Exam+sample+answers+READ+ME

(I've made these responses by piecing together YOUR ideas and examples, mostly in my words) a) The speaker feels that he belongs when he is on his boat amongst nature and when he is painting and caring for birds. [The question only asked you to //identify//, so if you wrote half a page you're risking marks elsewhere. You also risk the marker thinking you don't know the answer so you've just said everything you know on the topic. I.e. if you asked someone for directions from Narrandera to Sydney and they told you a bucket-load about the geography of NSW, you would suspect they didn't actually know how to get from Narrandera to Sydney.] b) The migrant must be prepared to give up parts of her culture and recognition of her accomplishments and place in society to join Australian society. The sacrifice she explicitly mentions losing is her dreams, but new ones replace them. c) The 'Close the Gap' poster is giving information about the availability of the perinatal health program available for Indigenous mother and babies. The positive and helpful nature of the program spoken about in the text is reinforced by the happy and healthy looking Indigenous mother and child in the image. The focus on the words "Close the gap" signifies the relationship which "new" and Indigenous Australian have. The visual text encourages the reader to think about the similarities between Indigenous and "new" Australian families and their right for equal health by displaying an emotive picture of a Indigenous mother and child. Therefore both the text "Close the gap" and the image reinforce the desire in the viewer to be aware of and support the Indigenous health initiative that is the subject of the poster. The Indigenous people referred to in the heading "Close the gap" are confirmed and demonstrated by the picture of an Indigenous mother and child. The picture is used to emotively grab the audience's attention whilst the text builds on that initial attention with more substantial information. The picture is of an Indigenous mother with her child, who has grown beyond the perinatal stage. Thus the picture demonstrates the success of the program that the text is telling the reader of. [You only needed two of these examples, but I've provided more so you can see a range of ideas. You needed to explicitly LINK the ideas represented in the text and the visual. If you just stated disconnected facts then you //are not answering the question//] d) The speaker is an Indigenous female. Evidence of her ethnicity is present in the line "Being black is core to who I am" and evidence of her femininity is present in "what I am ... a woman ... mother ... wife ... sister" [I did not accept that the author's name showed that the speaker was a female. This is because the author is not the same thing as the speaker, just as in a story the characters are not the same thing as the author. Even in an autobiography, it is a **construction**] [I **did** accept people saying she was Aboriginal or Indigenous Australian even though she is in fact African American and there is //nothing// in the poem to indicate she is Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander] e) Text One and Text Two (and Text Four was also popular) both represent the barriers to belonging and the negative effects of not belonging. The significant barrier to belonging represented in all the texts is physical appearance. All the texts show the pain of the desire to belong being denied as a result of different appearance through use of emotive language. "I cried" is the most effective in the use of emotive language. The emotive phrase "I cried" is repeated through the poem and is reinforced by highly emotive words such as "kidnapped", "enslaved", "murdered", "cheated" and "discrimination".
 * __Sample responses to the half yearly__**

[The biggest issue in this response was that people were not explicit enough with the aspects of belonging represented. You cannot just say "belonging" is represented because it does not show your complex and sophisticated understanding of the concept of belonging or of the texts.] [For those who received 7 marks, the final mark was often lost because your comparison of the texts was lacking an evaluation of which was more effective in conveying it's message about belonging. The question explicitly asks for this evaluation. It need only have been an extra sentence integrated in your analysis of techniques.]