Level 3 Unfamiliar Text External

Section 1: Overview

What is this?

Unfamiliar text is an external examination that asks you to close read TWO texts. It is worth FOUR credits and these also count towards the reading credits that you need for University Entrance Literacy.

For this external, you will be given a resource booklet and an answer booklet. The resource booklet will have two unfamiliar texts (*unfamiliar means that you won't have seen them before or studied them in class).

You need to do two things with each text - firstly, you need to read the texts and analyse each one for how they are put together.

Secondly, at Level Three, you need to compare and contrast them.

Have a look at The Studyit website to see what the achievement criteria is and get access to other resources.

What does it look like?

Here's the standard,

• the 2016 exam question booklet, the 2016 resource booklet, the excellence exemplar, the merit exemplar, the achieved exemplar

• The 2015 Assessment Report

Section 2: How to attack the question - use the process

Unfamiliar text always seems daunting, but if you follow this clear process, then it will be simple and easy. For this paper, process is everything.

Step One: READ FOR THE FIRST TIME, the first text. When you have finished reading it, write down FIVE words that describe how it made you feel. For example, happy, sad, shocked, etc. This is the author's tone and mood that you have described.

Step Two: Now read the question. What clues about the tone and mood can you pick up from the question?

Step Three: Now that you have figured out what the author wants you to feel, READ FOR THE SECOND TIME, and pick up on what they want you to think about (their message, theme, lesson *all of these words mean the same thing). During this reading, look for the main characters, what issues they face and how they change. Note, during this reading, any changes in tone and mood as well.

Note: your text should be covered in circles and underlines and highlights and annotations.

Step Four: READ FOR THE THIRD TIME. This reading is about figuring out the language features that the author has used to put the text together. So underline things like hyperbole, alliteration, imagery, adjectives.

Step Five: Put together a little plan for your writing, using all of your notes from step 1-4- remember, each point you make should be backed up by a link to the theme and at least one specific named example, such as, 'the author uses the hyperbole "freeze your Rastafarian nenes off" to highlight how cold it is for the reader.' You also need to talk about at least TWO language features (they might call these aspects, language conventions etc but it all means the same thing)

Step Six: Repeat steps 1-5 for the second text.

Step Seven: Now read the third question. This question asks you to compare and contrast each text, so this means, what is the same and what is different? Be mindful that the two texts will be linked in some way, for example, theme or subject. So think about how each author deals with the subject/theme in their own way. What are the differences? What are the similarities? What are the effects on the audience?Have a look at these YouTube tutorials to get a better understanding.

Section 4: Collecting all of your tools for the exam

You will need to have in your mental toolbox going into the exam:

• A good understanding of language features / techniques / conventions. These language features are the tools that authors use to build up their ideas. You've been learning these along the way as you go, but it's always a daunting task and the list of language features is really long (seriously, think thick book long). You could try using flashcards to learn them: either digitally or on good old fashioned paper or using sites like Kahoot! and then searching Unfamiliar Text - a whole bunch will come up and just have a play to see what your gaps are and what your strengths are.

• Some examples include:

  • Imagery - the author uses words to build up a picture of what they want to show, for example, 'the long tendrils of snow weighed the tips of the ferns heavily to the ground. Nothing moved, nothing spoke.'

  • listing - a list of things to convince the audience of the point being made, for example,

• A set of essay connectives and sentence starters that you have in your head to make your writing more exciting to read (you might to have read of this essay connective page from the University of Melbourne)

• A list of four or five key critical thinking questions to help you dive deeper on your readings.