How to answer ALL essay questions on the VCE English Exam

[@jakematt5648]

not gonna lie this was way more help than what any of my teachers did all this year smh, absolute legend, love ya mate

[@JLTutoring]

hahaha cheers boss!

[@nightmarionne4987]

Something that I often struggle with is simply trying to figure out what the hell to write when I see a new topic. I often find topics where I simply cannot come up with points and what to make my paragraphs about. How did you best prepare such that you could write for all prompts and not be left struggling to come up with points?

[@JLTutoring]

Great question - and something that I found challenging as well. So short answer is that there is no shortcut really - the best way I found was to cover the major themes of the texts and have quotes supporting each theme. This way I can tailor the main ideas for most prompts. There is always going to be those curly questions that are extremely specific, but from my experience, there is always one thematic prompt (so one essay prompt that is based on one of the key themes of the text - for both section A and B). With this in mind, that's why I focused on covering the main themes and making sure I had enough evidence/quotes/analysis to talk about each one in detail. To find these themes, you can either come up with them yourself, or I would personally go online to view a couple of free study guides (just search (name of text) themes and analysis) and you'll find a list of themes. Then try and condense or group certain themes in this list so you'll end up with around 3-4 major themes on which you can base your future essays on. To test if you have useful themes, try making quick plans for a variety of topics - that way you can practically test what ideas are repeatedly amongst the topics. Finally, I went with the expectation that I would have to think on my feet and always come up with new ideas. However, even if this is the case, all of the ideas will eventually trace back to the major themes which is why I think it is a good place to start. Hope this helks!

[@nightmarionne4987]

@@JLTutoring Fair enough. Thanks mate Another question I have. What would I write within my third paragraph of 'discuss' type questions? Using your example of "loyalty is the most important quality." You suggested for the first paragraph to agree with the prompt and explain why it is the most important. Then in the next you suggested to disagree, and explain why wisdom is more important. In the third, you suggested to "challenge the prompt" and use an example of loyalty and wisdom together being the most important. My question is what do you mean by "challenge the prompt" and what examples/evidence would I put there? In your example, you would have already used examples and evidence to explain the important of loyalty and wisdom in the previous two paragraphs, so what would you put in the third?

[@JLTutoring]

@@nightmarionne4987 Good question - so challenging the prompt basically means going beyond what the question is saying. So the essay question is quite one-dimensional, it's asking if is loyalty the most important i.e. a yes / no response. Now there are many ways to challenge the prompt but the way I choose to do so here is to talk about how it is not one quality that has the deciding factor but rather a combination. And so the evidence I could use here would be those quotes that show a combination of wisdom and loyalty (rather than simply how one is useful). Now, a common misconception is that you must use and focus on a particular quote - when it is much more sophisticated to let your ideas flow through the writing and then sprinkle short run-along quotes if necessary. So there doesn't have to be an explicit quote saying "wisdom and loyalty are the most important", but there can be an implicit meaning that you can derive from reading the text (and that is something that should be focused on since it shows a deeper understanding)

[@cwj.1576]

amazing video helped so much!!

[@joshreid9463]

What should I do if the prompt does not include a question stem? I recently had a test with the prompt "How does Shakespeare show that Romeo and Juliet’s relationship was destined to end in tragedy?"

[@JLTutoring]

Great question! So the question stem (as mentioned in the video) is sometimes optional, so it might not always be seen. This means treat the question you have as a HOW-based prompt as covered at 3:06 of this video