Come, woo me, woo me, for now I am in a holiday humor...

Who said the above? Prize for the winner...smart money's on Hudders...

I truly hope that you all enjoy your holidays and have some time with your family and friends. These holidays and your next three breaks need to be times when you unwind but must also stay focused on the task at hand. A two-week hiatus from your studies will wreak havoc with our carefully laid plains. Keep your work by your bedside, if it works for you, and just do fifteen minutes when you wake and fifteen minutes when you duck off to bed. That's your holiday work done!

Your tasks for the holidays (when completed) will position you all very well for not only this unit but also in terms of understanding the teacher-student relationship we will employ during the HSC to maximise our time together.

Without further ado...

1. You MUST MUST MUST have read the first 19 pages of your yellow speeches booklet. It is not only of massive benefit in terms of understanding what will be asked of you in your HSC assessments, it will also - as we have done before - offer you a wonderful vocabulary - remember how we had a similar kind of list for Satire? Highlight the keywords, it will help you for the next 12 months. 
2. Moving now to the green booklet (pages 13-18) you MUST MUST MUST have read and understood all the concepts within these pages. A couple of you have spoken to me about "finding techniques difficult". Indeed, I agree with you. I remember finding them difficult myself. This six-page piece of perfection clearly outlines the purposes of and devices used in rhetorical language (the basis of all oral language) and will signpost them for you in our set speeches.
3. Read (again, for some of you) the speeches by Paul Keating, Faith Bandler and Aung San Suu Kyi.
4. Read (again, for some of you) the notes from our green book on each of these three speeches.
5. Look at page 23 of your yellow booklet. This is (what we will call) a 'Table of Tidbits'. It will be your guide for each of the speeches. I saw Year 12 scholars studying these notes as they sat their trial HSC exams this year. They are gold-dust. Your penultimate task will be to fill out these forms for Sadat, Keating, Bandler and Suu Kyi. There is ONE table for each speaker. Please note that you will have these for the next 12 months - do them with diligence, precision and care.
6. Pages 32 will help you understand the universality of some of the speeches' ideas.
7. Pages 33-35 are past essay questions. The keener students among you may like to look at the sample answer (on pages 36-38) and write your own essay. I will be overseas all holidays but will mark your work upon my return.

"Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant."

- Robert Louis Stevenson

See you in two weeks.

M

 

Would the real Anwar Sadat please stand up?

And we're done with Anwar.

The reason why we have taken so long in going through his speech is simple. I truly believe that the mentality for your HSC revolves around the simple adage, 'give a man a fish, he eats for a day - teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime'. You are now armed with the ability to dissect a speech, to ponder its meaning and to understand its purpose.

We have tried to unfurl the speech the Egyptian President delivered to the Knesset in 1977. We have spoken at length about its context, tone, techniques, themes and objectives. We have acknowledged its passion and seen its repetitive mention of the term "permanent peace based on justice".

We must now look at the common themes for all the speeches. In viewing them and being able to deftly explicate them, we must also be able to talk about their universality as ideas.

I will put up another post before the holidays and your job will be to read it and complete the work that is explained within it.

Remember you have TWO booklets. The green-covered one is for us in 11E only. It is a quality handout that will give you a wonderful base upon which to build your knowledge of this unit. Please consider it somewhat of a 'vade mecum' for the contextual issues behind these speeches.

Please be aware that in Period 2, October 31st (Week 4 of Term 4) you will have your listening task. It will comprise excerpts from 2 or 3 of our set speeches (we will narrow these down for you closer to the date) and you will answer multiple choice and short-answer questions on their content. There will be no extended response or essay in this assessment. It is worth 7.5% of you HSC English mark. This might not seem like much but trust me, it adds up.

This means your knowledge of the speeches must be iron-clad. More solid than oak.

Gone are the holidays where you do no school work. Gone are the holidays where you leave things until the last minute. You MUST complete each and every one of the tasks I set you over the holidays in order to achieve in this unit.

If I was rating our start to this unit in class - I would give it 6.5/10. It is time for us to lift for our last 4 lessons of term and to head into the break with the desire to achieve.

M

I have a dream...

We now begin our study for your HSC English. Our first unit is 'Speeches'.

Essentially, it comprises seven famous historical speeches that have many overlapping themes. Their purposes are different. They are delivered in different manners to different audiences.

Your job will be to understand every facet of every speech. We - and later, the HSC markers - will want you to demonstrate your genuine engagement of a text's ideas and features. We want you to provide detailed analysis of the text. We want you to understand how a speaker has delivered their speech - what rhetorical devices have they used to engage their audiences? To what purpose? Finally, you will need to understand the context and history of the speeches AND acknowledge their ongoing relevance; their unerring value over time.

1. 1977 Anwar Sadat's 'Statement to the Knesset'
2. 1993 Paul Keating's 'Funeral Service of the Unknown Soldier'
3. 1994 Margaret Atwood's 'Spotty-Handed Villainesses'
4. 1995 Aung San Suu Kyi's 'Keynote Address at the Beijing World Conference on Women'
5. 1996 Noel Pearson's 'An Australian History For Us All'
6. 1999 Faith Bandler's 'Faith, Hope and Reconciliation'
7. 1999 Sir William Deane's 'On the occasion of an ecumenical service for the victims of the canyoning tragedy'

Your first task will be to read all seven of these speeches.

We will then analyse and annotate these speeches in class and there will be a definite emphasis on using your own ideas. This is your HSC. This is your future. Let's start well.

M