How To Ace Writing | Selective High School Test Tips! [2024]

Welcome everyone my name's Charlie and welcome to this exam revision session today on the writing section of the select entry exam so it's going to give everyone one more minute to get ready so feel free to make sure that you're set and that you're all ready for this session and we'll just let the last few people join and make sure that they're all ready to go perfect so it looks like we've got most people here now and so We're going to kick off with this session so really the purpose of this session today is to

help you feel really prepared for the writing section of the exam it's like obviously writing is a section where this year in particular there is a little bit of uncertainty around what the exam looks like which we will go into in a little bit more depth during the session but really the goal of this session is to make sure that you can make the most of these last few Weeks so number one you feel confident going into the exam and you feel like you've done enough to really feel confident and feel ready for the exam

but order to make sure that you can maximize your performance on this exam and so just before we get into the session today feel free to just leave a high in in the comments just to confirm that you're here you can hear me and you can see the screen okay and then we'll get moving Perfect looks like everything's working all good welcome to everyone again who's been attending these sessions in the past as well and welcome to everyone here who is here for the first time and so really who is this session for if you're

here today who is this session being created for really it's for students who are sitting the select entry exam for admission into one of these schools so whether you're looking to get into mcrob to Melbourne High Which is where I went to nostal or Suzanne Corey this session really is here to help you excel in the writing section of the exam to gain admission into one of these four schools and what we're going to be covering in today's session in particular is we're going to be covering number one a quick intro of the writing section

and what you can expect from this section of the exam number two we're going to be really focusing on the persuasive and Discussion style of writing which is a piece which typically you will be expected to write on the exam there is a little bit of an unknowns this year around exactly what the pieces you'll be expected to write because this is the first year that ASLA is looking after this exam however it is a very safe bet that it's very likely that this will be one of the types of bumps which you'll need to

prepare for and you'll likely see on the exam and so we'll be going Through some templates that you can use to do predictably right pieces which are going to be greater than an 8 out of 10 a 9 out of ten or a 10 out of 10. and then finally we'll be going through some tips and tricks so secrets from past Superior students so that means they're scored in the top 11 on writing and what you can do to incorporate these into your own preparation and into your own performance and I know a lot of

you probably already know who I am but just In case you don't know me my name's Charlie I graduated from Melbourne High back in 2015 so almost 10 years ago now which seems crazy to say and I gradually with an atar just below 98 of 97.65 since then I've been in the education space for more than five years I actually studied Laura Monash as well and so most of all I've been to a select Entry School I know what it's like being one of these schools the meal is a massive thing to get into Melbourne

High And it made a real difference to the atar score I got I think there's no way I would have bought a score anywhere near that amount if I didn't go in Melbourne height and so I'm very grateful for the opportunity I'm here to help you get into these selective schools as well and most importantly I've set the exam I know what it's like being only a few weeks away from the exam and I remember when I was sitting this exam and from chatting to a lot of Students in the last few weeks it's very

common to be thinking is it too late to be preparing now am I smart enough to Excel on this exam and to get in one of these schools have I done enough I've been preparing for a while I've already just started preparing am I actually good enough to get into one of these schools or can I even get in is a select Entry School right for me or is it just something which is just Out Of Reach and really the biggest piece of advice for Students at this point where there's only a few weeks left

until the exam it's natural to be feeling a little bit nervous a little bit stressed and a little bit worried about if you're ready if you're actually going to be able to Excel on this exam or not is that ultimately success on the select entry exam is not random and the thing that I always think is the fastest way to achieve any result in life whether it's a test grade or in anything else you Want in life just find someone who's already got the result you want model or copy exactly what they did to achieve

that result and naturally you'll achieve the same results and this is something that I had to learn the hard way when I was in school when I was in school in year 11 I Was preparing for a subject called accounting I kind of just made up how I Was preparing for it I used some textbooks I learned from teachers but I just sort of stumbled together and Didn't really have a method for how well I was structuring my preparation and I kind of did random things I didn't follow someone who got a really good high

school in accounting and I just sort of made up my own type of preparation and it didn't work too well for me whereas when I went into year 12 I was a subject called business management which I just wanted to get a really high score for and I was lucky that there was a few students at my School that actually got perfect scores at this subject and I just listened to every single thing they did I prepared in the exact same way as them and allowed me to get the exact same score which was being

in the top 30 students out of 40 000 and I would never have thought that was possible but it really just made me realize that if you want anything whether it's an upgrade whether it's something else side of your schooling performance if you find Someone who's got that result that you want and you model and copy the way that they prepared to get that result it's inevitable that you're going to get a result very similar or potentially even the exact same result like I did and so we're going to get stuck straight into the writing

section now with a little intro to what is writing what can you expect from this section of the exam and I know that some of you might have been preparing for this section for months And months and you're very familiar with the writing so don't worry this will be quick if so but if you're new to writing or you've only just started preparing this is going to give you a really good foundations to carry you through the rest of this lesson and so Rod what is writing well it really does generally assess your ability to

write in persuasive discussion or narrative form and we will talk about this because there is potentially some changes here In this year's exam with the move from edu test which was the old traders of the exam that you'll be sitting but now it's moved to ASA however generally it's one of these three types of writing and I just got on the screen here a screenshot from the Acer website which has the schedule of how the exam data is actually going to look for you now it's only a few weeks away it's good to think about

when writing is and writing is actually going to be the last thing that You're doing so you'll start off with reading maths which is around an hour then you'll have a short break then you'll do verbal and quantitative then you'll have a short break again of only just five minutes this time and then right at the end there is writing which is 40 minutes and they have specified on the Acer website that there will be two writing pieces that you'll be writing on however the biggest thing is they haven't actually specified Definitively what these writing

pieces are going to be so from past history we've seen generally it is either persuasive or a discussion piece which we're going to be focusing on today or it is a narrative form there is always a chance that they do something outside of this it is a small chance um however the biggest thing that I'd really recommend is the safest thing you can do is just prepare for persuasive discussion and narrative form pieces and That's going to give you the best chance at excelling on this exam and probably one of the biggest things I remember

is one of the things I've heard from a lot of students with this uncertainty they're like it's unfair that we don't know exactly what pieces we're going to be assessed on like students last year they had it so easy they knew it was going to be these specific types of pieces but the biggest thing is no one has any information everyone's going Into this exam not knowing definitively for sure what prompts they're going to be number one and also what type of writing you're going to be assessed on and so you're not at a disadvantage

really it's the students who are most adaptable who've prepared and are ready to be agile depending on the prompt they're the students who are going to perform best and that's really what we're going to focus on in today's session making sure that if you do well In these sections it gives you a massive Advantage for the rest of the exam I've just got a question here from Mala which says is the writing 30 minutes or is it 40 minutes and this is one of the things which if you look on the ACES website they've just

said now that it is in fact 40 minutes maybe let's just hear from the comments is this what every other student has been hearing or have you been hearing that at 30 minutes or 40 minutes 40 minutes 30 40. so it looks like there's a little bit of 10 minutes 40 minutes 25 40. 40. 40 amounts of both tasks so 20 minutes for each yeah so it looks like let's see another pretty sure it's two essays yeah that's right so look the reason there is a little bit of uncertainty this year is it is the

time where the exam is Shifting so last year it was the edu test this year we've moved to ASA and to Be honest the information has been very difficult to find out the shift in general they didn't publish it very clearly they only published it a short time ago and so for a lot of people it has been really hard to figure out what the writing section is assessing you on how long it's for what it's going to look like but really the main thing that we should be doing is just looking at the official

Acer website which I've included a link for here and I will also Post this in the chat for everyone to review and on the official Acer website here it does say that there is 40 minutes for writing and the writing section is going to be broken down into two parts where it's 20 minutes for one piece and 20 minutes for another piece and so really this is the main thing that I'll just accept it says on the ACES website this is what we're expecting to see on the exam I've just got one question here which

is if it's 2020 do they let us know when 20 minutes are done that is a good question they haven't published that information yet in the past sometimes they have sometimes they haven't however if not it's something that you're going to have to structure yourself and so that's one of the things we're on the exam you want to be really agile about this and you want to make sure that if they don't break it out into two separate sections There you are spending 20 minutes on each section and so what I'm going to do now

is I'm going to move through to our Focus for today's session which is the discussion or persuasive prompt type and so really this is the type that we're going to be showing you how to master we're going to break down the exact template that you can use and then we've seen past students who've got a superior use that really Excel on this type of prompt and Hopefully by the end of this session you'll know the template and the structure that you can use for this type of question so number one you always can make sure

your structure and Order of your piece is really good and also you know how to come up with really persuasive arguments which are going to help you stand out in the exam and so we've got a few questions here I'll save more general questions to the end And so there's one question which is will we have a choice of which prompts we can do typically the way it works is there is no choice over prompts so in all the past years of reflect entry exam there is just one prompt that you're given or true property

you're given and you are to write on those pieces that's what we're expecting to see this year and so that's really what I would prepare for and so let's begin then with with Persuasive and discussion based writing pieces and so really what are the difference between persuasive based pieces and discussion based pieces and there is a few differences so the biggest thing is that persuasive prompts require you to take a stance and convince the reader of your position and so for example an example persuasive prompt is write a persuasive peace I agreeing whether or not

you believe the Olympics are a waste of money and so in This prompt here you really have to take a stance number one do you think the Olympics is a waste of money or do you think it's not and you have to try and convince the reader of your position and this this means naturally you're really going to be assessed on how compelling are your arguments are your arguments as to why the Olympics are a waste of money compelling or are your arguments as to why the Olympics are not a waste of money are they

compelling and so that's The first type of prompt which is persuasive prompts the second type of prompt is a discussion prompt and this is very similar but a little bit different and this requires you to discuss both sides equally so rather than where you take a stance and it's all about convincing someone of your point you're convincing them that the Olympics are a waste of money or you're convincing them then they're not in this case it's more about creating a Discussion the Olympics could be seen as being beneficial for these reasons however for these reasons

they may not be considered beneficial and so in this case you only give an opinion when requested and so for example in this prompt here which says hosting the Olympics and provide a significant boost to the local economy and tourism with Brazil generating 6.2 billion in revenue from hosting the 2016 games however some critics argue that the Olympics didn't Set a financial drain on host cities but many venues hotels and Facilities being left to decay in the years after the games discuss both sides and provide your opinion and so really one of the key things

you want to pick up with discussion based prompts is are they asking your opinion if they are then it's very important to address it and that's one of the key things which I really focus on throughout this writing section is very very important to make Sure you address the prompt correctly there's so many students every year who the exam's stressful the exam's nerve-wracking they get in there they just want to get writing they know they only have about 20 minutes to write for each prompt and so they're very stressed and they want to make sure

they get pen to paper as fast as possible and it means they right on totally the wrong thing and this was something that happened to one of my friends in University they're in law they've been getting top marks throughout the whole year they've been averaging 95 which was basically the highest thing in the year level they got there on exam day they've been preparing really odd day or more prepared than anyone else but they read the prompt wrong and they wrote it a slightly different way and they only just passed the exam because of that

reason they could have easily failed they should Have got a top Mark but it was all because they didn't read the prompt correctly and so that's one of the main things I'd really focused on doing when you're getting that exam even though it's at the end of the exam even though you're probably tired and you want to just get the exam finished it's really important to make sure you don't miss anything and you address the prompt correctly this is the easiest way to just totally ruin your score by not Addressing the prompt as closely as

possible and so key takeaways persuasive prompts make sure you take a stance number one and make sure you focus on convincing the reader of your position to your stance and then for discussion based prompts make sure it's not about taking a stance it's about discussing both sides equally and only giving an opinion if requested and if it is requested make sure you do given opinion and so how is your writing actually Assessed what does success look like on this exam and we've just got a few questions so I will just look at these so got

one question will we be covering creative work writing in another webinar yes we will be running more webinars on creative writing but other sections of the exam as well so you can stay tuned for when these will be coming up what happens if they don't ask for our Opinion with discussion based prompts if they don't ask for your opinion you don't need to include it so you can just do argument for one site argument for another site and you don't need to raise your you don't need to raise your opinion either way we have another

question which says what if the prompt is a question for example are you proud or ashamed of the world what type of prompt would that Be and we have another question here is infrastration marks if you have two going four your opinion and one however against okay so a lot of these questions we are going to get into later in the session and so we will not be going through all of them but I'll focus on a few of these questions here which is what if the prompt is a question EG are you proud or

ashamed of the world what type of prompt would that be and so Really that type of question are you proud or ashamed of the world is most likely going to be a persuasive prompt because if you look at the question saying are you proud or ashamed of the world and so it's requiring you to take a stance and convince the reader of your position and so I would say that's likely a persuasive prompt and we've got another question here which is in persuasive will you get extra marks if you have two and two Going for

your opinion and one however paragraph This is something where the however paragraph or a rebuttal so for example with persuasive prompts just to make this really clear for everyone what the questions asking is if you had an essay where you had two arguments explaining why the Olympics are a waste of money and one argument saying why it's not a waste of money which you maybe rebuttoned say why that reason isn't actually good will you get extra Marks for that that's something which you definitely can include and it can boost your marks and we'll show you

how to do that well but if you don't have time it is also something you can not include and so what I'm going to do is I'm just going to take a pause on questions for now and I've noted all these questions down and we'll get through any which we haven't covered now at the end but I'm just going to move on to make sure that We actually get through some of the content as well but loving the engagement and I'll make sure that all these questions are answered before the end of the session feel

free to keep sending them through but we'll just move on to the next slide now which is actually one of the questions which is how is the section assessed and so how is your writing actually going to be assessed so alongside your use of persuasive devices punctuation Grammar spelling and vocab and the relevance of your writing to the prompt examiners will really be assessing your writing based on three criteria and so before we get on to these criteria it is really important to note that the examiners definitely do look at your punctuation your grammar your

spelling and your vocab and so you really want to avoid spelling mistakes punctuation issues grammar issues with these really are going to hold you back and they are Going to immediately deduct points from your um writing piece for making these types of mistakes but they also as we mentioned they are also going to deduct coins if your writing isn't relevant to the prompt so it is really important to be relevant to the prompt aside from these four things which are the sort of core things going to be assessing you on there's three key buckets which

really make the difference between the best Pieces of grinding so if they're spelling mistakes if they can't read your writing if it's totally off prompt obviously you're not going to be contending for an eight or a 9 or a ten however if all the basics are right and you've got these other areas in a really strong way as well that's going to give you a really good chance of one of those eights or nines or tens out of tens and so the first one is order so does your writing follow a logical progression and Structure

so really what they don't want to see with these persuasive and discussion based pieces is really unstructured pieces of writing where it doesn't really make sense they read through the piece and there's no logical order to it and they're just left in a bit of a scramble when they don't really get what you're trying to say there's no logical structure to it and so one of the things you want to make sure is that your writing does follow a logical Progression and structure the good thing is we're going to be going through the exact template

you can follow to make sure your writing is following a logical structure today so you really should have no issues with this first check mark because follow the structure and you're going to have no issue with this you should get full marks in this area every single time the second one is argument or discussion points so have you chose Strong Island ligaments and Have you support supported them well so how strong are your Arguments for this section so for example with this prompt here write a persuasive piece arguing whether or not you believe the Olympics

are a waste of money if you just said the Olympics are a waste of money because they cost a lot of money that would not be a very persuasive point and even if it was written really well you are going to lose marks there because it's not very compelling it doesn't show A very nuanced level of thinking it doesn't show critical thinking and the ability to really think through the prompt and identify a real reason and so that's going to cost you marks where whereas if you said the Olympics are considered a waste of money

because they cost billions of dollars every year and that billions of dollars could have been spent helping this other major problem in that whole city which is causing massive problems for that whole city and Fixing that problem would have created a far bigger benefit than the Olympics did that's a much more nuanced item and much more nuanced argument and examine is going to look on that much more favorably and so the strength of your arguments is again something we'll work at today but that's really going to be something that you want to be working at

insistently from now until your exam reading different prompts even if you're not writing full pieces I'd really focus On coming up with strong arguments every single day from now until your exam and then the first thing the last thing sorry is style does the writing read well and sound convincing and compelling and this is something that's a little bit more difficult to pin down what does this exactly mean but this just really determines the difference between the really my little pieces does it read well does it sound really convincing and compelling does it sound like

a really Really good piece that's the last criteria here and so really this is a good slide to refer to when you're editing your piece so it's a good thing to quickly ask yourself am I following the right order are my arguments and discussion points really strong and is a style good have I made sure not to make any punctuation grammar spelling mistakes is my vocab strong and I stayed on topic with the prompt this is a really good Slide to refer back to when you're marking your pieces or when you're reviewing the pieces and

they'll send it to you as something you can use um whenever you're reviewing your running pieces or at the end of an exam and so really the question from here is we know how this sections assessed we know the type of piece that we're looking at learning how to master how would you actually use those 20 minutes in the exam so you've got 20 minutes It's not much time how do you want to break up that time and generally what we've noticed students who score superiors so students who achieve scores in the top 11 which

is of course a superior surprisingly they generally approach the exam in a very similar way and they break the exam into three parts the first part is planning generally students spend around four minutes on this it can probably range from three Minutes up to five minutes depending on how quickly you can come up with your planning however four minutes is generally a good gauge and really what it says here is given that the structure of your peace and the strength of your arguments and discussion points makes up a significant amount of your grade planning is

therefore essential you plan your stance and arguments or your discussion points before you start writing and so the reason for this is Because we know structure and the argument points are so important for your performance and your grade we want to plan these before you start writing and really one of the biggest mistakes or traps that a lot of students fall into who haven't really prepared or haven't really received any coaching on how to Excel on this exam is they'll start the exam they'll just start writing straight away so they'll read The Prompt really quickly

and they might Be writing Hot Topic and then they'll just start writing straight away and really one of the key things to remember is the strength of your arguments does have a massive impact on your performance and so spending a couple of minutes at the start four minutes out of the twenty it does sound like a lot but given how important the structure and the arguments are it's four minutes it's very well spent second phase so once you've planned you Know your arguments you know the structure that you're going to be using and of course

we'll run you through an automation plan later in this session then you've got the writing time so around 40 minutes is what we'd normally recommend until once you've got that plan it's time to start writing you should be writing in accordance with a template you've learned prior to the exam you really don't want to be making up a structure for how to respond to the Prompt on the day that's really going to make it difficult and it's going to make it unpredictable how you perform if you're right in a different structure every single time sometimes

structure might be good other times the structure might not be good and so it's best to use a predictable structure that past students have used to seem success which is what we're also going to be going into in today's session so first four minutes planning next format 14 minutes Writing and the last two minutes is editing and so at this point your piece is finished it's time to edit it you want to check for grammar spelling punctuation you want to make sure there's no issues there you want to make sure you follow the clear structure

you've used a range of Interest vocab and just want to make sure you're happy with your piece this is the time to polish it you're not going to be making any massive distractual changes in the Last few minutes but it's a time just to make sure that you're happy with it and you're ready to move on to the next piece and so exam strategy how much should you be expected to write again similar with the structure we've found that typically top students they run around the same amount every single time we've found students who are

consistently getting those eights those nines and even the tens often they're riding between 250 to 350 words and the sweet slots normally around 300 words I wouldn't really recommend writing below 200 words that's probably at the point where examiners are going to look at it and potentially Mark you down because it's too short even if it's good it's potentially too short and so I would try to avoid being anything under 200 words and similar with being over 400 to me that suggests that it's probably a bit rushed maybe the points haven't been as well Considered

as they have they could have been and so around 250 to 350 words for 300 words being The Sweet Spot is typically the optimal amount to make sure you've written enough you've also had enough time to really think about your arguments in the structure and you've also had time to edit to make sure it polished and it reads really well and so what that normally means is for a persuasive prompt this is how you want To structure the piece so you want to start off with an introduction which is three sentences long you want to

have two argument paragraphs it's like arguing your points and then you want to have one rebuttal paragraph where you reap up that point and then you rebut that point again so essentially what this means is let's say for example you had the prompt is the Olympics a waste of money you'd have the introduction you'd have argument one Which explains why it is a waste of money you have argument power graph two which again explains why it's a waste of money because that's your stance that it is a waste of money a rebuttal a paragraph is

where you actually give an argument on the other side you show one reason why it's not a waste of money why it's actually a good use of money but because it's a persuasive piece you show them again why that's actually not true so for example you would say some Critics would say that um the Olympics isn't a waste of money and it is a good use of money because it brings in lots of Tourism however Studies have shown that this manager could have been better spent on other things like building infrastructure for the local economy

and again we'll go into that in more details you know exactly what that looks like later in this session but this is just showing you the structure for these pieces and Then we end on a conclusion same thing for discussion prompts we have an intro we have two discussion paragraphs we have one paragraph on your opinion and we have a conclusion and so before we move on to the next section which is where we go really deep into planting so what we're going to do is we're going to go deep into planning we're going to

equip you with a template to use for planning and we're going to actually get you to go through that live Then we'll go through writing we'll get you to write a few things and we'll finish with some editing before we move on with that did we have any questions relevant to what we've just gone through so it's been a couple of minutes going through them now there's one question here which is what classes have we run so far so last time we ran verbal reasoning and this is adverse writing one and we'll be covering the

other sections over the Next few weeks we have a question here sorry to bother you again but will that be true writings or one so the way it works is writing goes for 40 minutes one writing piece will be 20 minutes and another writing piece will be 20 minutes as well are they strict on handwriting so really with handwriting the biggest thing to consider is they're not strict on handwriting but they have to be able to Read it so imagine that you're an examiner and you're marking hundreds of students of essays you're reading hundreds over

the course a week if you're writing is very easy to read naturally when they see it they're going to think well I've read some students essays who are very hard to read and I could barely read them and this one's easy to read it just puts you in a better mood so in that sense it probably is better to Write as neatly as possible however in saying that there is no criteria that you have to write neatly and so at the very least I'll just make sure I'll just make sure that it's very easy to

read you don't want your examiners to not be able to understand what you're saying that really is then going to count against you so with handwriting the biggest thing is can they read it if they can then it's probably good enough if they can't then that's probably Something you want to work on before the exam so we've got about 25 questions in my direct messages apology I'm not going to get through them all right now but I'll just pick one more and so the question was no there's one question for you which one of the

clarification which my question was what happens if they don't ask an opinion on the persuasive piece so on the persuasive piece I will just go back to That one now so really there's two pieces there's a persuasive piece which is where you're always going to be arguing whether or not you believe the Olympics is a waste of money and so in this case you're always going to take a stance and you're always going to try and convince the reader of your position position that's kind of the whole point of persuasive peace and that you do

take a stance and you do try and convince the reader of Your position and so that's always going to be inherent in a persuasive piece however in a discussion prompt it does require you to discuss both sides equally and so you'll only give you an opinion when requested to if they don't ask for an opinion you won't give it in a persuasive prompt they're always going to ask you to take a stance and they're always going to ask you to convince the reader of um your stance does that make sense Okay so look there's a

few more questions coming through um it sounds like that answer made sense feel free to just keep posting the questions at the end of the piece at the end of this session we'll run through all of them so don't worry we're not going to stop without having your questions answered just feel free to keep posting them through but we're just going to move on now we're really going to start looking at The planning phase so how can you make the most of the planning phase we've talked about why it's so important what has a massive

impact on your score what can you do in the planning phase of the first four minutes to set yourself up for success and so what is a planning phase well this is the time you dedicate to for the persuasive pieces picking your stance your arguments and your rebuttal and for discussion pieces this is where you pick Your discussion points and opinions and really the strength of these elements at the end of the planning phase we're in a large part determine the strength of your piece and so what I've generally found is after just the planning

phase a lot of the time you can tell how well a student's going to perform students who've got these elements now they've written them down really well and they're compelling in that sways it they are really on track for a good score but Students who haven't got this at the end of the four minutes they've either started writing random things or they haven't really nailed these components it's an uphill battle because they've really decided the theme of it at least from that point onwards and so this four first four minutes really is the most crucial

the good thing is it's easy to learn how to do well but it really is crucial and the reason for that as we've mentioned a few times examiners are not Just looking for a well-written piece but they're also seeking to understand the depth of your thinking and your ability to create compelling compelling arguments or discussion points and so a few key things to note we won't plan your intro or conclusion it's really just about planning these elements here so for persuasive pieces your stance your arguments and your rebuttal and for discussion pieces your discussion points

or your opinion and so We're going to do is we're going to show you now a template that you can use for the planning phase and really for this is what I'd recommend for persuasive pieces so all you need to do is you just want to write down in that four minutes of planning your answer to this question so my stance is that so with that example we had before about whether the Olympics is a waste of money I would just say my stance is that the Olympics is a waste Of money because the and

then here the two becausees are arguments as to why you believe that stance so I'll say I believe that the Olympics is a waste of money one because the capital that was allocated towards the Olympics could have been better allocated towards infrastructure on long-term projects which would have had a far more positive impact on the local community and because number two often bringing so many tourism into the host Cities causes issues for its host nation I'd say they were made two arguments so I wrote them down and then I put in my rebuttal here so

on the other hand critics would argue that such as some critics would argue that the Olympics brings in lots of Tourism and therefore it's positive for the economy however these tourisms these tourists often litter in the local city causing issues for Citizens and local wildlife and so That's all you need to do in the planning phase you say your stance so you can put that here you say argument number one argument number two a counter argument and then a counter argument to the counter argument let's have a quick look at an example of that now

in action as again it's the exact same problem we just talked about so my stance is that the Olympics are not a waste of money because they increase tourism for the whole city creating new income sources For locals because they create a sense of national pride on the other hand Fredericks would argue that they force grow cities to invest in infrastructure of stadiums and accommodations that are never used after the game's finish however cities can use this infrastructure spending to improve facilities for local residents improving quality of life for its citizens for years to come

into the future and so planning really is simple it really is Just answering these five prompts that's all you need to do you can see if you have this ready if you have this with you it really does set you up for the rest of your writing piece and so we're actually going to be going through an example you're going to be writing a practice planning piece for one of these prompts in a second but before we do that we're going to go through how you plan for a discussion piece so for discussion pieces this

is a little bit Simpler and this is where you just pick your discussion points opinion and so some people support one side because and you'll have your response some people support the other side because and you'll have another argument there and then you have if you're asked to ask if you're asked to provide your opinion so what's your stance on this issue you will say I believe that and you'll have your stance and then you'll have a reason for having Your stamp episode because so have a look at a quick example of that again so

here's the prompt we talked about earlier which said discuss both sides and provide your opinion and it gave some context about the Olympics and it says here an example would be some people support one side because the Olympics can increase tourism in the whole city some people support the other side because families can facilities can be left to Decay after the game is Finished I believe the Olympics are a financial dream of those cities and then lastly because capital is spent on facilities for the games rather than long-term health of the city and its people

and so really what I'm going to be doing number one is I'll send you through these templates after the session I would recommend with some of the prompts which we're also going to send you after the session so you can practice really practice probably five Or ten of these these plannings you want to be practicing these almost every single day I'd rotate um different types of prompts so some discussion prompts some persuasive prompts you want to get really good at planning and the good thing is it's only four minutes there's no reason why you can't

dedicate four minutes a day to planning and so I'll send you a few exercises that you can do with this after your session Probably one of the biggest things you might have noticed is really planning is all just about coming up with ideas it's about coming up with what one side would say and what the other side would say for discussion pieces and then for persuasive pieces it's about coming up with compelling arguments how can you convince the other person with your arguments and so the natural question is how do you actually come up with

great arguments and how can you tell in the Exam if the arguments you've come up with are actually compelling or not there's a really simple test that I use which allows me to determine how compelling my arguments are and it's something you can think about yourself in the exam and when you're practicing to determine how compelling yours are as well and I call it a lounge room test and so what I want you to imagine is imagine you're in a lounge room you're sitting on the couch you've got your Five closest Brands around you and

you must convince them of your side of this debate what would you say because what I've often found is that when students come up with lousy arguments arguments aren't very strong for example for this prompt here write a persuasive piece arguing whether or not you believe the Olympics are a waste of money if one of your friends was trying to tell you that they are a waste of money and they decided to waste of money because it Costs heaps of money you're just saying well lots of things cost away from I think that doesn't mean

it's a waste of money I need some more I need some more information to be convinced of your opinion whereas on the other hand if they said um let's say they said look it is a waste of money because they force host cities to invest in infrastructure like stadiums and accommodation that are never used after the game's finished did You see the recent soccer World Cup where there was all these stadiums left over and that money could have been better spent investing into the local economy or core things which they need are like hospitals and

schools that's much more compelling and so it's a very simple test but it's an easy way for you to know would this convince one of your friends if you're sitting around a lounge room would you actually be able To convince one of your friends with this argument or would they not really be convinced and so really the key thing is with the planning section of the exam if you fail to plan then you're planning to fail in this section of the exam planning really is everything it's where you come with your arguments you come with

your stance you make sure whether you have a really big understanding of what this section is going to be like for you and so it's Time to practice we're actually in a practice one right now and the way we're going to do it is we're going to give you four minutes to write and to plan for a prompt and so what I'm going to do is I'm going to leave you the structure on the screen so you know how to plan you're equipped with that core template that we've ran through and I'm going to give

you four minutes I'm just going to get my timer up now What I would recommend doing is writing this online writing this in some notes on your computer somewhere even just in the zoom chat box because that's an easy place to do it everyone has access to that and just send it through as soon as you're finished and what we're going to do is we're going to run through a couple of students plan we're going to assess them I will tell you how strong your arguments are how compellent they would be and if it would

give you a good Chance of actually excelling on this exam in the writing section or not and so I'm just going to get up a timer now I'm now going to put the prompt on the screen as soon as I put it on the screen I'm going to start the four minutes and you can get writing and someone said here are we sending on private chat or to everyone feel free to either send your planning piece to private chat or everyone whatever you feel more comfortable someone said what Are we doing what are we writing

on that is what I'm going to be showing you now and so you've got four minutes the plan for this prompt The Prompt is write a persuasive piece arguing whether or not you believe the government should Implement a ban on junk food for people under the age of four of 18 years old and to post your response in the comments once you're finished we will provide feedback get started now here is the template that you can use for this Prompt the Palmer is starting now well done to the students that have already posted your plan

this is extremely quick there's one minute left now a couple of seconds left and we are done so that's the four minutes up so what I'm going to do is I'm going to run through one student's now and what I'm going to do is I'm actually just going to copy it and pop It up onto the screen here I have also had the chance to actually run through and read a lot of your questions from earlier on which I'll answer does some really good questions there and so I'll make sure they're all covered as well

and so this was one of the plans from one of the students and there was one question earlier which is will you be marked on your plan you won't be marked on your plan so no worries at all they're not going to be reading your Responses um or assessing your plan in any way really it's just going to go a long way to determining how would the rest of your writing piece is that's one thing the second thing is of course we haven't had time to give feedback to everyone's plans but what we will be

doing is there will be an opportunity to attend a q a call on Saturday which is a question and answer call where it's just all questions and answers which really seems Needed after this session and you can bring writing pieces to that session you can bring any questions um we'll be there for around an hour and we'll make sure that all those questions get answered and that feedback is given to your pieces as well so don't worry if you haven't got um in us to run through it today live in the session that's okay as

well there's going to be a whole session on that just to make sure that if you have any questions I can provide Support to you as best as possible and so let's have a look and what we've written and so the first thing is my stance is that we must implement the ban on junk food the people under the age of 18. now the reason why this is very good is it's repeated exactly what the prompt's looking for and this is one of the things which examiners are looking for it's tempting to think why not

get a little bit creative why not use Different words why not use ban why not use why not reinforce under the age of 18 but it's very important in our stance to mirror The Prompt as closely as possible and so saying look very clearly my sense that we must Implement a ban on junk food for people under the age of 18. it's clear it's using the writing from within the prompt perfect that's very good next thing their first argument to begin with are future Generations health will be spoiled That was the first argument and this

is the start of a good argument however I think we probably need to have a little bit more depth here and I would really encourage us to go back to the lounge room test imagine we're sitting around the couch one of our friends asks a question and they say do you think junk food should be banned from the ages of 18 and someone says um yes it should be because future Generations help will be spoiled people Would say yeah it probably will be spoiled but how and so ideally in our plan we can add that

little extra bit of information why we'll be spoiled because it would be spoiled in many different ways but it'll be good to call out one thing specifically and that's really one of the key things which you might want to take away from arguments in general for everyone the more specific your arguments can be the better and it's kind of this one's kind of similar with Is the Olympics a waste of money if you say yes it's a waste of money because it costs a lot of money that's not very specific but if we said it's

a waste of money because it's spending money on something which could have been better spent somewhere else and this is a specific example of where Ruby and that has been much more compelling and same thing with this one then my future Generations help will be spoiled you could say our future Generations Health will be spoiled because it's opening up our future generation to um diseases and Cancers which have a massive impact on their health if you can get really specific there's that extra layer of specificity is going to make a real difference so that's probably

one other thing which you can really think about is my argument specific enough that's a key takeaway which you can use to assess your own arguments the second one here in Addition to this junk food will be a leading industry which could potentially create a variety of controversies against between junk food companies inducing Superfluous arguments it's probably the main thing with this one is I'll say how can we make this more clear so in addition to this junk food will be a leading industry which could potentially create a very variety of controversies against between junk

food companies Inducing superflative arguments and so to me this one's probably not clear enough how could we make this more clear how could we say to your stance is that we must Implement Demand on junk food for people on the age of 18. how could we say that the junk food industry currently advertises across every channel sports media TV and they're constantly showing ads to kids which really isn't good and so by Banning junk food for the people under the age of 18 They're going to be able to learn healthier eating habits and get better

sources of information on what's healthy and what's not well if they're under 18. so that they have those healthy habits into the future that's potentially something that's a little bit more specific a little bit clearer and so probably two key takeaways from these specific response is make sure it's specific so how can you make your arguments as specific as possible but Also make sure it's very clear and again if we go out to the lounge room test you should be able to just tell it's summer and they just get it straight away if it requires

too much explanation we just don't have time for that sort of explanation on this exam I'm just going to make it really tricky and so again make it specific make it really clear we now have the rebuttal so on the other hand critics would argue that adults would hesitate to drive junk Foods when They're 18. however because junk food is restricted it'll seem like a reward making adults consumer without being hesitant in any way and so this one is okay but again I would think about how compelling would this be if you're sitting around and

trying to convince someone and is there anything more compelling you could say so what's the most Compelling reason why the government shouldn't Implement a ban on junk food what's the most compelling reason let's just hear in the comments what do you think is the most compelling reason as to why we shouldn't have a ban on junk food so a few people here have said that it can be regarded as a treat food and they will deserve a treat and once a while a treat for children which is a fair enough argument it's should we really

be Forcing students not to do it should be forcing people on the age not to have any traits a similar thing could be said with other unhealthy Foods or other things which are not perfect for us and so potentially a better argument would be on the other hand critics would argue that banning junk food in general is Extreme and that students should be able to have a treat of junk food occasionally if they want to as a part of an otherwise healthy dinner And then the last thing here we would rebut that by saying however

because junk food is restricted you'll see in like a reward making out it was consumed without being hesitant anyway again what's the most compelling reason how we could rebut that students should be able to have a treat we could say that students do this over treat however they should be having a treat with something which is supporting their long-term health and prosperity and so therefore It should still be banned and so really probably the key takeaways from this one here uh number one make sure your arguments are specific so I'll just write that down here

specific number two make sure your arguments are clear and then number three make sure they are compelling as possible and so really I know it's easy to try And rush and just try and get something down on paper but in the planning phase or just get something there because you don't want to be sitting in limbo not knowing your Arguments for too long but really just take that little extra second think what's the most compelling possible argument for this point if I really had to convince someone if someone came up to me and said you'd

have to convince me why we must ban junk food otherwise bad things are going to Happen too what would you say what's the most compelling thing you could say and that's going to give you a big Edge because a lot of students that it's going to rush it's going to skip through it and they're going to miss that so key takeaways make it specific make it clear and make it as compelling as possible and so we're going to move on now we've gone through that first base which is plan that's the first four minutes of

the exam done we'll send through those Templates we'll send through plenty of prompts for you to practice this on and there'll be opportunities to get feedback later in the week as well on your planning so now let's get into number two which is writing how can you actually made sure once you've got the plan you write a really good piece and as we mentioned earlier top performing students on the second entry exam they often use a template or response for how they write both persuasive and Discussion pieces on the exam and this means that their

essays are always structured well and they're able to practice and eventually fine-tune a specific flow for their pieces then it just means they're not worried about order they're not worried about the structure and the flow of their piece because they have a template that they use every single time and what we're going to do is we're going to break down the specific template of structure you Can use for both these types of writing pieces in the exam now and this will ensure that your piece always ticks all the boxes but the order assessment criteria but

also it's going to make it a better piece overall across all the criterias and so what does a winning template look like as we've mentioned earlier this is really what I recommend so for persuasive pieces typically it's going to be by paragraphs long the discussion pieces again typically it's Going to be four or five paragraphs long I did actually notice there was a student who asked which is a really really good question if they don't ask your opinion so if they specifically don't ask for this and that's just ruled out they don't they don't care

what we think about a specific point do you then have to do more points on either side and the answer is no but given that you've only got 20 minutes to write and you're actually only going to be writing For 14 minutes of that if they don't ask your opinion that's fine you can just make your entire piece for paragraphs rather than five and you'll just add a little bit more meat and a little bit more depth into these two discussion paragraphs here and so again I'll send through this slide so you don't have to

worry about noting it down but this is the structure that would recommend for these pieces and so we're actually going to go Through each of these types of paragraphs and how you can Master it and I know it looks like we're running a little bit over time um if you're ready to continue with this session that's amazing we're going to be probably running for an extra 20 minutes from here just so we have time to run through the entire structure of the piece but I know that if the students have to go at seven that's

okay but I'd really recommend staying for the next 20 Minutes to go through all this stuff with us and so firstly we're going to be looking at introductions how can you write a really good introduction the good thing is that writing a good introduction it's very easy the first thing you do is no matter whether it's a discussion piece or a persuasive piece is your write a topic sentence that provides a brief background on the issue or the topic that's just one sentence with brief background on the issue of a Topic step two you write

one sentence that explains your stance or position on the topic for persuasive pieces until notice you'll just plan that you just plan into what your stance is and so that sentence is going to be very similar to what you've written in the plan probably basically the same thing whereas for discussion pieces step two is to write one sentence that explains the two sides of the topic and then step three is for persuasive Pieces to write one sentence at signposts the two arguments you're making your essay or for discussion pieces is writing one sentence the sign

posts again the two arguments that you're making the essay one for each site let's have a look at a few examples of what that actually looks like so for a persuasive piece a prompt we've seen right throughout the session write a topic sentence what does that look like an example one would be in the aftermath Of recent Olympic games that has been increased debate as to whether the Olympics has a positive impact on the economy of the toast Nation that's clear public sentence by doing a brief background on the issue and the topic step two

is to for persuasive pieces which is what this is we're going to write one sentence that explains your stance or your position on the topic and so I'm going to say here whilst the Olympics is costly it is not a waste of money and then step three we're going to signpost the two arguments which we're going to make and so what you're going to notice is all this information that's required in this introduction you already know this from the plan and so this introduction really should take you no time at all because you've got all

this information it's just about writing down in standby and so an example is This is because firstly in significantly increases tourism for the whole city opening up economic opportunities for its residents and secondly it creates the greatest International provide promoting shared unity and so this is an example of what a good introduction would look like for one of these pieces a persuasive piece let's take a quick look well that's actually give you now some time to do this for yourself so we've Gone through the structure I'm going to give you three minutes to write your

own introductions the same thing as last time right in the zoom chat send it through once you've done it I'm going to be putting a timer on now and we will break down one student's introduction and so you're going to be writing your introduction based on the prompt that we just went through so you've already got the plan you've got three minutes timer Starts now and you can use this complaint to write your introduction foreign we have got one minute left one minute ten seconds left 15 seconds left and five four three two one time

is up well done everyone I was very short pace and I can see a lot of you are sending it through which is really good well done on that challenge What I'm going to do is once again I'm just going to pick one from the comments I'm just going to pick one now perfect so what I've got now is I've got one which I'm going to put on the screen and we're going to break down this one together foreign key takeaways just from having a look at everyone's quickly then is overall the structure was really

good it's like everyone has number one had a stance That's really clear um by the looks of it everyone has had arguments and the overall cohesion of the writing is pretty good the main thing which I noticed which differentiated students then is really the strength of their arguments and so this is something which I know we've spoken about a bit already today but something which you can do which you can either do with friends or a family member if you're able to is if you can Even just go through prompts and even if in the

last few weeks you don't have time to write for essays every single day just spend some time with your parents or a friend or a family member coming up with different arguments so come look at the prompt think of some arguments discuss it with them come up with your best arguments and just really train that skill of coming out with good arguments because for context from looking at everyone's responses then That really was the difference the quality of the arguments makes a massive difference on the piece we're going to look at a student here who

this is a very good piece of writing so it says the recent rise of childhood obesity so this one here we probably would want to it's not super clear so maybe we would say with the recent rise of childhood obesity critics have been calling for The purchase of junk food for miners to be prohibited so again this is really clear probably one thing which I would say is if you can use the same language from the question that is probably ideal I do think using the word prohibited potentially could work in your favor because it

is a word which is a little bit more advanced a lot of students in year seven are not going to know how to use that word or curate and so it is potentially a good thing to use however Just to be safe I would probably say to be banned this however is completely unnecessary and is detrimental to science society as a whole this is a very clear stance so it's a very clear stance it's a very strong stance which has someone who's writing reading this piece I'm now curious about how can you say it's completely

unnecessary what are your points and then we now have the argument so corporations which provide great economic benefits will suffer That again is a very clear point so corporations who provide benefits economically to the economy will suffer very well written very clear but also very succinct and the right to Liberty will be severely diminished and so people who do or do not know right to Liberty you could say it's a right to Freedom will be severely diminished which you can imagine where if they did bad junk food there is a question of if they're banning

junk food well why not Also ban not sleeping enough why not also not bad dressing in a certain way where is that line and so this is again a really good argument and really what I thought is good about this piece is number one there was a couple of there wasn't one little issue at the style which would have made the writing and read a little bit clearer but the arguments are really good so arguments tick and the Vocabulary is also really good and so it's really a key takeaway if the vocab is good and

the arguments are good it really does stand out just like this piece of writing what we might do is we're going to just go through one more one student who has put it into the chat and we're going to break it down and so this is their introduction one thing I know that it's typed on Zoom so it's probably not displayed how you'd actually write it in the real exam but Just make sure the introduction is just one paragraph so rather than having as two sentences like this just make sure it is one paragraph because

if every single sentence is its own paragraph and you have a space like this examiners will potentially think it's not a perfect structure and Mark you down for that so let's read this one junk food is becoming increasingly common in children and the government is under pressure You banned it so probably to ban it I know we haven't had time to review these yet so that's okay it is a bit of a rush but you will want to pick these up in the reviewer editing time so there is under pressure to Banner for people under

the age of 18. it has long-term negative effects on children they'll make it a habit to consume these types of food and so this it is a good argument but it isn't written extremely clearly so we could in Some way we could say it is long-term negative effects on children because they may make a habit to consume unhealthy food and become and risk or developing diseases in the long term I probably would just leave that as a sentence there it's just one sentence that's probably one of the key thing Just to note short sentences are

your friend the longer the sentences are the easier it is to stuff them up to have spelling and grammar and punctuation points and so really one of the things that I've focused on when I did the exam was just keep my sentences short I even did this in year 12 English I just wrote really simply short sentences no spelling mistakes no grammar mistakes and it just makes it easier for yourself so let's read through it again is Long-term negative effects on children because they make it because they may make it a habit to consume unhealthy

food and the current residual disease in the long term that's quite clear hence John Cruiser rebound people at the age of 18. maybe we'll just do therefore jump through two hand on the edge of 18. so really probably the difference between these two pieces these two introductions I would say the first one is probably slightly stronger than the Second one mainly just because of the elegance and the vocab and so these are two other key takeaways is arguments very important vocab also important it is a bit of an advantage when you can use words like

diminished Liberty economic operations originally we had prohibited here detrimental they're just words that really make your piece stand out as soon as you rebuilding exam anything about This piece it's it's probably going to be either up there for a 9 or 10 out of 10 straight away just because the vocabulary is really strong the second piece here it is still good it is still definitely something that's within range and we could get a pretty high score but if you want to really elevate it to the next level I'll focus on really strong arguments number one

make those arguments really strong the number two vocab how can you build your vocab in The next few weeks um there's actually a vocab trainer which I'll send you after this which I'd recommend doing on regularly as well and I'll hopefully allow you to include a few more complicated words like these ones foreign we've run through how to write an introduction for persuasive prompt and what we're going to be looking at now is how do you write these argument or these discussion paragraphs this is like the Meat of your writing piece this really is what

dictates between like students who just had good arguments in the introduction so maybe you've got a few good arguments but how will you actually explain it how old are you back them up that's what really these or paragraphs are about and the good thing is once again there's a simple structure that we use for these and it's called the teal structure you've probably heard of it you might have Heard at school you might have heard it for somewhere else but these are the four sentences that you'll use for these pieces and really if you keep

it simple and you just follow this structure these paragraphs are going to be very easy and it's just going to be very templated like your introduction so first sentence of one of these argument pieces is the topic so what is the argument or the discussion point for the paragraph so for example for this first student here One of their topics would be corporations will provide great economic benefits or supplements that would be topic one and the other one topic would be the right to Liberty will be severely diminished yeah there are two topics the first

sentence will be addressing one of these Topics in the example here the topic was firstly countries that host the Olympics can see an influx of tourists during the games and in the following years after context influx Means an increase a surging of tourists and it's a word again which if you're a student who uses like this one it's going to give you a little bit of an advantage in doing well second thing explanation so the first sentence was just setting up the topic um the discussion topic for the paragraph second sentence explanation so tourists spend

money on accommodation food and experiences whilst traveling which creates new opportunities for Local restaurants and sports grocery existing businesses we're just really explaining what we meant by that topic and provide a little bit more depth the third sentence is just providing some sort of example evidence without this it's really hard to make a good compelling argument um you really do want to make sure you pick arguments where you have some sort of evidence it doesn't have to be evidence like this in this case it was Provided in a prompt so it was easy for me

to use it if there is ever anything included in the prompt to try to see if you can use it as evidence because it's a lot easier but you want to make sure you have some sort of evidence to really back up your claims and so in this case here said in the 2016 Olympic Games an extra 6.2 billion was injected into the economy by tourists and then finally step four is Linked to how is this evidence linked back to your initial argument or discussion point and so I said therefore tourism can have a substantial

impact on the economic prosperity of host cities and so really that's all it is that's the topic sentence which explains the point of the of the paragraph So in the example here the the first part the first sentence sorry we'll talk about why corporations which provide great economic benefits will suffer the next Sentence therefore will be an explanation of that point so we'll explain why they will suffer it will the third sentence will then be dividing some sort of evidence so how specifically will they suffer an example could be now rather than being able to

sell to 20 million in Australia the three to four million people under the age of 18 they will no longer be able to purchase a product and obviously You want to make sure these stats are correct those ones I've just come up with there'll always be some sort of evidence that you'll be able to call them and the last sentence then is linking back up to that first that first sentence as to why you know as a whole this supports your stance and so the last thing here the last piece of writing we're going to

do is you're going to be writing one of these Terrible sentences or the introduction that you've just written so what I want you to do is I want you to pick one of your arguments and I want you to pick your best argument if it's something that you've already written down then that you still think it's your best argument use that one but if since we've gone through all this you've thought of something where you know actually this is a stronger argument use that one instead and so you've got three minutes Now to write one

of these teal paragraphs again leave it in the comments once you're ready and I'm going to get this ready to go now so get started and here is the template video thank you halfway through one and a half minutes left one minute warning ten seconds left got a few really good ones already submitted There we go that is the timer and so well done for everyone for submitting that let's have a look at how many we've got come through one two three feel free to keep submitting them [Music] perfect so we're going to do is

we're going to break down one I'll just pick one for us to run through and this is a really good example of some things that have gone really well and a few little Areas where we can improve it to really elevate it to the next level so let's have a look at it so to start things off this is the type of thing where one of the things we do want to consider with these writing pieces is it is fairly formal so like a written persuasive or discussion piece of writing it is quite formal and

so to say to start things off it's potentially on the side of being a little bit too casual it could be okay but personally for me I would probably Want it to be a little bit more formal and I know there's a few questions about can we just start with like firstly and I think that's okay personally I would just not pay the risk and I'll just save firstly because it's formal it's clear um and you're not going to get a risk of them saying the tone was a little bit off so firstly governments must

ban junk food for those kids under 18 years old as it can result in severe health issues very clear this is a perfect sentence Where it outlines what the topic is so for that sentence I would say perfect really good writing next one which now should be expanding on that let's see how well it does that even if parents have restrictions on the amount of junk food allowed for children it's human nature for us to disobey it that's interesting that's really expanded on it in an interesting way and I'll say it's very clear as well

so that's a good piece of writing This should now start to be providing some evidence if the government does not set this restriction immediately and children can start to develop serious addictions which can result in health issues such as diabetes and obesity this is a pretty good way of providing evidence in that or an exam like this most of us are not going to have stats on hand which tells a few questions about that can we make up stats unfortunately the car and It ultimately All we can do is just play with what we've got

and so in terms of saying the evidence as it can cause diabetes and obesity and other health issues that's pretty good evidence and so that's a pretty good um argument again there and then the paragraphs finished off with which young kid would want to suffer from ailments and issues that are developed when they're older and these types of rhetorical questions they can be a Little bit of a risk in this case I think you have executed it really well I think it probably would work in your favor but is a thing where you want to

make sure you're not using it too many times so I definitely wouldn't use it in every paragraph I probably just only use it once if you really want to use it but in this case I think it was clear I think this paragraph is really clear that you must ban junk food for those kids under 18 and it can cause as it can Cause severe health issues but I'd probably say this was your main argument it can come of course severe health issues um why is that the case well you've said that even if there

were restrictions if parents have restrictions it's not going to be enough so that's again a really good point and then if the government sets it it's going to allow kids to not develop serious elements which can cause major health issues and So I think that's a really clear parallel probably a few things which you could improve if you wanted to is vocab how could you increase the level of your vocab if possible to be a little bit more sophisticated I'm not this wasn't sophisticated I think this was actually a really good piece that if you

wanted to really stand out and if someone reads this I think well this student has a very very good vocab in adding a few words this piece would really spank that Otherwise I think it's a good piece it reads really well and you've done well here and so what we've done now is we've run through this teal structure very quickly and the key thing is this is all you need to use for the core paragraphs use the teal structure even really simple and hopefully you've started to see that for the planning you've got a template

that you can use the introduction you've got a template that you can use again For these argument and discussion paragraphs you've got a template that you can use for either argument or discussion pieces and so in terms of structure and Order of your pieces you should just be able to follow these structures and you're always going to do pretty well in that area it really just comes down to all the other things around arguments on your actual writing style to determine things from there and so what we're going to do now is We're going to

quickly look at what would this rebuttal paragraph look like and so you've written a really good introduction you've written some good arguments what would a good rebuttal be how would you actually structure that paragraph it's very simple so it's not going to take you much time but let's have a look at that so essentially what the rebuttal does is it adds more Nuance to your essay by demonstrating your ability to see both sides of the topic If you think about it if you're an examiner you want to know that students aren't just the type of

student who they just are very militant with one side and they see this side's right I'm not even going to consider the other side and consider whether it's accurate or not I've got my argument and that's it every I'm just going to block everything out they're not really looking for that they're looking for students who consider consider both sides they can Hold a few arguments on one side they can hold a few arguments on the other side and they can come to a reasonable point of view they can say look there's a lot of benefits

on this side there is a couple of benefits on this site however I think the benefits on this site outweigh these benefits and so therefore this is my stance that's really what they're looking for and so I really want this rebuttal should do is step one you should explain a major Counter argument to your stance again the bigger and the juicier counter argument you can add the better so for example for the Olympics example I said on the other hand some experts have argumented the infrastructure spending required for the Olympic Games is wasteful and goes

towards stadiums and accommodation rather than vital need to the local community like Rose Transport and safety that's a pretty good argument and then Step two is to explain why the counter argument isn't true and so the example here is however host cities are now increasingly considering how infrastructure expenses for the Olympics can be leveraged by the local community after the games so the stadiums for example can be reshaped into hospitals and homeless shelters that's really flipped it on its head initially in the first one you're thinking about you probably should be using that money for

Roads transport hospitals education then in the second one we're like actually that's being considered and so really this rebuttal or this opinion it can just be two sentences you can keep it really clear really simple and that's all you have to do for the Redbubble and you can see it doesn't have to be long we don't have to follow the teal structure it is just following these two steps but it really does improve the quality of your piece significantly And so final thing is conclusion how do you write a really good conclusion I've only got

a couple of more minutes left in this session so don't worry if you have to head off it will be done by 7 30. inclusion so essays require a conclusion to be complete and so we did have a few questions about students about what should the conclusion be doesn't need to be all paragraph the key thing to remember here is you will lose marks if You don't have a conclusion so it just looks like you've run out of time and you haven't finished the piece if you don't have a conclusion however generally they're not an

area where you're going to be getting a lot of marks students who have unbelievable conclusions of five sentences are not really going to have an advantage over students got one really just want to keep it simple you want to make sure you have it you want to make sure you don't Include any new information so that's probably the biggest area where students go wrong they add in another argument into the conclusion which is just something we don't want to do we only want to re-emphasize points that we've already had in our pieces no new information

and conclusions and it says here just reiterate the coins you may try your essay so how do you write a winning conclusion it's pretty simple all you do is Summarize your arguments or discussion points in one sentence so an example is therefore the Olympics is not a waste of money as it can have a positive impact on the economy of those cities as well as increased feelings of national pride and togetherness and so really all you need to do is if it's a persuasive piece as I mentioned to summarize your stance and your arguments and

if it's a discussion piece just summarize both of your arguments we want to keep it really Simple just make sure it's one sentence make sure you have it there's not going to be a major factor in the success of your piece you just need to add it there so just check that there is no major questions around that nothing yet and so essentially that's a that's the last part of that process there so I'll just get back to the beginning for a little bit of context but we went through planning so we know how to

plan Our piece and we went through how to spend out four minutes we've gone through what writing a successful piece looks like and again I know this has been super fast we've gone through a lot in just 90 minutes and so I will be sending through everything we've covered and some more detail as well so you can really actually practice this on your own and really ingrain it but we're now just going to quickly skip over what does it look like to edit your piece What should you be looking at and this is something that

we really looked at quite a bit at the start but the last few minutes is really where you want to reread your writing remove any spelling grammar or punctuation mistakes check you've followed your plan and then your essay reads well so of course you've only got two minutes you'd only make any massive changes and you really want to just make sure that you've ticked all the boxes so as You're following follow a logical progression structure if there's anything that isn't working see if you can just quickly fix it up are your arguments strong and supported

well so by this point you've well and truly chosen your arguments but you can see entries are a little bit of extra evidence that you can add in or is there a paragraph that you can strengthen with a little bit more evidence install doesn't rain well so this is Something you can really impact how can you make it sound more polished maybe you run through the piece and look for a few words that are a little bit more sophisticated or Advanced that you can add in that's a good thing to do or you can just

make sure that it reads a little bit better by just shortening the sentences like we did with one of the pieces today and again this is like a good slide to come back to when you're editing your Pieces and so at this point as we mentioned we've now gone through how to use that 20 minute seeing exam four minutes planning 14 minutes writing and two minutes editing and that's how the 20 minutes is going to look for a persuasive or a discussion piece and so the key thing from here is what I'm going to be

doing is I'm just going to be sharing a few little tips and tricks which will help you and then I'll be Sharing the next steps you'll hear to make sure that you make the most of the last few weeks before your exam so a few key tips and tricks to take away tip number one one of the things I really focus on is practice writing high quality pieces first without worrying about time pressure so once I stand through the recording of this lesson and the slides and the structures that we talked about today I'll just

go through and write a whole piece without worrying About time first and just try and make it as good as you can and then once you understand the mechanics of how it should be structured how writing one of these pieces works that's when I'll start adding in the time pressure but ultimately like if you can't write a really good piece without Prime pressure you're not going to be able to write it with time pressure so I'll probably break it into two phases number one write it really well without Time pressure number two write it really

well with time pressure and so yeah as we've got on the screen here tip number two examiners are people too so play to the biases of them don't click pick inflammatory arguments this is one of the things to be careful of you want to make sure that your arguments aren't going to offend the examiners and this is one of the things that a lot of people say oh their Dominoes are completely impartial even if you have an offensive argument they're not going to care even if it's Justified but this is one of the things where

naturally if you have an argument which is potentially a little bit controversial or inflammatory or it's likely to make them question things a little bit um I would probably say do not use it just because even though maybe they're not supposed to take into whether they Agree with your arguments or not you probably don't want them to be reading a piece and thinking I really disagree with this student is very very wrong you probably want to avoid that because subconsciously it might impact the way they grade your piece so I try and avoid that if

you can tip number three just make sure you can avoid spelling mistakes or grammar issues sometimes students will add in sophisticated words and they spell them Wrong or they don't know the meaning of them and then they'll just not make sense they'll add in this sophisticated word that just doesn't make sense and it really stands out it really stands out as a student who's trying to make a sophisticated they don't understand the use of the word and so if you don't understand the word really well don't use it just keep it simple there's nothing wrong

with just being having short sentences and keeping it really Simple that's what I really need 12 English and it worked really well and that's what I did on the exam as well and it worked well and so next steps from here there's a couple of weeks into your exam we've covered a lot today what can you do from here to make the most of your preparation well really what I focus on is going through the homework that we provide them so what we're going to provide after this session is number one Prompts for both the

persuasive and discussion pieces that have gone through today so we'll send you through some prompts which you can practice on you can expect to receive them through email and also in the Facebook group tomorrow um so once you've got them feel free to practice on them and also some for narrative and creative pieces now material will send you through the slides today with all the key takeaways so I won't include the slides which are Unnecessary I'll just have all the key takeaways on structure so you know um you can really extract everything from this lesson

but I'll also include the recording of This Workshop so you can watch it back it was definitely one of the most action-packed sessions we've had we've covered a lot often you'll cover this type of content over 10 hours rather than one hour and so if I've seen Michael Moon fast it seemed like we were covering things really quickly it's Because we were normally would cover this much slower but because we've only got a few weeks left before an exam we wanted to make sure that we didn't discover introductions for example and not go through how

to actually write the majority of the piece we covered everything in some sort of detail and so we'll be sending through the recording feel free to watch it back that will be a good resource as well and so what I might do is I might wrap that up now Once again if you have any more questions feel free to send them to me through email I'll be sending you an email with all the homework that we talked about and so if you have any questions let me know otherwise thanks so much for attending today and

being here for 90 minutes I know we ran a bit overtime but hopefully it was really valuable for everyone and I look forward to seeing hopefully as many of you as possible on Saturday otherwise um I'll see all of you for the reading comprehension session in a couple of days time as well so thanks everyone I'll see you and have a good night