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