ICAV Paragraph Structure

Quite some time ago, we're talking about 10 years, I attended some Professional Learning run by Emily Bosco and Anthony Bosco of Into English. This PL was focused on Nineteen Eighty-Four but the thing that stood out to me was a paragraph components activity where four different elements were highlighted to help students understand the purpose of each part. 

(Full disclosure: I've since gone on to write for Into English but this was back when I'd only been teaching English for a couple of years and didn't know Emily or Anthonyyet). 

Anyway, the activity in the Nineteen Eighty-Four PL was focused on vocabulary and crafting a paragraph with enough relevant detail. I'm not here to talk about this today. I want to look instead at how the four different elements can be used to prompt students to think about writing structure. 

I don't personally invest myself as a teacher in any particular paragraphing acronym. Off the top of my head, I'm familiar with or have taught (or been required to teach): PEEL, TEEL, CLACEL, PEAL, TEAL, ALARM, PETAL, SEAL, OREO and I'm sure there have been some others. To be honest, it doesn't matter which of these get used, the point is whether a student understands it and if they're able to use the acronym to build an effective framework for writing about texts. With this in mind, I tend to use whatever each particular class is likely to 'get'. If the school is an ALARM school then it makes sense to use ALARM because students should (hopefully) already understand it. If some students are really struggling and have some literacy deficits, then I'll probably aim for something as simple as PEE (Point Example Explanation) just to get them started. If I have a class of skilled reader/writers then I might tell them to just write freely without thinking about paragraph formulae at all and then go from there. And if a student has a tutor who's taught them a completely different way of writing a paragraph that I hadn't even considered, then who am I to stop that if it's working? My point is that I've come to realise that there's no definitive way of doing it. 

This brings me to ICAV. I don't use this all the time but I've found that sometimes, with some particular students who are a bit stuck, that it helps them to think about things in a different way. 

What it is: Something that can kickstart a student's thinking and get them writing, which is often the biggest hurdle. 

What it isn't: A formula for writing HSC examination essays (...unless, of course, it seems to work within this context for a particular student!) 

Here is a quick explanation of the acronym:

• Idea. Same as concept, topic sentence, thesis, or point. What is the main idea that your paragraph is exploring?
• Context. Provide some background for your idea. Expand on your initial sentence by adding some contextual details. 
• Analyse. Provide an example from the text with analysis of an identified technique.
• Values. What conclusions can be drawn about the values being explored in the text? What stance or position is potentially being suggested by the author?

I like it because it builds-in a relevant way of talking about context. The values bit at the end also helps students reconceive their overall paragraph in a new way so that they're not just repeating their main point.

Here are examples of how it can be used with a preamble for students to read. The first is a general example and the second a specific one.

Poetry

ICAV (Ideas Context Analyse Values) is a way of structuring and writing paragraphs. The first step is to pick a poem, any of the ones we've looked at this term, and to write at least four sentences using the guideline below so we can start practising paragraph writing.

1. Write a sentence or two explaining the main IDEA of the poem. Don't forget to mention the name of the poem and its composer.
2. What is the CONTEXT behind this poem and idea? Think about how they connect.
3. Give at least TWO examples from the text that explore the idea. Use 'inverted commas' to quote each example, identify the techniques used, and ANALYSE how this technique highlights or enhances what the poet is trying to say.
4. Link back to what the poet VALUES and how the poem explores this.

Writing about Fritz Lang's Metropolis

Examine a range of Metropolis screenshots and select one to form the basis of your paragraph. 

• Write down an IDEA that's relevant to what you see.
• EG. Capitalist control of the means of production.
• EG. Dehumanisation resulting from capitalist exploitation of workers.
• Expand upon your topic sentence by giving further CONTEXT.
• EG. Marxism, industrial expansion after WWII, influence of German industrialists like Hugo Stinnes.
• ANALYSE techniques - deconstruct the screenshot in terms of what connects it to the context.
• EG. The close-up of the clock is symbolic of the amount of time workers are required to work, and the way that their time has been turned into a commodity to be exploited. 
• What conclusions can you draw about the VALUES of the composer?
• EG. Lang establishes the value of the individual by calling the viewer's attention to the process of dehumanisation visited upon the workers. 

It's not a revolutionary approach but it can be a useful way to mix things up a bit. I've found that it works best with the outliers at either end of the bell curve - students who find it difficult to write paragraphs altogether and students who are quite high ability but need that spark to get them started.

Credit to Emily Bosco and Anthony Bosco for the initial Idea, Context, Technique, Values approach to paragraph vocabulary. 

Scaffolding Paragraph Construction

If there's one thing I was never explicitly taught as an English student back in the 1990s, it was how to write an essay. Even in my time as a senior student, I don't remember ever being conscious of how to write one... I wrote them, of course, and I got good enough marks to justify my later life choices, but essay and paragraph structure weren't ever focused on in my days as a student. 

This presented me with a challenge when I became a teacher. The day I became an English teacher was the day when I first had to start thinking about how essays were written. I observed my fellow teachers and backwards-engineered A range student responses, learned about PEEL paragraphs for the first time and, a bit later, ALARM. I've since come across a range of acronyms that help to formularise and quantify the process of paragraph writing in English... PEAL, TEAL, PEEEL, ICAV, CLACEL, OREO. 

I don't begrudge any of these. Whatever works, right? I just don't have the experience of learning these as a student, and I think it's important for teachers to have such experiences to call upon. Being inside the learning process as student is very different to constructing it as teacher.

I've since tried my hand at writing in the aforementioned formulae for this precise reason, sometimes under fake student names so that I can get an honest appraisal from my teaching peers (a daunting process, let me tell you!). Thankfully, my essays have received appropriately high marks when I've done the 'fake student' thing, but I have to admit that I don't think I do my best writing in the context of using paragraph formulae and scaffolds. When I meet students who have an instinct for writing I encourage them to avoid squeezing themselves into the acronyms, at least as much as our system allows.

That's enough reflection for now. Below is a task that I wrote a couple of years ago while I was thinking about paragraph writing. I've since used it with Stage 5 classes (both Year 9 and Year 10) and it works pretty well. 

It relates to the documentary Blackfish and aims to familiarise students with the idea of supporting a concept statement with relevant examples and analysis. The task does not require students to come up with said examples and analysis as I wanted to explicitly and specifically hone in on the actual construction of the paragraph. As I've explained before on this blog, I think we sometimes get too open-ended as teachers and become afraid to show students exactly how things are done because we don't want to be seen as doing the work for them. Unfortunately, this approach can leave students completely in the dark and they can become unwilling to attempt tasks that they perceive as just too complex.

Here is my thinking:

• Academic paragraph writing is complex. It requires the synthesis of multiple skills - conceptualising, judicious selection of evidence, the ability to write sentences in a variety of structures, use of appropriate vocabulary in a high modality, use of a wide and subject-specific vocabulary (IE. Metalanguage), the use of a paragraph structure that makes internal sense whilst also operating within the wider context of an essay, and memorisation of detailed content that can be recalled in essay-writing contexts that may not allow for notes to be on hand.  
• In order to get students to even start doing the above, I need to remove some of those skills from the playing field. I need to zoom-in on just one or two things and make sure students are confident with these first, and I need to do it in a way where students have the ability and confidence to complete the task whilst also still learning new things (that zone of proximal development we're all familiar with from our university pedagogy days).
• In this particular task below, students are being taught TWO things - the ordering of information within a paragraph, and how to generate a concept based on two different examples from a text. 

The task:

1. Students are given this worksheet.
2. Students pick two pieces of evidence from the worksheet that they think are similar, or that they like the look of. Higher ability students can fill in details about the point being made by each piece of evidence.
3. Students think of something they could say that brings these two pieces of evidence together. What common idea is within them? How are they similar? What argument do they both support? This is then written onto the top of the sheet.
4. Students then write a paragraph that starts with the concept statement they have created and copy the two examples in after it. This is done under timed conditions (9 or 10 minutes for Year 9, 8 minutes for Year 10).

There are three things to watch for when students construct the paragraph. These are things we may take for granted, or things that have not been explicitly taught to students before.

• Make sure the students are putting their sentences one after the other in the paragraph. Some students will start a new line for every sentence which makes the paragraph look like three small separate paragraphs. It can mean a couple of things when students do this, the most worrying of which is that they may not think of all these separate sentences as being part of something cohesive that belongs together. Some students won't learn this through being told ahead of the task, they will need to physically write it wrong first and then have the teacher correct it in front of them in person. 
• The two examples will need some adjusted wording or a connective clause of some sort between them. EG. Additionally, In addition to this, A further example of this is, Moreover, etc. Not all students will instinctively know this, especially if they haven't done a lot of (or any) academic reading. 
• For students who have no trouble assembling the paragraph quickly and understanding all of the above, this could be the time where you introduce the idea of a linking sentence at the bottom that consolidates the concept of the overall paragraph and ties things back to a bigger idea (the thesis). Stronger English students will be able to do this quite well in Stage 5.  

Happy paragraphing!

Disclaimer: The above resource was created specifically for this blog in my own spare time. 

Using Schemas with Related Texts

The drive for senior NSW students to locate and select their own related texts has diminished somewhat since the days of Belonging and Discovery. The 2019 syllabus de-emphasised it across the entire Standard and Advanced curriculum, relegating it as a single Common Module element that doesn't require external assessment (meaning there is no requirement for students to recall their related text in the HSC exam... make of that what you will!) 

All that said, Extension English 1 still requires students to find some related texts for their elective module. In total, the elective module involves the study of three prescribed texts (selected from a pool of six) and two related texts - with students expected to (most likely) draw upon their knowledge of two prescribed and one related text for the HSC question. 

In a 1 hour exam context, it's quite a feat to be able to tie together that many texts and tailor a response to a previously unseen essay question.

I found myself grappling with this challenge when I first picked up an Extension class a few years ago, thinking to myself: 

How does one prepare Year 12 students to be adaptable while managing sophisticated and interlocking knowledge of that many texts?

A schema works. This is a way to guide students in pulling out specific textual examples from their texts. The examples are collected in connection to the module descriptor, which can be a highly effective way to organise thinking if the student is made to do it over and over again with in the following ways:

1. Use the schema with multiple texts at the same time in a single lesson
   
2. Use the schema with the same texts at different times throughout the year
   

My schema was developed for the Literary Homelands elective but versions could be easily made for any of the other electives. I was heavily influenced by Paul Kiem's excellent video on the Question 1 segment of the History Extension exam. I recommend watching it even if you have no connection at all to the teaching of History as it's a really valuable approach to teaching adaptable critical thinking and the synthesis of ideas at a more academic level. 

Download schema here.

Once students have used the schema a bunch of times they can then try out some paragraph or essay responses. I start them out with the instruction to come up with a thesis in response to the question (a whole other exercise) and then to tie this thesis to one of the themes in the schema. The notes the student has made on each of their texts (both prescribed and related) in relation to this specific theme can then be pulled from each schema to construct a single thematically-driven essay paragraph that ties together two, three or even four texts. 

It's not the only way to do things but my students found it helpful so maybe yours will too :)

Writing in Response to the Literary Homelands Prescribed Texts

One of the challenges of the HSC Extension English syllabus is the idea that students need to analyse a broad selection of texts as part of their elective. The mandated amount of texts for study are as follows:

• Three of the Prescribed Texts (two of which must be 'extended print' texts - this means two drawn from the available novel, non-fiction text, drama, and short story suite options).
• Two related texts.
  

This means that, in response to the question given in the HSC Exam for the Elective, students will need to be able to ostensibly call upon detailed knowledge of up to five texts (though in reality, it's most likely to be two prescribed texts and one related). Putting aside any concerns we might have about the level of depth that this allows for in a single one-hour exam, students are required to have a holistic enough understanding of the studied texts to be able to achieve a synthesis of understanding in response to the Elective descriptor. 

So how do we teach this?

There are many roads to Rome, so to speak, but having just finished teaching the new syllabus for the second time I feel more ready now to share a particular approach after fine-tuning the way it works in action. 

This hinges on the use of a schema - download here.

1. Start with your normal way of approaching each text. Students should read, and re-read, and discuss, and analyse, and write about the texts in a variety of ways.
   
2. There then needs to be common identifiable threads that can be applied to all of the texts. This requires legwork from the teacher because students will not have read all of the texts until the end of the course. Part of this legwork has been done already in the Elective descriptor, and this is reflected in the schema. There is room on the schema for additional concepts to be drawn out from all of the combined texts that have been chosen for the students. As far as the Literary Homelands Elective goes, I've indicated a range of common concepts in the schema and left space for the class to come up with further ones throughout the duration of the course.
   
3. After each text has been studied, students look at the schema and connect their analysis to each concept (or half of the concepts - your mileage may vary). 
4. As you move through the course, students come back to this schema over and over again, using the concepts to discuss commonalities and differences, building up their meta-analysis of  Literary Homelands.

Eventually students internalise many of the concepts. They pick out their favourites and they start connecting quotes to a thesis they develop in response to each concept. They write paragraphs exploring their meta-analysis of each concept. 

And then you chuck some HSC-style questions at them and they practise rearranging their meta-analysis accordingly.

This schema approach could be easily adapted to each of the electives. You'll just need to examine the the Elective descriptor for your chosen Elective and use the indicated key concepts to fill in the schema accordingly. Once you've read the Prescribed Texts as the teacher, undertaken some professional learning, or read associated academic texts, you can then populate the schema further to suit the needs of the Elective.

Incorporating Drafting into Extended Response Assessment Tasks

With the advent of NESA's stipulations for HSC Assessment, in which students may only sit one formal examination per subject (including essays set in this fashion), there is now an increased need to senior students to practise the writing of extended responses in a meaningful fashion. Prior to the new rules, students might have written essays in assessable conditions anywhere up to 3 or 4 times across their final schooling year, but now this is no longer possible.

One way to get around this is to incorporate drafting into an assessable essay. This takes away the formalised examination context and - in the spirit of what NESA is hoping for - allows for a less stressful approach to essay writing in which students can engage with assessment as learning. 

There are two examples here for different subject areas, both of which were written for the older syllabus that ended this year. Regardless of your KLA, it's worth checking out both of them as they represent different approaches to the drafting process.

• Advanced English Example

• Modern History Example

Both tasks utilise an analytical marking criteria (as opposed to the holistic style rubrics used for HSC marking). It's a different way to mark than what we may be used to, however, it's imperative to use an analytical-styled criteria when undertaking assessment as learning as it allows the students to identify specific skills they can work on to consolidate strengths and address weaknesses. 

The holistic marking grid (in which student ability is represented in bands of grouped criteria) is specifically designed as the absolute end point of the learning process, IE. This style of criteria gets used for HSC marking because the students don't get to see how they're marked at this point. An analytical marking grid (in which specific skills are addressed with their own independent marks) is designed to offer meaningful feedback to the student, and this is often what a lot of Australian universities use for their humanities courses when demonstrating to students what criteria they need to address when submitting assignments.

Anyway! In terms of the resources attached above:

The Advanced English task requires students to submit a draft at some point before the final submission date. In terms of making their drafting visible to the marker, 5 of the 25 marks have been allocated to a reflection statement that they must attach to their final submission. 

The Modern History task strips back the differentiation of skills (it's only a 15 mark response) in order to take the pressure off students who are being asked to do multiple drafts. The drafting process is incorporated here as a non-mandatory due date, which works as thus:

• Students submit a draft about one week before the final due date. Students can't be penalised if they don't submit at this time - it isn't mandatory and it isn't the final due date.
• The teacher marks the drafts and gives them back to the students with feedback.
• Students have an option to re-submit on the final due date for re-marking. If they choose not to do this then they take the mark they've already been given instead.

Roughly half the students in this scenario re-submit a new draft for marking. The other half aren't interested in "doing the assessment task twice" and will take the mark they've been initially given. It turns out to be a remarkably efficient approach as you get to finalise marks for half the students before the final due date.  

I'll write another blog down the track once I've had a chance to develop more assessments in response to the new syllabus.

Standard Module C: The Craft of Writing

This blog post offers an overview of the Prescribed Texts for Standard English Module C, 'The Craft of Writing'. In the study of this module, teachers are required to teach TWO of the Prescribed Texts. It should be noted that there are no prescribed editions for these texts, which means that they don't have to be sourced from particular anthologies or websites (NOTE: This is interesting as some of these texts [such as Crouch End] exist as different versions in different places).

I would like to offer my eternal gratitude to my colleague and mentor Kira Bryant, who supplied me with these texts. Check out her great blog: Tales from an Edugeek.

Prose Fiction Options

There are five fiction short story options to pick from, three of which are by Australian authors; Peter Carey, Catherine Cole, and Melissa Lucashenko. The last of these, Lucashenko, is also Murri Aboriginal.

'The Pedestrian' by Ray Bradbury

What is it: Leonard is a writer in the mid-21st century who has taken to walking the streets at night - the only one of the city's 3 million residents to do so. Careful not to disturb all the people safely ensconced in their houses, Leonard finds himself targeted by the city's lone police car as he walks aimlessly through this future world.  

Scope for Study / Verdict: Bradbury explores the theme of conformity in this 1950s satire of increased home comforts, imagining a future where people no longer have any reason for going outside. The protagonist subverts the conventions of his society by daring to walk for no reason other than just walking, something that confuses and alarms the authorities - represented here by the police (who no longer have much to do due to people staying inside with their TVs and air conditioning). Students will be able to draw parallels between this imagined future and their own 21st century world of increased home entertainment, with room for comment on the isolationism prompted by new technologies.

Page Count: 2 pages.

Source: First published in a magazine in 1951, 'The Pedestrian' can currently be found in the Ray Bradbury anthology The Golden Apples of the Sun.

Peter Carey doing his best "Oh hi, I'm an author" face.

'Report on Shadow Industry' by Peter Carey

What is it: An unnamed protagonist reflects on the nature of the 'shadow industry' that has emerged in America - the springing up of 'shadow factories', the way they are changing the environment, the increasing popularity of manufactured shadows, and the connection of this new product to misery, suicide, envy, embarrassment, etc. 

Scope for Study / Verdict: In this fictional 'report' Carey satirises the nature of materialism by taking an abstract and obviously useless product and showing its impact on society. Carey explores the various dimensions that come with a society obsessed with material possessions, drawing upon his own background as an advertiser to make evident the power that consumerism holds over the customer. Students will be able to engage fairly easily with the story due to its brevity, unusual concept, and the fact that it's broken into 5 separate short parts that deal with different aspects of the topic.

Page Count: 3 pages.

Source: Written in 1974, 'Report on the Shadow Industry' can be found in Peter Carey's anthology Collected Stories.

'Home' by Catherine Cole

What is it: Ahmed is a refugee who, after spending 4 years in the Villawood Detention Centre, moves into a small Sydney house next to a cemetery. He finds his new home strange and alienating, and the profound losses he has endured make it difficult for him to even find solace in his religious faith. 

Scope for Study / Verdict: Cole plays with past and present tense to manipulate the reader's distance from the story at various points, and tells Ahmed's tale in a third person limited perspective that allows for the reader to get a deeper understanding of what the character is going through. This narrative also allows for the reader to view the way that Australian culture appears when seen through the prism of a newly-released asylum seeker's eyes. Unlike the more high concept, abstract narratives of the previously examined short stories, 'Home' is very much a character piece that allows for students (and teachers) to look at perspective and characterisation in a fairly traditional sense. 

Page Count: 8 pages.

Source: 'Home' can be found in The Best Australian Stories 2011 anthology (ISBN: 9781863955485).

'Crouch End' by Stephen King

What is it: Two police officers in the London suburb of Crouch End field a case from a hysterical American woman who has lost her husband. Crouch End is known for mysterious disappearances and odd goings-on, and the husband, Lonnie, has become the latest victim of the Lovecraftian monsters that live beneath the Earth in this area.

Scope for Study / Verdict:  Originally written as a contribution to an anthology that sought to 'shake up' H. P. Lovecraft's long-familiar Cthulhu Mythos, 'Crouch End' sees King combine the British 'bobby' police procedural genre with his well-known penchant for horror. Watch out for the challenging structure (it risks getting lost in flashbacks within flashbacks), as well as the UK-specific vernacular that King rather unsuccessfully tries his hand at (EG. "Maybe you ought to give me a kiss... I always fancy a kiss when I'm getting my doodle pulled").

Page Count: 17 pages.

Source: Originally published in 1980 as part of Ramsay Cambpell's anthology New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos. The source listed in the syllabus document, though, is a slightly different edition of the story published in Stephen King's 1993 short story collection Nightmares and Dreamscapes.

Lucashenko has written six novels, including the award-winning teen mystery, Killing Darcy.

'Dreamers' by Melissa Lucashenko

What is it: Jean, a young Aboriginal woman, comes to a farm in rural 1940s NSW to seek work, and develops a friendship with a farmer's wife, May. Together they raise May's son, Eric, a toddler so prone to wandering off that they decide to attach a bell to him.

Scope for Study / Verdict: Lucashenko's story spreads across a two decade backdrop of post-war Australia and incorporates contextual points related to our mid-20th Century history - including the 1967 Referendum, the Aboriginal missions, and the impact of the war on rural Australia. The writing itself mostly sticks to a third person limited perspective that's both understandable enough for Stage 6 Standard students and inclusive of enough context-specific vernacular to maintain an engaging sense of setting and character. In terms of teaching students, 'Dreamers' is also a good example of a circular narrative structure.

Page Count: 11 pages.

Source: 'Dreamers' can be found in the 2016 anthology The Near and the Far: new stories from the Asia-Pacific Region.

Nonfiction Options

There are four non-fiction options to pick from. Two of these writers are American, one is British, and the other is Australian. All are Anglo-Saxon/Western.

'Dear Mrs Dunkley' by Helen Garner

What is it: Garner reminisces about her formidable childhood teacher, Mrs Dunkley, and describes the dread of her teaching methods. The story pieces together Garner's memory, her impressions now, a dream she once had and wrote about, and a letter from a stranger that illuminated the real Mrs Dunkley and forever changed Garner's remembrance of the woman.

Scope for Study / Verdict: A fantastic piece that expertly dances between childhood memory and adult experience to draw a complex portrait of a terrifying but influential figure in the author's life. Garner brings Mrs Dunkley to life before the reader's eyes through the use of carefully-observed imagery and hindsight, and the final part of the overall piece packs a resounding punch that will shift the audience's entire view of the story. A perfect example of a well-written memoir.

Page Count: 3 pages.

Source: This piece appears in the 2012 collection Sincerely: Further Adventures in the Art of Correspondence from Women of Letters, curated by Marieke Hardy and Michaela Maguire. It can also be found online as a Sydney Morning Herald article, and in Helen Garner's own non-fiction anthology Everywhere I Look, published in 2016.

'The Sporting Spirit' by George Orwell

What is it: Orwell comments on a 1945 visit from the Dynamo Moscow football team to play some historic matches against the British, and in particular on the way that sport can be viewed as an extension of aggressive nationalism. The writer deconstructs the motivations and impacts of international-level sport, drawing on the 20th century re-emergence of sport as a contributing factor to the destructive nature of nationalism.

Scope for Study / Verdict: Once you get past the 1940s context there's a lot in this piece that should prompt Standard English students into discussion. With Australia's sporting culture so prevalent at a school-level in so many different contexts (urban, rural, suburban, private schools, public schools, whatever), it shouldn't be an issue getting students to engage with the contentious idea that sport can be ultimately damaging when examined on a national scale. Orwell's relatively straight-forward and conversational style also makes this piece perfect for a Standard English cohort, and there's ample scope for analysing his use of figurative language, rhetoric, logos, and ethos in an attempt to persuade the audience. It's also worth noting that, if you have a high-performing Standard class, the gender and race-related prejudices of Orwell and his time can be critically evaluated as well.

Page Count: 2 pages.

Source: Originally published in the leftist newspaper The Tribune on the 14th of December, 1945. The essay be easily found online with a quick Google search, and has also been published in Penguin's 'Modern Classics' series as part of the Orwell non-fiction anthology Essays (ISBN: 9780141183060).

'A Comparison' by Sylvia Plath

What is it: This short piece delves into the differences between writing a poem and a novel, with Plath using the full brunt of her descriptive and figurative powers to characterise the two literary forms in a complicated and interconnected manner.

Scope for Study / Verdict: A wonderfully creative piece of artistry. Plath playfully manipulates language and uses imagery, metaphor, personification, and candor to control the relationship between subject and audience. The density of the piece is preserved by it's brevity, which means that Standard students should be able to deconstruct it in close-up without fear of losing their way too much.

Page Count: 2 pages.

Source: This piece can be found in the Plath collection Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams, a volume released in 2000 that focused on her non-poetry pieces.

Vowell is a journalist and social commentator best known for her work on radio in examining American culture.

'What He Said There' by Sarah Vowell

What is it: The author describes a visit to the historical town of Gettysburg, where Abraham Lincoln once delivered his famous Gettysburg Address during the American Civil War. As she tours the town, Vowell flits across themes on the commodification of history, the dumbing down of culture, and what it is that ensures certain parts of history live on in the collective memories of the wider public.

Scope for Study / Verdict: In a piece rich in literary invention, Vowell meditates on the nature of history within the context of modern America. In examining the author's writing, students might consider why Abraham Lincoln is seen as an 'American Jesus', or why the Gettysburg Address is like a 'soy-bean', or why the author switches to present tense when describing Lincoln's thought processes 137 years ago. There's also this great quote, "The best the slaughtered can usually hope for is a cameo in some kind of art", which is basically the thesis of the article.

Page Count: 8 pages

Source: Vowell's essay can be found in her book, The Partly Cloudy Patriot, published in 2002.

Speech Options

Of the four speeches, two are Australian, one is American, and one is British (delivered at an American institution). Both of the Australian ones are delivered by politicians, one of whom is Wiradjuri Aboriginal.

Linda Burney delivering her historic speech.

'First Speech to the House of Representatives as Member for Barton' by Linda Burney

What is it: In this speech, Linda Burney, the first Aboriginal woman to be elected to the House of Representatives, gives her inaugural speech to Parliament in 2016. She explains what it is she stands for, who the people of her electorate are, and the background she has come from. Burney uses this opportunity to describe the role of politics as she sees it, with particular attention given to the themes of equality, welfare, and the remedying of past wrongs to pave the way for a more inclusive nation.

Scope for Study / Verdict: Burney is an entertaining speaker, utilising humour and pathos to construct a deeply affecting picture of Australia's marginalised minority groups and what it means for them to have people like herself in parliament. Teachers will need to examine the speech within the context of 2016 and the history that has led to this point, with Burney referencing the Wiradjuri Wars of the 19th century, the 1967 Referendum, the differences between the Liberal and Labor Parties, Edmund Barton, the 2008 Apology, the incumbent government's defense of 'hate speech' in 2016, and a few other relevant events. Students can examine the rhetoric used by Burney to strengthen her position and draw connections between the content of her speech and their own lives and beliefs.

Page Count: 8 pages.

Source: A transcription and video of the 2016 speech can both be found on the Parliament of Australia website.

'How to Live Before You Die' by Steve Jobs

What is it: In a speech delivered at Stanford University, Apple Mac creator Steve Jobs describes the purpose of things, and the art of using your experiences to carve your own unique path. Through the use of hindsight and the telling of three key stories, Jobs explains the cause and effect chain that led to his own innovations, and what motivates him to live his life in the way that he does.

Scope for Study / Verdict: This is a very accessible speech, and one made somewhat poignant by Jobs' death by cancer (he references having been cured of pancreatic cancer). I think it would work quite well with a Standard English class as the language is conversational and straightforward whilst dealing with some hard truths pitched at an audience of young adults.

Page Count: 3 pages.

Source: Delivered as the 2005 Stanford University Commencement speech, 'How to Live Before You Die' can be found on Stanford's website here.

Paul Keating lays a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

'Funeral Service of The Unknown Australian Soldier' by Paul Keating

What is it: Prime Minister Paul Keating delivers a eulogy on Remembrance Day for all Australian soldiers who have died in war, examining what it means to die for one's country, and the reasons why we honour the fallen.

Scope for Study / Verdict: Keating's mastery of the speech genre is well-renowned, and his memorial speech for the 'Unknown Soldier' provides ample fodder for the study of rhetoric, and the way politicians like Keating use this art form to control language and persuade audiences. Examples for analysis include anaphora, logos, the use of semi-colons as 'super commas', symbolism, carefully selected paragraph breaks, parataxis, embedded clauses, and polysyndeton - all persuasive and structural devices that demonstrate Keatin's expertise as a renowned orator.

Page Count: 2 pages.

Source: A transcript of the speech can be found on Paul Keating's website.

'The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination' by JK Rowling

What is it: Harry Potter author JK Rowling delivers a speech to Harvard University upon receiving an honorary doctorate, choosing to focus on the concept of failure as a force that can galvanize people into assessing their own purpose in life, seeking out the things that truly matter to them, and using this as a foundation to build their own dreams. Rowling recounts her own experiences of failure and how this led to her work at Amnesty International, and the impact this had on her.

Scope for Study / Verdict: An uplifting speech that's perfectly pitched for Year 12 students who will be evaluating their own life journeys in the days to come. There's a great quote from Rowling, "There is an expiry date on blaming your parents on steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you", which should have some relevance to the young adults we teach. Her speech encompasses themes of achievement, failure, speaking up, and the (implied) meaning of life itself. There's also just enough challenging terms smattered throughout that will allow for expanding student vocabulary, IE. 'quixotic', 'paradoxical', 'parenthesis', 'ennobling', 'vicissitudes', 'temerity', etc. 

Page Count: 5 pages.

Source:  The full text of the speech, which was delivered in 2008, can be found on one of Harvard University's websites here. A 20 minute recording of the speech can also be found on the Ted Talk website and on Youtube.

 
Poetry / Performance Poetry Options

Of the five poets featured here there are three Australians. The international entrants are the American Robert Frost and Singaporean poet Carol Chan.

'Popcorn' by Carol Chan

What is it: Chan ruminates on the international origins of her 7/11-bought popcorn while remembering a conversation with a barista from China, and considers the fine line between authentic culinary experience and phony, consumer-driven materialism. The piece is framed by a comparison between the poet's craving for popcorn and the feeling of disappointment she experiences when she eats it.

Scope for Study / Verdict: Standard English students may at first be confused by the presentation of this blank verse poem in couplets that break up an otherwise straightforward piece of writing. Chan folds an illuminating conversation inside of the story of the persona's popcorn-consumption, adding irony and political commentary to an otherwise innocuous occurrence. I think this would be a fun poem to teach, especially if you have creative students who might appreciate composing their own pieces in a similar manner.

Page Count: 14 pairs of lines (about 1 page).

Source: 'Popcorn' features in Contemporary Asian Australian Poets (ISBN 9781921450655). This 2013 anthology is also a Prescribed Text for Standard English Module A: Language, Identity and Culture.

Frost's demeanour and fashion suggest a certain oneness with nature

'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening' by Robert Frost

What is it: Frost describes a sense of rapture experienced by the poem's persona. The short and economically-composed portrait of the woods-in-season represents a communion with nature that links to concepts of place and emotion.

Scope for Study / Verdict: I guess this could be seen as the token international 'classic' entry in the poetry section of Module C, with Frost's exploration of nature conveyed through traditional use of imagery, sensory description, and elegant word choices. The poetry is more than accessible enough for a Standard English class, and its mileage will probably depend on the level of enthusiasm held by the teacher for Frost's poetry.

Length: 4 short stanzas.

Source: Originally published in 1923, this poem can be found most recently in The Collected Poems of Robert Frost, released in 2012.

'An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow' by Les Murray

What is it: A man stops and begins to cry in the middle of Sydney at Martin Place. The poem describes the way surrounding people react to the weeping man, with multiple points of view building a sense of depth and mystery.

Scope for Study / Verdict: Murray arranges free verse into several five-line stanzas, eschewing a more formalised structure in order to force the focus onto the content of the poem. Students can be scaffolded in examining each viewpoint presented, and there is a lot of scope for discussion in terms of creatively exploring the enigmatic weeping man at the centre of the piece and the strange impact he has on those around him. I think this would be a fantastic piece to study with a class both in terms of analysing the text and using it as a basis for creative writing activities.

Length: 9 stanzas presented across two pages.

Source: 'An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow' can be found in the 2012 book The Best 100 Poems of Les Murray, published by Black Inc.

I'm just gonna say it: Judith Wright looks like such a badass in this photo. I love it.

'The Surfer' by Judith Wright

What is it: This 1945 piece by the Australian poet Judith Wright describes a body surfer's mastery of the waves, the synergy between the human swimmer and the personified ocean, and the dangers that lurk in attempting to subjugate such a powerful force of nature.

Scope for Study / Verdict: Wright's language is powerful and visceral in its description of action, drawing parallels and tensions between the ocean and the swimmer who attempts to ride it, and remains a great piece of verse. The poem is relatively short and features little in the way of obscure or archaic language, allowing instead for the Standard English student to observe the writer's creative use of structure when arranging clauses and word combinations. There is also scope for students to explore connections to the poetry in terms of what it has to say about the underlying conflict or relationship between humanity and the elements.

Length: 3 stanzas (1 page)

Source: The poem can be found in the anthology Judith Wright: Collected Poems 1942-1985 published in 2016.

'May Your Pen Grace the Page', performance by Luka Lesson

What is it: A plea for potential writers to express themselves creatively, Lesson's slam poetry examines the nature of writing itself as an entity to be wooed and flirted with, and gives way to enthusiastic and romantic reflection.

Scope for Study / Verdict: The inclusion of this piece as a performance rather than a text-poem brings into focus the potential for analysing multimodality, with Lesson using pace and volume to build tension and emphasis. In 'May Your Pen Grace the Page', the process of writing is personified as a lover, calling to mind similarities with other Module C texts such as Sylvia Plath's 'A Comparison', and Lesson mixes the genres of poetry and hip-hop, which may assist with engaging some Standard English students with nominally challenging content.

Length: 3 and a half minutes.

Source: An audio recording can be found on Luka Lesson's 2012 CD Please Resist Me, and on Youtube. A transcript can also be found here.