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.
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