How to Achieve Top Marks in VCE English Section A

In VCE English, the Text Response Essay makes up a third of the often dreaded end-of-year exam as ‘Section A’. As a tutor, I often see students hesitate and feel uncertain when they are confronted with a long, complex essay prompt, even on a text they have well-studied. This is how we tackle that feeling and make sure we can deliver the exact sort of essay the prompt asks for. 

Let’s break down how you can be best prepared for Section A of the exam!

Types of Structures

In order to understand what an ideal essay entails, it is important for us to understand different essay structures.

The most intuitive and commonly used essay structure is probably the YES-YES-NO format, where your first two points agree with the prompt and your last paragraph (the complexity paragraph) disagrees. This is probably my least favourite way to answer an essay prompt.

However, often with an “extent” or a “how” prompt, you want to use a YES-YES-YES format. The complexity ‘NO’ paragraph only undermines your overall essay in answering this sort of question. Furthermore, if your three YES points accumulate into your overall contention (e.g., A gives you B, which then gives you C, which ultimately supports your contention), this is the gold standard for building complexity across an essay for examiners. The ability to ‘stack’ your points this way is regarded as highly impressive.

Lastly, one of my favourite ways to go about an essay structure is the BECAUSE-BUT-SO format. For those of you who haven’t seen this before, it might look a little daunting – but all you have to do is put your contention before each BECAUSE/BUT/SO, and answer accordingly. This essentially provides you with a more complex YES-NO-OTHER format, with the OTHER (the ‘SO’) being your choice of exploring authorial intent, a theme or the socio-historical context of the text.

Planning

The first thing most students want to do when they get to the exam is plan their essay, whether that’s during reading time or in the first five minutes of writing time. This is a perfectly sensible choice if you’re a student who finds themselves struggling with staying on topic, or has a bit of trouble remembering the exact examples they want to use later on.

Tip: Planning an essay is often more effective as a form of revision than writing an entire essay or just writing a sample paragraph. This is because it gets you to do the complex thinking necessary for a full essay and practice evidence application in a fraction of the time.

In terms of planning effectively, here is an example of what I consider the ideal plan:

The Women of Troy is a cautionary tale about the grief which comes inevitably from war. Discuss

Contention: Euripides contends in The Women of Troy that while war inevitably begets grief, one’s innate instincts for both self-preservation and revenge are similarly provoked.

P1: The grief of war / the women’s lament

P2: The instinct for self-preservation

P3: The instinct toward revenge

In this (very simple) plan, you’ve got the contention as the backbone of your essay, and the three points you will be discussing to support your contention. This is realistically all you need for a plan – any evidence you would like to include can be placed in bullet points, like so:

Contention: Euripides contends in The Women of Troy that while war inevitably begets grief, one’s innate instincts for both self-preservation and revenge are similarly provoked.

P1: The grief of war / the women’s lament

• Ancient Greek convention of lament
• Choruswomen & Hecuba (lamenting together in grief)

P2: The instinct for self-preservation

• Ancient Greek conventions of sophrosyne and rhetoric
• Andromache (‘positive’ self-preservation) & Helen (‘negative’ self-preservation)

P3: The instinct toward revenge

• Ancient Greek conventions of fate and divine punishment
• Cassandra

Writing Introductions

In terms of writing introductions, I find that schools tend to overcomplicate it a little for students. Realistically, only two things are necessary in an introduction: (1) a contention and (2) your three arguments.

An introduction only exists for the examiner to make sure you are staying on track and answering the essay question exactly, so the following inclusions are often unhelpful:

• A plot summary
• A description of the characters you will discuss
• The date, the year and the historical context*
• A general statement of your opinion about the topic
• A values and views statement*

That is not to say that you shouldn’t include all of the above at some point in your essay. The ones I’ve marked with asterisks can be especially helpful, but the introduction is not the place to put them – the simpler your introduction is, the more time it saves you to write and the examiner to check your points.

I would probably say the most efficient introduction contains a sentence for your contention, and 2-3 sentences for your points. This is all you need to set your essay up.

Writing Body Paragraphs

When writing body paragraphs, most students will elect to use a TEEL structure. Honestly, there is nothing very wrong with a TEEL structure – for the most part, it encapsulates everything you’d want in a well-rounded, evidence-supported essay – that is, if you’re doing it correctly (most students don’t).

About TEEL

TEEL was designed by a group of English teachers several decades ago for the sole purpose of improving literacy. This is a structure designed to help you pass in English – not to succeed. To succeed, we’ll have to bend the rules a little.

Topic sentences and linking sentences (back to the contention) are fairly straightforward and there often aren’t many issues with them, so let’s move straight into evidence and explanation.

When I was taught TEEL, I was taught that there could be as many sets of EE’s as I liked. This intuition is correct, but most students don’t know just how many you need. I tell my students you generally need at least 4 quotes in a paragraph, meaning 4 sets of EE’s. Now, this might seem like a lot of quotes – in fact, this would be a lot of quotes if our quotes looked like full sentences.

Quote Integration and Use

I now have to break a harsh truth. Our quotes, if done properly, should be no more than 5 words long. This is one of the very few hard suggestions I provide to students, because there is nothing that is harder to work with than a long quote. I would put the ideal length of a quote at around 1-3 words – these are easier to chuck in with the rest of your sentence, and make for a very fluid integration.

Following this, our quotes also need all pronouns removed (substituted using square brackets [ ]). This cuts down on the bulk of your quote and makes it far easier to integrate.

When integrating quotes, you ideally want the quote to blend seamlessly with the rest of your sentence – if read aloud, a listener would not be able to tell if you were using a quote.

E.g., “In her role as the 'mother bird' of Troy, Hecuba’s lament symbolises a mourning for her entire nation.” (The Women of Troy, Euripides)

What does an ‘EE’ Set look like?

The above example also works very well to illustrate how an ‘EE’ set should look. I’m sure most students wouldn’t consider this an EE set, but…

“In her role as the “mother bird” of Troy, Hecuba’s lament symbolises a mourning for her entire nation.” (The Women of Troy, Euripides)

…is exactly how it should look.

We have the first E for evidence (the quote “mother bird”), and the E for explanation in the second clause after the comma. This is all there is to an ‘EE’ set – where most students go wrong is incorrect integration, and passive voice for the explanation. This would be a standard ‘EE’ set with the same quote if we aren’t thinking too deeply about quote integration:

“Hecuba is the “mother bird” of Troy. This shows that her lament is a symbol of mourning for the entire nation.”

There is nothing wrong with the above ‘EE’ set  – it just lacks the finesse and nuance of the first example, and if similar ‘EE’ sets are repeated across an entire essay, your essay will lack the overall fluidity and detail an examiner really wants to see.

Writing Conclusions

Hopefully, having read this far into the article, you have a much clearer picture of how to proceed with writing both introductions and body paragraphs.

To wrap up, let’s take a look at some conclusion structures – given there is no objectively ‘correct’ conclusion, this part of the essay is really up to you.

It is very common to see conclusions that mirror introductions, in the sense that the topic sentences are repeated and then a final iteration of the contention is layered after. There isn’t anything wrong with this, and it is a perfectly fine way to write a conclusion; it offers a summation of your points, and reinforces your contention a final time to solidify your argument.

However, I often see in high-scoring students a preference for a different type of conclusion – this one is a lot looser, and toes the line a little. It largely involves a restating of the contention, and then includes what I call a ‘wow’ statement. The ‘wow’ statement is one that is very nice to read and demonstrates an ability to eloquently convey one’s own opinion about a given topic. Here is a conclusion with a ‘wow’ statement:

The Women of Troy is a play about lament, sorrow and feminine suffering. Euripides offers this critique of war to convey ultimately that political conflict in Ancient Greek myth was a zero-sum game, where nobody won but the gods – playing out their rivalries with men as collateral.

With a WOW statement, students earn themselves the space (of a single line) to show their opinion – it creates room for a last bit of creativity (and some showiness) to ‘wow’ examiners.

Final Comments

Ultimately, your success in a Section A VCE English essay comes down to clarity, insight, and control. Learn your text deeply, understand the nuances of the prompt and craft an argument that speaks directly to both. Students should never aim for perfection in any subject, but specifically in English, they should aim for precision. Each point should be solid, each quote should serve a purpose, and every sentence should move you closer to proving your contention. With practice, feedback, and a willingness to refine, your writing will grow clearer – and so will your confidence. Good luck!

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Written by Andrea Ting, KIS Academics Tutor for VCE. Andrea achieved an ATAR of 98.10 in 2023 with all raw scores 40+, and received the Premier’s Award for Top Three International Students in the state. She is currently studying a Bachelor of Arts (Philosophy and Classics – Latin) at the University of Melbourne. You can view Andrea’s profile here and request her as a tutor.