Look, we know they're mostly BS, but it's your teachers' last chance to believe that you learned something from all the quality literature they've been ladling down your throats. The thing to remember about reflection statements - and writing for school generally - is that this is not how writing happens in the real world.... Continue Reading →
Only the characters that we love to hate exist outside the story. Their strength allows them to breach the walls of their text and enter our world. a) use this statement as a stimulus for a character, persona, or speaker who is hateful in some way. You must include at least one literary device or... Continue Reading →
Only the characters that we love to hate exist outside the story. Their strength allows them to breach the walls of their text and enter our world. Write about a character, persona, or speaker who is hateful. * The new boy had longish hair and long, slightly skeletal fingers. That was all she noticed before... 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 →
Not actually a Module C piece, but rather Texts and Human Experiences. Compare these two versions of an experience. VERSION ONE 7.15am wake up, psych yourself up to face the day. You hit snooze a lot. 7.35am actually get out of bed. Some showering and stuff but it mostly goes by without you really noticing... 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 →
Above us, the Milky Way is a slash of sheer silver gossamer, studded with diamonds. The stars of other constellations are in sharp focus, stretching far out into the heavens. Two trains blaze past in the night, sirens and headlights blaring as the signal bells ring on the road next to us. They pierce the... Continue Reading →
Use the image above to write creatively about a character’s response to entering this unfamiliar setting for the first time. Simmo sat on a hard bench near the staircase, which was a wide thing with a strip of red carpet going up the centre. It looked like something a Disney princess would come floating down... Continue Reading →
The Craft of Writing 