Let’s talk about the 4 purposes that VCAA has set for our Year 11s and Year 12s!
For the Creating/Crafting Texts SAC, VCAA has give our VCE students four options to choose from, and they are:
- Argue
- Reflect
- Express
- Explain
The rule is that you MUST choose at least one of these purposes. So you can choose more if you want, although we don’t recommend more than two – it gets too messy!
To Argue
Most students are pretty familiar with this purpose!
In order to argue successfully, you have to have a perspective or a stance, and your aim is to persuade your audience to agree with your stance.
Since this is a persuasive piece, there should be some kind of contention or main argument. The easiest way to make sure of this is to identify a problem, and then propose a solution. This should help you to stop ranting (which is just complaining loudly), which is not persuasive in nature!
To reflect
Writing to reflect can be tricky, because it’s not something that we ask our students to do very often.
When reflecting, what we’re generally trying to do is to compare past, present and or future scenarios, and revealing truths and growth (hopefully personal) through that comparison.
Often, reflective writing is an exercise in looking back in time and observing how a subject is now different, or an examination of ourselves (or another subject) in the present and imagining how we might be different in the future.
To express
Expressing, in the dictionary, is to convey emotion or perspective.
In a writing format, we are trying to get our audience to understand our perspective or our emotions. Bear in mind that expressing and arguing are different purposes – where arguing is to make your audience agree with you, expressing is to make your audience understanding where you’re coming from
To explain
When explaining, we are really trying to make ideas more clear or describing something in more detail, and highlighting a truth in the process.
Explaining is less subjective than a purpose like expressing. Usually there is a very complicated concept you are trying to help your audience understand, or perhaps helping your audience to understand a concept in a different way. It doesn’t have to be your personal perspective or how you feel about it, as long as there is that element of education for your audience.
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