Through the year if we find any interesting prompts or essay questions we’ll post them year for you to use as practice writing. Here’s two on the ‘Encountering Conflict’ context that one school recently used for its Unit 3 SAC.

Choose ONE of the following two prompts to write a Creating and Presenting essay. You may write in any form: expository, persuasive, imaginative, or a hybrid form. You MUST show an understanding of the ideas and issues in The Secret River as they relate to the context. Your piece is to be published in an anthology written by VCE students for VCE students familiar with the subject matter and texts.

Prompt One

‘In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity’. Growth can come from conflict

Prompt Two

‘For every problem there is a solution that is neat, simple and wrong’. Conflict is often more complex than it first appears.

Here at the EnglishBook we don’t really tend to highly endorse the study guides that are available on single texts, especially those of the generic USA variety designed to help college kids with their SATs or something.

But, they play a part, and can be useful at times, when you’re checking your knowledge, refreshing your understanding or looking for some good words. As long as you keep them in their place and never use them to try to replace developing an understanding of your own!

Shmoop’s CRUCIBLE pages seem to have some good material, and nice hyperlinks to some of the background knowledge you might find useful. Just remember to read the book as well!

“Above all, I wanted to know the individuals, to get into their heads and their hearts. In all their variety of personalities, they must have been like people I knew and like myself - not heroes and not devils, but just human beings, stumbling from one small decision to the next and in so doing, without really planning it, creating the shape of their lives. As I wrote, I kept coming back to the central question: what would I have done in their place?”

So says author KATE GRENVILLE, as she expands on her thinking about writing The Secret River on her home page. Essential reading if you’re doing the context ‘Encountering Conflict’.

In case you can’t remember being in it, this is a kiddies’ pool. One of. It was a lot of fun. When you were a kid.

Now (hopefully!) … it takes more to amuse you. Deeper water. Bigger pools. More sophisticated toys, maybe. Perhaps the company matters more. Or location. Or the weather. Or maybe not.

Maybe you don’t swim so much in man-made pools, but in those crafted by nature -more open, hidden depths.

Or maybe you’re out there – with all the risks: of danger and of discovery that that entails.

Students studying Martin Flanagan’s book The Line for the ‘Encountering Conflict’ context for AOS2 might be interested to find that Flanagan has just begun a regular blog at the AGE HERE.

Could be worth keeping an eye on it as the year develops.

Powered by ScribeFire.