Intermediate 2
During this course you will be asked to complete a piece of Reflective Writing and your teacher will give you detailed instructions on how to go about this.
On the following pages you will find some exemplars of this type of writing. There are two essays which achieved a pass mark and two which have failed. Accompanying each essay are comments on the writer’s performance. Please read the essays and the detailed notes which go along with them.
Level: Intermediate 2
Type: Reflective Essay
Title: “Rage Against the Machine?”
I was sitting in my attic, supposed to be cleaning, when there was a knock on the door. Glad of the distraction, I climbed down the ladder and answered it to see a small, fair haired boy with thick dark, bushy eyebrows. This was Gary, who was bouncing on the spot and seemed really hyper for 1 o’clock in the afternoon. He was a good friend of mine but if I didn’t know him I would probably have been freaked out by his presence on my doorstep.
“Awright, man. How you doin’? What you up to?” he asked and before I could answer any of his questions he walked into my house up the stairs.
“In you come,” I said, purely out of habit.
“Here, I brought this CD. It’s pure fine. Wait and hear this. Where’s your CD player? Aww, man, this CD’s pure fine.” This was how Gary spoke when he was excited about something, never pausing for a breath. When Gary was hyper it was usually down to too much sugar, or too much Junior Calpol (He said the stuff tasted “pure fine”), and when he was like this I tended just to let him talk. I didn’t even need to be there.
He put the CD on and pressed play. The first song had a really fast bass intro and I thought it was really cool. I remember being really impressed by it.
“Who’s this?” I asked him.
“Rage Against The Machine,” he replied.
I picked up my bass guitar and started trying to play along. However, I was useless and couldn’t play along at all. Gary asked for a shot and was able to play the song perfectly. I remember feeling really jealous and inferior, even though Gary had been playing for a few years more than me. I asked him
to show me how to do it, but even though he tried to show me, I still couldn’t do it. This was what made me feel really bad and I didn’t want to even look at my bass any more.
When Gary left, he took his CD with him, no matter how much I asked him for a shot. That week I went around humming the tunes from the album to myself, and eventually I started to really annoy myself and everyone around me. I went into town that weekend and bought my own copy. As soon as I got home I put it in my CD player and it stayed there for about a month. I started to go on the internet and get the music for it so that I could play it on my guitar. After about a fortnight I was able to play most of the ten songs on the album and was growing in confidence on my guitar. I became a
lot better over a short period of about two months.
However it wasn’t just the music that impressed me, but listening to the vocalist’s lyrics (it was a mixture of rapping and singing). I noticed that they were highly political. They seemed very anticapitalist and against the Republican Party in the America. In their video for “Sleep now in the Fire”
they play a gig in the doorway of a Wall Street building and allow no one to get in for over two hours.
Michael Moore, an anti-Right Wing author, also appears in the video to support the band. This encouraged me to read his books, because my mum had copies and I hadn’t bothered to read them before. My mum bought me a Rage Against The Machine T-shirt with a design of Che Guevara’s face on it and I borrowed a couple of books about him from the Central Library.
“Rage” quickly became one of my favourite bands and I eventually bought their entire back catalogue and learned how to play most of their songs. At the time I thought that they were making me more politically aware and that I was starting to become more mature. I was reading more books than I
ever had before – usually I hadn’t bothered to read at all. However, one day I started to think that maybe they weren’t the musical gods that I once thought them to be. I realised that most of their songs were pretty formulaic and that a lot of them sounded pretty samey. I noticed that the guitar riffs were pretty simplistic as I became better on my guitar. I soon became bored with their music and stopped listening to it. It probably came about as a result of a short attention span combined with me playing them non-stop for about six months.
Maybe I was starting to grow up and mature, and their messages of rebellion no longer applied. I became bored with rebelling in about third year, when causing trouble in school suddenly stopped being so much fun. As I became older, and started noticing the first years coming into the school every year, thinking they were so cool because they got a “punny”, I realised that this was what I must have been like and I was embarrassed by myself. Causing trouble was never really “cool” and I soon stopped bothering with it.
“Rage” was just a phase for me, and it only lasted as long as I could be bothered with them. I still listen to their music now and again, but nowhere near as much as I used to. I think that I grew out of them as I grew up, so that must mean that I’ve matured throughout the past few years, which is a
terrifying thought!
Commentary
This piece of reflection has weaknesses, but the candidate succeeds in describing his brief infatuation with the band and some of their ideas. It conveys a fair bit of the writer’s personality and is in places thoughtful. It engages the reader’s interest and is accurately written.
Content
The details of the writer’s introduction to the band’s music, his obsessive interest in it and in the books of Michael Moore, and his subsequent rejection of both are given clearly and effectively.
There is, perhaps, too much attention initially to Gary who is the agent of discovery but not important to the reflection, and there is certainly a shortage of detail about the writer’s alleged rebelliousness (“I got bored with rebelling in about third year”). Nevertheless, there is some depth and complexity of thought underpinning the whole piece.
Structure
The content is appropriately sequenced and reaches a satisfactory conclusion.
Expression
The reflective nature of the piece is well sustained (“Glad of the distraction,”, “I remember being really impressed by it”, “However it wasn’t just the music that impressed me”, “I noticed that the guitar riffs were pretty simplistic”), and the descriptions of Gary are rather engaging. Vocabulary is generally sound, with some impressive choices (“distraction”, “anti-capitalist”, “formulaic”, “phase”). Sentence structures are mostly well handled (e.g the penultimate paragraph).
Technical accuracy
There are no problems at all with technical accuracy.
Award: Intermediate 2: Pass
Level: Intermediate 2
Type: Reflective Essay
Title: “Cowal Games”
It was a warm August morning. I had laid out my kilt and the rest of my uniform the night before. I was going to Cowal Games – to play my bagpipes. I had never been very good at getting up in the morning … except for that August day. I ran down the stairs almost tripping up on my dressing gown.
My first really important performing event! I was mentally listing all the ceilidhs and parades I had ever done, thinking how important these events had seemed to me – even the time I piped in the New Year.
I dressed, rather hurriedly, in my kilt, sporran, belt, shirt, tie, socks, flashes, shoes and finally my thick tweed jacket. I scraped my hair back, and left the house, pipes in one hand, hat in the other.
As I drew close to the rendezvous point, I noticed everyone waiting eagerly, their sky blue kilts waving in the wind. The minibus was waiting. Turned out I was late! We all scrambled on and squeezed our equipment into the back, even Billy’s Big Bass Drum.
Before we knew it, we were off. We were travelling with another pipe band who kindly paid for the ferry ride there and back. The journey went fairly smoothly except for a few minor hiccups (Billy stalling the bus). Apart from that we had to wait in a long queue before boarding the ferry. I passed the time texting furiously on my mobile. The bus finally made it to the front of the queue, but as we were leaving the pier and moving onto the ramp, the bus stalled. We all looked round at each other.
Billy restarted the engine and everyone sighed with relief as we entered the car deck of the ferry. The ferry was dazzling white and the sea choppy, so I clambered up to the top deck to see Dunoon on the horizon. The salt air whipped my face but I still watched us travel towards the horizon. My kilt was almost whipped up in the wind, but I managed to catch it in time!
We arrived at the pier at the same time as the Waverley. We stopped with a jerk. Hundreds of people, young and old, piled out onto the pier. We sped out – without stalling. Soon we stopped on a grassy verge to unload all of our equipment.
We all strolled to the largest piece of trampled grass we could find. I hid myself under my tweed jacket and hat, hoping no one would recognise me. The drummers showed off their skills and I tapped my foot to the beat. Just being there with the band as a piper was an achievement for me. The
Pipe Major made sure everything was perfect before we formed into a circle and went straight into a reel.
Quite quickly a huge crowd gathered round us. I tried to make no eye contact and stared straight into the sky so the sun was beating down on my forehead.
That was just the begining of it. Before I could take a rest, we were parading up a long road that ran through the heart of Dunoon. We played “Scotland the Brave”, which is an all-time favourite of mine. My lungs filled and deflated like bellows. I tried to ignore the audience of people around me
but – instead I crinkled my eyes to keep the sun out. People “awed” at the band’s youngest pipers,
Peter and Alan, only 8 years old.
Later on that evening after enjoying the Highland Games and talking to lots of new people, one of the pipers invited the band to a ceilidh which didn’t finish till midnight. So I danced the night away to Strip the Willow and the Dashing White Sergeant. At exactly midnight I watched the serene sky
become a huge drama of fireworks. This display ended with an enormous explosion and flash of purple with what looked like glitter or a falling star come towards me and the earth.
Finally, exhausted, and after spending about 20 minutes looking for two pipers who were found boozing at the hotel bar, we made the last ferry and the two rather drunk pipers scrambled to the front to play the Skye Boat Song with another 25 pipers and drummers.
The long drive home was made shorter by the 2 pipers playing reels and jigs non-stop all the way home. As I waved goodbye to everyone I realised how tired and exhausted I was. Back home, I launched into my bed after dumping all my gear on the floor.
Looking back now I realise how I have changed so much from one experience, which has made me so determined to go and play at even bigger events, like the Tattoo and the World Championships. It has also given me confidence to perform in front of hundreds of people.
Commentary
This enthusiastic account of the candidate’s performance at the Games captures some of her excitement and sense of achievement. Something of her personality emerges, although the key area – her (lack of) self-confidence – is not fully developed.
Content
There is some well observed detail, and the piece does more than merely list events. There is an attempt to recall feelings and reactions, and there are several references to the candidate’s apparent shyness, the overcoming of which seems to be an important part of this recollection. There appear,
however, to be contradictions here: she doesn’t want to be recognised and tries not to make eyecontact, yet mixes well at the Games (“talking to lots of new people”) and “danced the night away” at the ceilidh. At the end she asserts, without any substantiation, that the experience “has also given me
confidence to perform in front of hundreds of people”.
Structure
The structure is simple, but appropriate for the type of writing involved.
Expression
The reflective tone of the piece is reasonably maintained: the excitement and apprehension at the start, the building anticipation and nervousness, the joy in the dancing and the firework display, the concluding sense of achievement. There are conscious attempts to use language effectively, such as the opening, the description of the fireworks and the journey.
Technical accuracy
The piece is written with consistent accuracy.
Award: Intermediate 2: Pass
Level: Intermediate 2
Type: Reflective Essay
Title: “Accident”
It was a regular night, go out with friends, hang about. But tonight would end in a way I could never have imagined. Myself and a few friends were returning from the shopping centre on the bus. Our stop came and we clambered of the packed bus. I stood on the roadside waiting to cross. I was never really that safety cautious, but always remembered my mums persitant moaning, “look left, then look right, then left again” she would drum into me. Unfortunatly this time I thought i’d push my luck. As the oncoming traffic drew closer I thought to myself, rather naively “I’ll make it” How wrong I was