This is from a Trial paper from Cranbrook. "First of all," he said, "if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view." Atticus Finch, To Kill a Mockingbird. Use this... Continue Reading →
This is from a Trial at Hornsby Girls' HS. Sometimes, when I’ve been driving down the motorway, I’ve looked up at a tatty banner hanging from some overpass. You know the ones I mean: cheap art-class white poly-cotton, frayed at the edges and graying with exhaust fumes. The writing in capitals done with a wide,... Continue Reading →
This week's Mod C is from Caringbah High School's 2022 Trial. It's very much the same as the last few, asking about stories and their value (I think I'm going to stop answering sample questions that focus on this because I'm bored stiff with it). Stories matter. Stories can be used to empower and to... Continue Reading →
This is from Barker College's 2022 (?) Trial paper. Personally, I think this would have been more fun as an imaginative, but I followed the question (part a anyway) as set. It's become a cliche to say that stories help us make sense of our world. It might have been new in the 1980s, but... Continue Reading →
This is from Ascham school's 2022 (?) Trial paper Books contain everything worth knowing except what ultimately matters. The sort of books I write, anyway. The sort that sell. After trying and failing to sell stories about what does matter, I gave up. It's enough to know the truth; you don't have to share it.... Continue Reading →
See my comments on this question from James Ruse High here : Use the image below as the inspiration for an imaginative OR discursive piece which explores the result of a transformed outlook on individuals and/or society. * A few chapters after the world's creation, a man is standing in his house at night having... Continue Reading →
For HSC students, the discursive mode is probably best defined by what it's not. If you keep a journal or diary, you don't even need to read this post - you're already writing discursively. The discursive mode is the widest, the catch-all, the marker of a humane and intelligent person. You're not trying to sell... Continue Reading →
The 2021 HSC paper offered students this characteristically miserable image, and the instruction to 'Use the image provided to craft a central metaphor in a piece of imaginative, discursive or persuasive writing (for 10 marks). For another 10 marks you had to Evaluate how your study of figurative language in The Craft of Writing influenced... Continue Reading →
The 2021 CSSA paper presented several confusing questions to Advanced and Standard candidates. Yes, it was the same Module C question for both Standard and Advanced, which seemed a bit cheap to me. Module C was a little better than Module A (which was nightmarishly meaningless), and had two parts. Part A looked like this:... Continue Reading →
A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on. Use this as the stimulus for the opening of a creative, discursive, or persuasive piece. Use at least one example of figurative language that you have learned about in Module C. * So here's an odd thing... Continue Reading →
The Craft of Writing 