The Craft of Writing

The Yr 12 module The Craft of Writing, which is common to Standard and Advanced, builds upon the Yr 11 module Reading to Write. The new HSC syllabus aims to improve students’ writing.

The module can be taught as a discrete unit or can be embedded in other modules. It is examined in Paper 2, which is two hour exam. Paper 2 has three sections: Mod A, Mod B and Mod C. The Craft of Writing is Mod C.

The aim is to improve writing skills. Here is a summary of the Module rubric:

- Students appreciate, examine and analyse texts as models and stimulus for their own writing.
- Examine how writers use language creatively and imaginatively for a range of purposes, eg, to describe the world around them, evoke emotion, shape a perspective or share a vision.
- Evaluate the versatility, power and aesthetics of language.
- Imaginative engagement with texts.
- Draft and revise own writing.
- Create highly crafted imaginative, discursive, persuasive and informative texts.
- Consider imagery, allusion, rhetoric, voice, characterisation, point of view, dialogue and tone.
- Consider purpose, audience, context to shape meaning.
- Use conventions of syntax, spelling, punctuation and grammar.

You can see it is a continuation of everything you have been doing in subject English.The difference is that you will be explicitly examined on these skills. How?

You will need to study two of the prescribed texts. These are short works of fiction or nonfiction, selected from the prescribed list by your teacher. (Some of these texts were in an old HSC module: Speeches - there are resources for these you can find online or at your library.) You will be asked to read widely and write in different forms, reflect on your writing, redraft and edit your work. Your assessment task makes up 25% of your whole school assessment. You can find links to the prescribed texts here. 

The exam is likely to have two parts, one asking you to write something in response to a stimulus, or you may be asked to write a piece in a certain form which includes a specific stylistic or literary device. You could be asked to write something based upon a text you have studied. The second part may ask you to justify the creative decisions you made in the piece you just wrote. Or you could be asked to reflect on what you have learned about the craft of writing with reference to any module prescribed or related text. You will be asked to write an imaginative, discursive, persuasive, informative or reflective response.

You would have written most of these types of texts before, but discursive is new to the syllabus. The NESA description is here:
Texts whose primary focus is to explore an idea or variety of topics. These texts involve the discussion of an idea(s) or opinion(s) without the direct intention of persuading the reader, listener or viewer to adopt any single point of view. Discursive texts can be humorous or serious in tone and can have a formal or informal register.

But you can also think of discursive writing as a writer thinking on the page, exploring an idea. It may be a personal essay. It may explore multiple viewpoints. It still requires a structure. The point is to read widely and to write for various purposes.

You can find a wide range of essays on a wide range of topics in various journals such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Medium, Electric Literature, Meanjin. Do an online search for best essays and read some you find there. Black Inc has been publishing collections of Best Australian Essays for each year since 1998. You can find these in your library. Recently I've been reading essays by Susan Sontag, Joan Didion, Annie Dillard, and Rebecca Solnit. I recommend you also read short stories. Black Inc has been publishing collections of Best Australian Short Stories since 1999. See also this online guide http://www.shortstoryguide.com/ and there are some online recommendations of short stories you can read in your lunch break. 

If you read an essay each morning and a short story every night for forty days, imagine how much you will learn!

And you can see how the terms of rhetoric come in handy here! You would do well to apply them to the prescribed texts.

Texts and Human Experiences

In the final term of Yr 11 you will do the first module of Yr 12: Texts and Human Experiences. It is common to both Standard and Advanced students. As a module, that name is very broad. It asks that you consider what are universal human experiences; what do communities have in common and what makes them distinctive, and how do individuals fit or not fit into communities. What do all humans need? What do we want? How has that changed according to time and place? How has it remained the same? How do we think, feel and behave? It relates to ideas of belonging, identity and representation.

Here is a summary of what the rubric is asking of you to explore:

- How texts represent individual and collective human experiences using language.
- How texts give insight into anomalies, paradoxes, inconsistencies in human behaviour and motivations. The role of storytelling throughout time.
- Develop skills in using literary devices, language concepts, modes and media.
- Make judgements about how meaning is shaped by context, purpose, structure, stylistic and grammatical features and form.
- Communicate ideas using figurative language to express universal themes and evaluative language to make informed judgements about texts.
- Develop skills in metalanguage, grammar, syntax.
- Respond to texts to see the world differently, challenge assumptions, ignite new ideas and reflect personally.

Most of those points are what you would have been working on through years of studying literature. You will see how it relates to the Advanced module in Yr 11: Narratives that Shape our World, and Module A in Yr 12 Standard: Language, Identity and Culture.

The point you may not have thought much about yet is the role of storytelling through time. That is a big topic. That idea has been explored through science (neurology), philosophy, politics, psychology, mythology, religion, theatre, art, architecture, dance and music. You can use any prism that makes sense to you and apply it in this module. You might want to review my post on Core Principles: From orality to literacy, as well as finding other resources according to your interests. You have the whole internet to help you, but if you are stuck I can recommend some books and articles. Ask in the Comments.

You are required to study a prescribed text and a related text of your own choosing. Your chosen related text is not examined, however it must be included in your assessment task for this module.

Exam paper 1 will cover this module. It is a 90 mins exam with 10 mins reading time. There are two sections. Section I asks you to respond to unseen texts. Section II asks you to respond to your prescribed text. It may include stimulus material or an unseen text as related.

For the rubric in full see here https://syllabus.nesa.nsw.edu.au/assets/english_advanced/english-advanced-stage-6-syllabus-2017.pdf

Rhetoric

In the new HSC English syllabus, rhetoric is mentioned in the modules Narratives that Shape our World and The Craft of Writing. Learning figures of rhetoric will help you in all your modules.

Here is the NESA definition of rhetorical devices, from their glossary: Strategies used by writers and speakers to achieve particular effects, for example to stimulate the audience's imagination or thought processes, to draw attention to a particular idea, or simply to display wit and ingenuity in composition. Examples of rhetorical devices are irony, paradox, rhetorical question, contrast and appropriation.

But there is a lot more to rhetoric than that!

The word rhetoric is from the Greek meaning ‘speaker in the assembly’. Rhetoric is the art of using language for persuasion, in speaking and writing. The devices for doing this well were codified by the ancient Greeks and Romans. They did this through observation and analysis. They found patterns and named them. In the Middle Ages in Western Europe rhetoric was taught together with logic and grammar. It was considered part of a classical education. The rules were divided into five processes: invention, arrangement, style, memory and delivery. Each had their subdivisions. Although rhetoric is no longer formally taught in high school (except, perhaps in the study of Ancient Greek and Latin), the ideas from rhetoric are helpful. They provide a student of literature with the words to identify literary devices and their effects. They also help improve your own writing.

For our purposes in high school English figures of rhetoric are tools to help you compose writing that achieves your purpose - to entertain, inform, persuade or present an opinion. They help with strategy and style. They cover logic and how to make your writing memorable. But you need to ensure that you use these figures to help your writing; misuse will hinder your purpose.

You can think of them as formulas. There are principles you can apply which work. These should not be hidden from you.

There are other ways these terms have been categorised and each resource will present the information in its own way. I had intended to present these terms according to how they can be applied as metalanguage - words about words, how to describe sentences, structure etc, but have settled on presententing them according to Lanham’s categories. It is not very helpful to a student to just read a long list presented alphabetically, as available online, unless you then create your own categories.

To make things more complicated, there is often disagreement about terms. These terms have been discussed over two and half thousand years, so it isn’t surprising. What it means for you is that there is some wriggle room. There are devices that can belong to more than one category. These divisions are sometimes unclear. There are broad or disputed meanings. You can apply your own thinking in how you use these terms to organise your responses to texts. There is precedent: the Greeks, Romans, Medieval monks, European Renaissance, various English dictionaries, and there are probably scholars who are currently working on it. There is no one standard dictionary of rhetoric. You can see yourself as continuing the chain of scholarship.

The other main point to remember is this: YOU DO NOT NEED TO REMEMBER THE NAMES OF ALL THE DEVICES. Of course, it would be good if you can, but, depending how keen an English student you are, it will be sufficient to recognise that there are terms for certain structures and effects. You can notice the pattern or device and comment on it by describing it without naming it. However, if you are keen, you can access the resources below. They include devices that you would likely not encounter in high school English - there are literally hundreds, from ab ovo to zeugma - that may spark your interest for further study. (The books I’ve listed below are quite entertaining, especially how they link and give examples of the devices. In his introduction Mark Forsyth tracks how Shakespeare used rhetorical devices, improving as he practised.)

I am continuing to work on this resource. For each device or figure I want to include the etymology of the term, an example from ancient literature, and an example from a modern context which includes women and people of colour, who are usually absent from these examples. I want the example to say something relevant about our lives today. It is an ambitious project I have set myself, and I’ll update the posts as I go along. But I’ll do the simpler posts about the devices first, so you can get started.

A useful activity to begin might be to take a large piece of paper (cardboard or butcher’s paper) or a whiteboard, and write down all the words you use in subject English. This is your metalanguage. See how you can categorise your metalanguage. You will then grow this as you learn more terms and devices. This will help you with everything in subject English. Growing your metalanguage is part of the purpose of the new HSC syllabus.

Books and Further Reading:

Aristotle - Rhetoric, Poetics

Quintilian, Cicero, Longinus

A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms - Richard A. Lanham

The Elements of Eloquence: How to Perfect the English Phrase - Mark Forsyth

Rhetorical Devices: A Handbook and Activities For Student Writers - Brendan McGuigan

A Handbook of Rhetorical Devices - Robert A. Harris

http://bmshri.org/sites/default/files/sri_sahithya/A_Handbook_of_Rhetoric.pdf

A Handbook of Rhetoric

http://www.hellesdon.org/documents/Advanced%20Rhetoric.pdf

A Periodic Table of Figures of Speech

Periodic Table of Figures of Speech - Full Size (visualcapitalist.com)

Wikipedia's Glossary of rhetorical terms

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_rhetorical_terms

And this site, where the figures are grouped according to what they do. 

http://rhetoric.byu.edu/Figures/Figures-Groupings.htm

See also here:

https://writingcommons.org/section/rhetoric/

Essay Conclusion

For your conclusion you would have been told to simply sum up your argument to give your essay closure. This is not very interesting.

Your conclusion is your opportunity to distinguish yourself as someone who has engaged with the text and considered it in relation to a broader context. If you answer these questions - I call it my Engaging With Texts Table - you will have views and context before you see the essay question you need to respond to, and you will have something to say. After you have read the text you are studying make some notes in response to these questions.

1. Curiosity: What does this text makes you curious about?
2. Connections: What connections do you draw between the text and your own life and/or other learning?
3. Challenge: What ideas, positions, or assumptions do you want to challenge or argue with in the text?
4. Concepts: What key concepts or ideas do you think are important and worth holding onto from the text?
5. Changes: What changes in attributes, thinking, or action are suggested by the text, either for you or others?
6. If you were to direct or produce an appropriation of the text, what would be your vision and aims?

Then, when you write your essay, your conclusion can almost write itself. In your essay you have engaged in an academic exercise. So what? What next? How is it relevant to our world today? You can start your conclusion by summing up your argument, restating or amplifying your general statement or governing principle, then add a sentence or two commenting on any aspect of the text that interests you, related to the question, or leading to the next question you would like to explore.

Your marker will be impressed that you have engaged with the text and think more broadly about the value of the module.

Essay Introduction

We have looked at how to write the body of your essay, so let’s look at your introduction and conclusion.

Here is a formula that works. It is for an essay which asks you to address two texts. If you practise the formula, when you gain confidence you can loosen it up a bit.

Sentence 1: make a general statement about the theme or module or literary genre.+ Use the words from the rubric. Show that you understand these general principles of literature and the rubric.
Sentence 2: state your response to the question - agree, disagree, partially agree - with definitions and distinctions. This is like what you do in a debate. You can define your terms.
Sentence 3: make a statement about the first text, naming the text, author and year and how it fits in your argument
Sentence 4: make a statement about the second text, naming the text, author and year
Sentence 5: signpost how you have categorised your evidence to present it in the essay. Say what you are going to say in the essay. There should be one category per body paragraph. 

Sentence 6: a sentence that wraps up the introduction (if it feels natural to do so). 

Example, from the 2020 NESA Workbook (which publishes band 6 exam essays - I recommend you read as many of these as you can):

Competing textual representation of the same event develop as a result of different purpose and context of each composer, yet the later casts a shadow upon the original, instilling doubt within responders on the authentic truth from the first. Silvia Plath's 'Ariel' utilises an innovative confessional form to combat female oppression and radiate power in a tumultuous cold war context, whilst Hughes' epistolary 'Birthday Letters' casts a shadow of doubt upon Plath's work, remolding readers' interpretation as he foregrounds his personal truth. Through poems 'Daddy', 'Lady Lazarus', and 'A Birthday Present' Plath communicates th ensnaring patriarchal confinements of the 1960s as factors in her demise, whilst Hughes' fatalistic adaptation through "A Picture of Otto', The Shot', and The Bee God' and 'Red'  reveals personal and ideological dissonances. In conjunction, these texts compete for power of authority as readers must interpret the truth amongst clashing perspective, memory, time and emotions of each composer.     

You can see in this example how the points are covered in a flowing and natural complex sentences. 

+ For general statements about types of stories see this 5 min video on the purpose of stories. 

The five types mentioned are: survival (based on fear), love stories, mysteries, transformation, creation stories. 'We must know there can be meaning.' 

A marker should have a good idea of how the rest of the essay will proceed because your have signposted the organisational structure.

I will post later on how to organise your work for essays in the modules.