National 5 Portfolio Planning and Preparation Guide

1. Nat 5 Plans https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/glowblogs/misscpacker/ August – October: • Creation and production finished • 1 short story • 3 poems • Analysis and Evaluation first sitting November – December: • Folio piece 1 • Finish poems (3) • Close reading January – April: • Second draft of folio 1 (in class) • Folio 2 • Prelim • Resists • Short stories April – June: • Revision Texts Scottish Text: Jackie Kay poetry Critical Essay: 4 Short stories

2. Plan • Your study: • Reread the texts: 6 poems and The Lighthouse • Memorise important quotes for both • Look at themes • Links between ideas in the poems • Practice the 8 mark question (SQA website for past papers) • Close reading practice (SQA website) • Practice critical essay plans • Today: Folio overview and plans Hw: Finish folio plan and research for Monday 11th January. Monday: Writing 1st draft of folio. Hw: Prepare for critical essay be rereading The Lighthouse and your notes Thursday: Critical essay exam practice

3. National 5 Portfolio What you need to know • This portfolio is worth 30 marks out of the total of 100 marks. The marks contribute 30% of the overall marks for the Course assessment. • This portfolio (writing) will have 30 marks and will contain two essays. Up to fifteen marks will be awarded for each essay chosen for the portfolio. • This assessment will be externally marked by SQA. • You will get marks for the quality of your writing. It does not have to be completely perfect to get a 15. • You writing will be assessed on both content and style. • Satisfactory technical accuracy is a requirement for the piece to meet the minimum requirements for the 9-7 Band. Your writing may contain errors, but these will cannot be significant. Paragraphing, sentence construction, spelling and punctuation must be adequately accurate.

4. National 5 Portfolio: What you need to do • Write two essays of no more than 1,000 words each, one of which is broadly creative, the other broadly discursive . Discursive writing Transactional — Transactional writing is informative, and might include a film review or a biography. It should be written with a specific audience in mind, and seek to engage that audience. Argumentative — Argumentative writing will present an issue or topic in such a way that a line of thought is developed dealing with two or more points of view, making clear the argument to be presented. Persuasive — The aim of persuasive writing is to persuade the reader towards the writer’s adopted point of view or purpose. It usually focuses on a single topic or issue and it will carry a sense of conviction, commitment or belief through the conscious manipulation of language to create an appropriate tone. Report — A report contains a number of key characteristics. It must contain information relevant to the chosen topic/issue drawn from at least two sources and the material drawn from those sources must be recast and paraphrased appropriately according to the purpose of the report. Report writing will have an appropriate sequence and structure. Diagrams, tables, charts and graphs may be included if appropriate to the chosen form. Headings, appendices, bibliographies and a lettering or numbering system to separate topics may also be used. Creative Writing Personal — Personal writing (real or imagined) will focus on a specific event/s or situation and your reactions to it/them. Reflective — Reflective writing will aim to interest or give pleasure, rather than purely convey information about an experience. It will concern itself, usually, with a single idea, insight or experience and will include some reflection on knowledge, thoughts or feelings created by this. Imaginative — This can take a very wide range of forms such as: a short story; an episode from a novel; a drama script (scene, monologue, sketch) ; poetry; the script for a radio play, television drama or soap; a piece of description or a series of linked or contrasting descriptive literary sketches. • What I can help you with: • The initial planning stage • Written or spoken suggestions for improvements on a first draft • ‘Once work on the assessment has begun, the candidate should be working independently’

5. Any direct quotations from source material used in discursive writing must be clearly acknowledged by the use of quotation marks. Specific details of sources must be given – eg dates and writers of newspaper articles, specific web pages, titles and dates of publication of books; it is not acceptable to say, for example, “various newspaper articles” or “environmental websites” or “the internet”. Unacknowledged use of others’ material such as copying and pasting from the internet or any other source, or re-wording or summarising information from another source and passing it off as the candidate’s own, is plagiarism and this carries severe penalties. Discursive Writing • Step one: Decide on a topic (you could look at your Creation and Production essay for inspiration) • Step two: Conduct your research. I have asked you to do this outwith class time. There will be no extra time to do this in class. • You must make sure to reference your sources. • Step three: Create a detailed plan for me to provide feedback on. • Step four: Write a rough draft that I will comment on. • Step five: Writing the actual essay.

6. Selection of a Topic: What to Consider 1. Originality does help an essay to stand out. With this in mind, it is worth rejecting common topics such as euthanasia, legalisation of drugs, drugs in sport, death penalty . . . • Apart from their lack of freshness, these topics are very wide and are likely to be covered in a superficial way in 1,000 words. 2. Select a topic which is of personal interest to you. 3. Broad topics cannot be covered in 1000 words. For example, the topic of “Global Warming” has multifarious aspects. Narrowing the topic down to one aspect will allow that aspect to be covered in more depth and hence show complexity of argument. Subsets of this topic could be: issues relating to power generation; carbon emissions; government actions. These topics alone are more than complex enough to be successful. 4. Complex arguments do not lend themselves well to simple lines of thought (for/ against). A persuasive essay should present a depth of opinion. 5. Selection of topics from other school subjects. • SQA regulations do not prohibit this. You need to consider the limited extent to which a piece of work from another subject will meet the success criteria for a persuasive essay in the English Portfolio. It may well present facts/ opinions but it has to do it in the correct way to achieve success as a persuasive. At best, you should see prior study of a topic as useful background knowledge. 6. When looking for topics, examining current news stories can be productive. There will be many current opinions about the subject and it is also likely to be an issue which is of social relevance. For example: “Britain should abandon nuclear power”

7. Persuasive Essay Style The main requirements of the persuasive essay are that it will: • carry a clear sense of conviction or inducement; tone may range from encouragement, through cajoling to pressurising • make effective use of a number of persuasive techniques, such as manipulating • information, claiming necessity/exclusivity, flattering, employing technical jargon/rhetoric.

8. Persuasive Essay Plan Example: My aim: To explore the issues relating to nuclear waste. Overall, I will persuade the reader that the nature and problems in relation to nuclear waste make nuclear power unacceptable. Plan – I need to find out how waste is disposed of at present and the length to which it remains harmful. I will manipulate this information to claim necessity that we have to stop nuclear dumping now. I expect to find that sources such as the government, nuclear energy companies claim that current practice is safe but I will find disproof or counter- argument from those opposed to nuclear energy. I intend to use the first person plural to emphasise how this issue affects everyone. I can use a rhetorical question to ask how can we pass our toxic problem on to future generations. My topic: What I will persuade my reader of: What evidence I will use to do this: What persuasive techniques I will use: Create a plan for your essay. Once this is complete you can begin the rough draft.

9. The Writing Process Linkage/ signposting Importantly, ...In fact, ...More importantly, ...Furthermore, ...Moreover, ... Changing direction or creating a comparison Rather, ...In contrast, ...Conversely, ...In comparison, ...Compared to ...Another point to consider is ... Adding a similar point Similarly, ...Likewise, ...Again, ...Also, ... Summarising Finally, ...Lastly, ...In conclusion, ...In summary, ...Overall, ...The three main points are ... Being more specific In particular, ...In relation to ... More specifically, ... With respect to ... In terms of ... Giving an example For example, ...this can be illustrated by …, …, namely, … …, such as ... Acknowledging something and moving to a different point Although ...Even though ...Despite ...Notwithstanding ... Following a line of reasoning Therefore, ...Subsequently, ... Consequently, ... Accordingly, ...As a result, ...As a consequence, ...

10. Effective Persuasion • Make it sound as if it is important. • Appeal to their feelings and emotions: make them feel sympathy, empathy or feel • guilty! If you are raising money for a charity make them feel guilty if they don’t donate. • Threaten them – tell the person what will happen if you don’t get what you are asking for. Make it sound as though their doing what you want is crucial. • Ask rhetorical questions – questions that don’t actually require an answer, like ‘Do you want all the children in school to suffer?’, or ‘Can you really live without this marvelous pen?’ • Make use of three-part lists – three reasons, three benefits, three emotive words. • Give your audience strong statements of belief - then go on to justify and expand on your ideas. • Use strong adjectives (‘best’, ‘most important’, ‘stunning’) and verbs (‘will’, ‘need’, ‘must’, ‘should’, ‘could’). Use the first person (‘I’ / ‘We’) to make your writing strong and personal; use the second person (‘You’) to involve your audience. • Show, where appropriate, that you can employ formal language. Organise your writing in paragraphs (or use other appropriate structural devices) and link ideas by connectives from the page before

11. Ways to Make Impact • Dramatic impact • emotive words • forceful phrases contrasts • play on the reader’s guilt imagery • exaggeration (hyperbole) shock tactics • Logic • quote a reliable source statistics • criticise the opposite opinion • make negative points impersonal • Stylistic tricks • clusters of three • catchy phrases or slogans figures of speech • short sentences/ paragraphs rhetorical questions repetition of words/ phrases

12. Introductions You should aim for this to be no more than one-tenth of the word limit. A successful introduction will: • Set out the topic clearly • Give an indication of the current importance of the topic • Set out a few facts which will contextualise the topic • Give some indication of the main aspects to be studied • At this level, there should be no need to make statements like “This essay will . . .”. Also avoid any lengthy explorations of the history of your topic

13. Conclusions In your conclusion, include an overview of the main arguments with perhaps one main idea from each paragraph. Don’t just list them and state where your opinion lies. Conclude strongly by evaluating the nature of the arguments and make a final statement of conviction.

14. Bibliography • BOOKSAuthors name(s) in italics, Title of Book, Publisher, Date of publication WEBSITES • Name of website with date of production (if known) in brackets, name of article (if known), full URL with [date accessed in square brackets] e.g.