Chances are in your second year of NCEA you will be relatively familiar with the NZQA website, but if not rest assured it will be quite the go-to for your studying and revising resources. You will get to look at and begin to unpack many resources that include a range of helpful tips and tricks to guide you along your NCEA Level 2 English journey. This includes achievement standards, where you can check what exactly is required for each mark. The achievement standards list achieved, merit and excellence categories and what to do on how best to reach them. Most importantly there are exemplars that are ready to utilized on the NZQA website. These are so helpful as they are basically a photocopy of achieved, merit and excellence student essays, that are ready to be unpacked and studied. Not only do these provide a good barometer for what will earn you each mark, but they also can help you study if your written text or visual text is the medium being discussed. You can use them to guide your study and also learn from the structure that the exemplars demonstrate.
For starters are you wanting to have a complete overview of NCEA Level 2 English? Then check this blog out here. Perhaps you are needing some more confidence and skill in attacking your essay questions? Maybe you just want to zero in on those tricky internals to work out what you will be doing for the year. And finally are you curious as to how English will help your future career, then check this blog out.
Where do you locate annotated exemplars?
Jump onto your nearest computer and log on to NZQA.govt.nz and click under subjects and simply select ‘English’. Jump onto the drop-down menu and you will see listed, reports, achievement standards and of course annotated exemplars. Here is a sample of the dropdown here:
Why bother with using annotated exemplars for your revision?
Have you ever found yourself at a complete roadblock or halt in your studying journey? You’ve gone through the notes from during the course year, made notes but still need more clarity on how to actually structure your writing. Perhaps you are aiming high for that excellence and wish to know what would be required in order to be endorsed with that mark? Well, annotated exemplars are great because not only can you look at the structure of a Merit or Excellence essay, but you can also come to know the deeper higher valued insights and conclusions that students can draw. They are also handy because they show how with effective planning you can succeed and get results. Basically, treat these as a blueprint to springboard into your own ideas and insights. They are there to be inspiring and educational. It might even be more significant if you have actually studied that particular written or visual text. On top of this, there is also sometimes notes at the bottom from the examiner which makes it very effective in gauging how that particular student did and how on-point their essay was. So not only do you get to see what an achieved, merit and excellence essay look like, you also can get valuable insight from the marker as to what worked, what didn’t work and where there was perhaps room for improvement.
Let’s look at a Merit example from 2019
For starters, let's note that all-important essay question:
“Analyse how language features showed the positive and/or negative qualities of one or more
relationships.”
Let’s unpack the question:
This essay question appears to have two components. First, you want to know what language features are (dialogue, one shot, two shots etc) and second you will need to address how they showcase both negative and positive traits of relationships. Should we dive in?
A close reading of the film Ladybird, directed by Greta Gerwig.
In this exemplar the student addresses the fact that the main relationship in the film between the mother and daughter is love and hate and therefore very complicated. The language features utilised are dialogue, one shot and two shots. These language features help to craft this love and hate relationship, where the audience is exposed to both the positive and negative qualities of the relationship. The film does a good job of showing the negative side of the relationship between the mother and daughter at the start. In a scene where Ladybird and her mother are clothes shopping, Ladybird asks “Do you even like me” to which the reply is “yes I do love you”. This dialogue however shows the disconnect that Ladybird feels towards her mother and she feels quite unworthy. In action, it causes the audience to feel for Ladybird as she is quite misguided and unhappy in her relationship. Although the two are tied together and spend a lot of time together they still have a lot of disagreements.
Later on, in the movie, Gerwig begins to leave clues of Marion the mother’s love for Ladybird. We soon are exposed to a more positive side of their relationship. This is shown through the language feature of the One shot, where Marion is shown fixing up Ladybirds dress and putting a lot of care and time into the process. This action is shown through the one-shot. This shot choice really addresses that Marion will literally do anything for her daughter and this shows a sharp contrast to earlier in the film. In a scene later on, when Ladybird is crying, Marion ends up comforting her and we see them go on an open home montage, solidifying their strong bond. This is illustrated through many close-ups that show both women with big smiles on their faces.
An excellence annotated exemplar from 2020
This particular exemplar goes in-depth about the novel Regeneration which was written by Pat Barker. What question did the student pick to write about?
“Analyze how ideas were presented to be thought-provoking and relevant? Ideas may refer to character, theme or setting.”
In order to answer this question, there are two parts. The examiner is wanting to know what particular ideas were both thought-provoking and relevant. Maybe brainstorm two separate columns on a mind map with these two headings and provide useful quotes to quickly note down. You can do this if you studied Regeneration and follow along with it, but also you could equally write your own mock exam as a study tool and use your own written text. Remember since this exemplar is an excellence, the student has successfully managed to explain and not just describe, formulating a higher form of argument. Let’s get to the close reading now.
Digging a little deeper: Close reading of Regeneration
One of the ideas used is language features throughout Regeneration. These help to serve the meaning of the book and help steer the author into addressing the story's main themes. Some important examples of language features in the 2020 exemplar are first-person narrative, direct speech and allusions. The book itself helps to illustrate the harsh realities for physicians in World War 1. They did this by literally showing and explaining the destruction through the eyes of the physicians in the first person. This is best addressed in the character of Dr Rivers, a psychiatrist who ends up changing his view on his occupation. The reader is always exposed to his thoughts as he tends to the shell shocked victims. This appears to be thought-provoking as his ideas surrounding war begin to shift and take a new shape. He wants to tend to and fix the soldier's injuries but also does not want them to be ready to go back into the line of fire for more wartime expeditions. This is thought-provoking because it puts his morals at odds with his profession, and he must choose what will win out. Will his duty triumph over his care for seeing these soldiers live, and live long?
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