach its final verdict?
I know that because of the different Jurors with different personalities, experiences and therefore different views of the case it is hard to come to a final verdict. However does anyone have any three main points i can base my paragraphs around. I am having trouble coming up with some para topics.
Thanks :)
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Hey Holly! I think this is the 2011 TAM prompt if I remember correctly, could be worth checking the past exams to see if VCAA put an example essay up. What I think your issue is, though, is how very broad the prompt it. It's so difficult for the jury to reach its final verdict for SOOOOOO many ways, but there's such an infinity of ways there just seems like there's none when it comes to write an essay.
Could you list themes of Twelve Angry Men for me and give me a basic example? Like, "Theme X -- Juror X is always like X". We'll go from there :)
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I think there are two ways you can kind of get going on the theme approach suggested above.
The first is to list all the specific examples you can think of - why do all the specific disagreements occur? Get a nice long list of all these concrete examples, then go through and see if you can group them. Do any of the examples kind of fall under the same category as other examples? Figure out what the common idea between them is, and you have your paragraph topic.
The second is to go through your list of themes in the text (if you don't have one, you should get one! there's no absolute list - it's just one that works for you, taken from class, Internet etc). For each theme, ask yourself whether you could argue it affects the ability of people to agree, or relates to the ability of people to agree. For example, prejudice is one commonly-listed theme. This affects the ability of people to agree. The meaning of justice is another theme. Once you have three themes you could link to agreement, you have your three paragraphs. Then find some examples/evidence for each.