essays and techniques transferable skills

How to write an A+ essayTransferable Skills by Dr Jennifer Minter

Writing Better Essays and Persuasive Techniques helps students improve their essays and written skills.

How do these skills relate to other areas of the English curriculum?.

Better Essays and Persuasive Techniques

Transferable skills and knowledge

Text response skills: essay writing, planning and topic sentences

Written expression: the benefit of an analytical vocabulary

Sentence models: close-passage analyse: analyse the author’s figurative devices.


Text response skills

Better Essays and Techniques: •essay-writing structure, p. 10 and •a plan of a typical paragraph, p. 39

•Reasoning and persuasive strategies also encourage close analysis.

Better Essays and Persuasive Techniques: pp. 10-39.

• Be sure to present your ideas logically.

• Use appropriate keywords and signposts to guide the reader through your discussion.

• In each paragraph, start with a “big picture” concept and then analyse specific examples and quotes.

Signpost: a logical sequence


Your paragraph plan

• In your persuasive essay, you must base your views on the facts and use a combination of evidence and common sense.

• You must show logical connections. • Start with a concise and sharp topic

sentence and progress from the big picture to particular, specific details/examples.

Summary: your paragraph


Paragraph plan: language analysis

A paragraph in a text response essay

• In each paragraph, start with a “big picture” concept (author’s views and values) and then analyse specific examples and quotes.

• Students should pay particular attention to topic sentences. They should be analytical and not descriptive.

• Students should also show an awareness of the text’s complexities: see close analysis.

Your topic sentence should be persuasive/analytical, not descriptive.

It should not describe a problem, but show a clear analytical link to the topic.

Better, clearer topic sentences

Better Essays and Persuasive Techniques: pp. 17.

Paragraph plan: text response

• Start with the key concepts; author’s views and values and intentions.

• Give specific examples, referencing the author’s depiction of characters and symbols/narrative devices.

• Incorporate quotes.• Show link to the big picture concept.


Author’s intentions: how to avoid “story-telling”

• If you summarise events you may be “story-telling”.

• If you use the author’s narrative devices such as symbols and character depictions and contrasts to recount the event, you are “analysing”.

• Focus on the purpose/impact of the author’s language choices and narrative devices. (See exercises relating to impact, p. 66-67


Your paragraph


Example: To Kill a Mockingbird

Topic: • “Boo Radley, Tom Robinson and Mayella

Ewell are all outcasts” Explain the factors responsible in at least three of these cases and discuss what this suggests about the communities attitudes and values.


Paragraph sample: To Kill a Mockingbird

• TS (Signpost): Statement on the topic analysing the most important aspect of character/theme . (How Tom suffers from prejudice/ how and why he is an outcast).

• Explain: author’s values: most important narrative devices/symbols/depictions: Lee’s critique of the town’s attitudes and values

• Evidence: explanation and quotes/ narrative devices/examples from text: examples of injustice and how Tom suffered unfairly

• Link: show how it relates to the topic: how the attitudes prompted his exclusion/outcast/ death.


Paragraph sample: To Kill a Mockingbird

• As an African negro, Tom Robinson is a victim of the racial discrimination that Lee believes leads to a serious miscarriage of justice in Maycombe. In court, where everybody is supposed to be treated fairly, a white man’s word is more credible (believable) than a black man’s. The Ewell’s contempt of the Negroes is typical of much of the townsfolk. They perpetuate the “evil assumption” “that ALL Negros lie, ALL Negroes are immoral beings, that ALL Negro men are not to be trusted around our women.” Because of their sense of superiority, Lee suggests citizens like Ewell scapegoat the negroes and blame them for their woes. In fact in Tom’s case, he was a “a dead man the minute Mayella opened her mouth and screamed.” As Lee suggests, “it is a sin to kill a mockingbird” because of its purity , beauty and innocence, and in this case, Tom becomes the “mockingbird”. He is a symbol of man’s cruelty to each other. In particular Bob Ewell is particularly hostile towards Tom Robinson because of his compassionate attitude towards his daughter which that challenged his authority and exposed his abusive nature. Even after destroying the last shred of Ewell’s credibility, “if he had any to begin with”, Atticus knows that Tom still does not stand a chance in court ….


Romeo and Juliet paragraph

• Who is to blame for the tragedy?• (Topic sentence: link to topic)

• As a fiery Capulet, Tybalt plays a prominent role in perpetuating the feud through his provocative and misguided attempts to protect their family pride.

Romeo and Juliet paragraph cont’d• (Shakespeare’s views and values) The playwright sets up a contrast between Tybalt’s

indignant and fiery stance, and Romeo’s desire for peace to reinforce his point that hatred leads to division, resentment and death.

• (close passage) This is particularly evident during Tybalt’s fatal encounter with his mirror image, Mercutio. Mercutio cynically suggests that Tybalt (“Good King of Cats”) is a coward and urges him to draw his sword, “Tybalt, you rat-catcher, will you walk” (3.1) Indignant after Prince Capulet’s defence of Romeo during the masked ball, Tybalt has been spoiling for a confrontation. The audience is aware that he hates “peace” as he hates “hell, all Montagues, and thee.” Tybalt’s claim to Romeo that, “thou art a villain”, could be referring to a man of inferior birth, such as a peasant, which is deliberately offensive and seems to offer Romeo no option but to respond.

• (link to Shakespeare’s views and values) The ensuring fight and subsequent deaths undermine Romeo’s conciliatory actions and accordingly, Shakespeare suggests that the belligerent (bellicose) actions of both become the catalyst for Romeo’s exile and the hasty marriage.

• (Link) As a result, Tybalt can be blamed for his contribution to the chain of events that lead to tragedy, resulting in the lovers’ date with destiny.

An expository essay

• Students are encouraged to write “hybrid” or feature-style analytical essays.

• See the Quick Guide on p. 90• See the Feature-style article on p. 91.• See the Source material and “suggested plan”

on p. 92.

Sentence models

• Students will practice sentence models that will help them explain the significance of an author’s language.

• For example:

• Word choice: The alliterative phrase “famous fashion brand” reinforces the negative impact of a model’s obsession with fame and fortune.

• The figurative reference to the “three-legged bird” reflects her view that 13-year-old girls are vulnerable in the modelling industry.

• See e-book 3.

Better Essays and Persuasive Techniques.

Model sentences: (transferable)Close passage analysis of Macbeth• In an aside, Macbeth juxtaposes the positive and negative

aspects of this “supernatural soliciting” to reveal his moral turmoil.

• Shakespeare uses alliteration such as the thoughts that “shake so my single state of man” to reflect Macbeth’s fears.

• Adopting an alarmed and fearful stance, Macbeth comments on the fact that “nothing is but what is not”

• The metaphorical reference to his “seated heart” which knock(s) at my ribs, against the use of nature” draws attention to his immoral thoughts.

• Macbeth states, the “eye wink at the hand” which figuratively refers to need to conceal his motives.


Years 7-9: building a tone vocabulary

Chapter 3: Persuasive Techniques and e-book 2

Work through the exercises to expand your tone vocabulary.

Typical sentences include:

•Troy also adopts a candid tone to reveal his typical feelings of pain and suffering as a “zoo animal”. •Troy uses an aggrieved tone, when he suggests that they feel like “zoo animals’. (He uses such a tone to reflect the depth of his feeling.)•Ardently, the blogger seeks to justify the ban on the grounds that “everyone clicks with their own kind”


Years 7-9: building a tone vocabulary

Use the tone words:

•in creative writing pieces to capture a character’s manner of speaking

•in a character analysis of a play/film

•in a character analysis in a novel

Better Essays and Persuasive Techniques and E-book 2

Creative writing

• Students will build an analytical (tone) vocabulary.

• The adjectives/adverbs will help students improve their use of dialogue in creative writing: identifying the character’s manner of speaking will help students build more insightful characters.


Writing Better Sentences

• To achieve a high-scoring marks students must improve the quality of their writing.

• They must show a sound grasp and control of a variety of sentence structures.

• They must show a fluent grasp of analytical vocabulary.


Resources include:

Suggested responses

E-books with exercises (downloadable and writable)

An e-licence (and class sets)


Language Analysis pathway program (Yr 7-12)

Series 1. Techniques of Persuasion

Series 2. Language analysis: become an expert

Series 3. Language analysis: an essay-writing guide

www.englishworks.com.au

Language analysis pathway program

Suggested Responses

Each workbook has a corresponding “Suggested Responses” booklet for 20-40 exercises.The Responses and “Taking it Further” extension activities are an ideal correction resource for teachers. They are also ideal as an independent self-directed learning program for students.

www.englishworks.com.au

essays and techniques transferable skills

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