Section 2 (2 Viewers)

[bananasmoothy]

So wait, you attack people for writing their piece about an old man who is telling his last story, even though the question says "He told me one last story. He used his aged ruined voice"?

Storys from the perspective of old men don't have to be boring.

No, Mr. Harry Flashman. I'm attacking the BOS for making people who feel stressed under normal exam conditions, to be reduced to writing such cliched stories.

 

[^CoSMic DoRiS^^]

yeah im starting not to like my story as much now. it had all this symbolic shit about a burning house. but that was about the best of it. oh well.

 

[kezz_xxxx]

Old man stories?? Wow. I didn't write about the old man at all.
I had a prepared story and I related it to the quote through the whole 'picking the lock to his past' reference.
My story was basically about a heroin junkie and while she's laying on the floor injecting her drugs or whatever she takes an imaginative journey back to different sections of her past to try and 'discover' why she turned to drugs etc etc.
Hopefully not as cliche as it sounds :s

I do advanced and was pretty happy with Section 2 really. I'm kind of getting worried with the whole old man thing though. DIdn't cross my mind at all. And yes, I know that seems stupid. SHould I be worried?

 

[mrpie]

omg this section was sooooo hard...writing about old people it reminded me of my teachers...their nice sexy wrinkles and tasty saggy breasts got me so distracted...i couldnt help but stare at my 80 year old teachers breats sag to the floor...mmmmm...i couldnt stop touchin myself...oh god yes...

 

[almightyBZZZ]

I was actually really annoyed with the stimulus..for the same reasons as everybody else.
In my way of thinking...there are people who stress out in exams and aren't actually able to articulate thigns as well...that's why they prepare one (like me).

If you write about...I think I heard...a woman having a misacarriage? If they gave you braoder stimulus, surely you can adpat it roughly to anything.
But having that line as the first line kind of takes away impact from a story which might have a preparted first sentence.

That's just what I think though. I suppose you love it if you could adapt it and you hate it if you cant.
Than again, I could adapt it, because my story was about a father pressuring his son into playing professional football...and i jsut said that the old man was his dad telling him that he used ot be great and now his son had to step up and things.
Eight pages.
Not too shabby, for my 'weak little hand', as my extension teacher told me.

 

[geegables]

haha i moulded the quote and interpreted it as the old man being my father, saying one last story, as in one last bedtime storey for his kid... it was the only way i could fit it with my story

 

[Harry Flashman]

Even the 2002 question was better than that though.

 

[jaisy88]

that was the world's most freckin f****d up question in the history of english literature...i mean for god's sake who came up with that pathetic piece of sentence...that bluddy statement totally wrecked my prepared response...far out man...i just i hope i pass.that section....
>>> section 1 and section 3 ROCK !!

 

[Dr_Doom]

haha i moulded the quote and interpreted it as the old man being my father, saying one last story, as in one last bedtime storey for his kid... it was the only way i could fit it with my story

That's actually a good way to start it off.

 

[maskd]

Jeez... You needed to prepare a more general response or more responses. You shouldn't blame the question for unpreparedness.

Agree. It's not anyone's fault other than your own for a bad story because you couldn't adapt it to the quote. Board of Studies probably realised that the amount of generic essay/stories were getting out of hand, and made the questions in such a way that you actually needed to do more than just regurgitate stuff you've remembered.

 

[sideshowtim]

Yeah "old man" could've been interpreted as slang for father...hmm didn't think of that in the exam...would've opened things up a bit more I guess.

 

[xx__savannah]

And what's the point of even doing a test if it's going to be predictable, all it is is memorising crap then, that's not what English is about.

hahaha. I have to say that from what I've seen, English is about memorising whole slabs of information, and just adapting as little as possible in order to suit the question.
And I think the main point of debate isn't the "predictability" (but I mean, plenty of people thought this'd be the year they screw us around after simple HSCs for Journeys so far), but rather the nature of the question, in which it seemed to favour those doing Inner Journeys. I really liked this creative writing, it was quite the opposite of the CSSA trial which was geared towards physical journeys, in my opinion.

I just read somewhere though in the Eng forum that the advice line said you can't do a poem? Doesn't that kinda contradict the "in any form appropriate to your purpose" line they gave us?

 

[Harry Flashman]

Agree. It's not anyone's fault other than your own for a bad story because you couldn't adapt it to the quote. Board of Studies probably realised that the amount of generic essay/stories were getting out of hand, and made the questions in such a way that you actually needed to do more than just regurgitate stuff you've remembered.

I get it, they train us for 12 years to regurgitate and then punish us for doing it in the HSC.

 

[pzella]

i liked that question it fit in PERFECTLY with my response. I did a story about a young girl leaving her home country in world war 2 and used the stimulus as her father telling her a story about how their family was always brave and she needed to be to.
i wrote it in 30 minutes cause i went over accidnetally on the essay by ten min. I did this dream sequence so she had an imaginary journey, did the boat trip ss a physical journey and had her feelings to kind of show an inner journey. I really liked that question

YAY NO MORE JOURNEYS !!!1

 

[maskd]

I get it, they train us for 12 years to regurgitate and then punish us for doing it in the HSC.

I never learned to regurgiate shit for English, rather make it up.

 

[annieclassof06]

I wrote it in 30 minutes cause i went over accidnetally on the essay by ten min.

Me tooooooo

I wrote a pirate story.. abit childish I suppose... but it was good. Wrote 6 pages. Hoping say 11/15

 

[Wakely]

I thought the question was a little hard, cos all the questions i'd seen from previous years had a little bit more choice, but i was still able to make it fit with the opening sentence. My story was about a grandfather telling his granddaughter about her namessake... a little bit wierd, but it worked

 

[Jesseo]

Ok well mabye i was the only one who thought it was stupid.. I would prefer a few things to pick from instead of a line and HAVING to open with it.. i ended up writing about my pop who died which was stupid coz eveyone expects the character to dye.. but i guess my creative techniques where just not flowing.. Hoping the other sections will pick my mark up.. Although it wasnt as bad as it could have been!

 

[Elaine1988]

Mine sounds sooo different to everyone elses, and at first I was happy but now im just scared because i couldve screwed it up as its so different
i put the opening stimulus in quotation marks, then said "and thats the last thing my father ever said to me before he died" and make the whole story from the son's perspective who is going through therapy. the whole thing was the son's therapy sessions with his psychiatrist and the way he has been scarred from his father leaving him at such an early age.

i also thought id be a bit clever and used a few different text types- the narrative between psyiatrist and son, a diary entry as part of therapy homework, a letter (with a bos drawn around it and everything) and back to narrative.

i hope it was ok

 

[xx__savannah]

English is also about making up crap on the spot as well. I do that a lot.

Admittedly, I do to, but rarely in AoS, and only in Section 1 of this Paper.