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VICEnglishQuick questions
Unit 3: Reading and Responding to Texts and Creating Texts
Quick questions on Discussion and reflection on writing processes: VCE English Unit 3 Area of Study 2
15short Q&A pairs drawn directly from our worked dot-point answer. For full context and worked exam questions, read the parent dot-point page.
What are purpose terms?Show answer
The four VCAA purposes (express, explain, reflect, argue). The verbs of effect (position, complicate, qualify, destabilise).
What are audience terms?Show answer
Specialist, generalist, sympathetic, sceptical, insider, outsider.
What are context terms?Show answer
Mode, register, publication context, occasion.
What are structural terms?Show answer
Diptych, frame, sequence, spiral, single scene. Section break, opening hook, closure.
What are language feature terms?Show answer
Diction, register, syntax, syntactic compression, polysyndeton, asyndeton, anaphora, free indirect discourse, imagery field, motif.
What are process terms?Show answer
Draft, revise, redraft, edit, refine. Feedback, peer review, self-review.
What is peer review?Show answer
Classmates reading your draft. The most useful peer feedback is specific: a peer who can name where the piece loses voice, where the opening drifts, where the ending feels assembled rather than chosen.
What is teacher feedback?Show answer
Often more diagnostic than peer feedback. The teacher can name the craft level that the piece needs to operate at and the move that would lift it.
What is self-review?Show answer
Reading your own draft after a gap. The most powerful self-review tool is reading the draft aloud, silently or actually. Sentences that work on the page often falter when heard.
What is specific?Show answer
Name the paragraph, name the sentence, name the move. "Your opening" is too vague; "the second sentence of paragraph one" is specific.
What is descriptive?Show answer
Describe what you read as a reader, not what you would have written. "I lost voice at paragraph three" is more useful than "you should change paragraph three".
What is useful?Show answer
Name what the writer can do with the feedback. "I lost voice at paragraph three; the sentence rhythm there is shorter than the rest of the piece" gives the writer somewhere to start.
What is listen?Show answer
Note what is being said without interrupting.
What is do not defend?Show answer
A draft that needs a defence is a draft that needs revision.
What is do not commit to act on every note?Show answer
Feedback is data, not instruction. A useful draft session might generate twenty notes; five will become revisions.