The Argument Analysis essay task hasn’t really changed in VCAA’s new study design for VCE English and VCE EAL, but the performance descriptors is a little different!
You still need to read (and now, watch or listen) to a persuasive text, then analyse them for their arguments and mechanics of persuasion.
What HAS changed is that in the new performance descriptors, there is now a heavier emphasis on the student’s understanding of who the audience is, and how the author or creator has target this audience, specifically in the persuasive techniques and also in the logic and argument they’ve used .
In the old study design, it wasn’t a great idea to just talk about the author’s arguments and techniques, but in this new study design, students will be marked even more harshly for neglecting the intended audience.
In the new study design, students really have to identify who the author thinks they are writing/talking to, in order to achieve anything above a ‘medium’ in the rubric.
So that begs the question – how can students figure this out?
Students need to to figure out what assumptions the author is making of their audience!
Are they assuming the audience understands lots of popular culture references? Are they assuming the audience knows nothing about politics and therefore dedicates a lot of the article to explaining the political situation? Are they assuming the audience is very familiar with online shopping and therefore does not explain how online shopping works?
Once these assumptions are identified, we can now work backwards in reconstructing a more detailed profile of the audience.
Here at TSE Tuition, we like to ask our students these questions:
- Where is the audience? (geography)
- What’s the socio-economic status of the audience?
- What are the audience’s interests or lack of interests?
Once students have this profile of the intended audience, they are now well on their way to writing higher performing argument analysis essay!
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