Notes when making social commentary

From 2017, the social argumentative sentence in the high school graduation exam in Literature no longer requires the discussion of an opinion or a statement, instead it is an argument about an integrated content and aspect. from reading comprehension.

Accordingly, the 2017 high school graduation exam: “Presentation of thoughts on the meaning of empathy in life”. Topic in 2018: “Thinking about the mission of awakening the national potential of each individual in today’s life”.

In 2019, the topic of discussion “About human will power in life”; 2020: “The Necessity to Appreciate Life Every Day” (1st episode); “My thoughts on the need to have faith in life” (episode 2). In 2021, the social essay question “Thinking about the need for dedication” (phase 1); “Thinking about the necessity of cooperation in life” (episode 2).

According to the 2022 Literature reference exam, the social essay (2 points) requires expressing thoughts on the need to respect the traditional cultural values ​​of the nation.

In order to do well this social argument, students should pay attention to the suggestions for marking answers of the Ministry of Education and Training as follows.

First, ensure the requirements for paragraph form. Students can present passages in a deductive, inductive, sum – division – union, chained or parallel way. However, teachers often guide how to write sum-to-concentration paragraphs to make the text more coherent and complete.

Second, students need to correctly identify the problem to be discussed. In the reference exam, the problem is “the need to respect the traditional cultural values ​​of the nation”. If you misidentify the problem to be discussed, you will write off the topic, your essay may be scored 0 points.

Third, when developing the problem to be discussed, students can choose appropriate reasoning operations to deploy but must clarify the need to respect the traditional cultural values ​​of the nation. Possible direction:

– General introduction: The need to respect national cultural values. Students only need to write a brief opening sentence introducing the problem to be discussed.

– Explain: What is national culture.

– Discussion: Why should we respect national cultural values? What needs to be done to protect those values? Students integrate some content from the reading comprehension section and add a typical example to highlight the issue to be discussed; minimize the use of evidence in literary works (the writer’s fiction). They can expand to discuss issues deeply, absolutely avoid narrating, rambling, rambling, roundabout ways.

For high school students, the requirement to write a 200-word social argumentative paragraph is a high level of application, posing many challenges, while the time to take the test is limited. So, before writing a complete paragraph, you need to make an outline with bullet points to help minimize errors.

– Draw a brief perception and action lesson.

Fourth, students ensure Vietnamese spelling and grammar. If you make a lot of spelling and expression mistakes, points will be deducted depending on each mistake.

Fifth, creative writing will be awarded 0.25 points, which means thinking deeply about the problem to be discussed, having a new expression.

Regarding the social essay, students can refer to the passage about overcoming fear below to gain more writing experience.

Sharing also reduces fear and boredom in our lives because it promotes social interactions and increases a sense of purpose, a sense of security for each person.

A recent study found that people who watch a lot of news on television often fear excessively about the danger to their peaceful and happy lives. The reason is because most TV programs focus on adding news, scary images, insecurity, giving rise to panic and fear in the audience.

And more ominously, modern life is appearing more and more “cocoons of people” seeking to live in isolation. In other words, these people just want to lock themselves in the ivory tower of relationships with relatives, but lose relationships with neighbors. It is this selfish lifestyle that makes them more vulnerable to bad guys and more vulnerable to dangerous things.

The best way to overcome your fears is to face them. From there begins the process of making a difference. The source of all danger comes from the consequences of social evils, but often we do not dare to look at the problem directly. The nature of things happening is not as important as how we take them in. We need to have the right attitude to reduce the causes of all the instability in our lives.

(Excerpt) Giving is forever, Azim Jamal & Harvey McKinno)

In terms of form, students write a paragraph about 2/3 of the exam paper (about 20 lines) and no line breaks. In addition, students need to know how to allocate time reasonably when doing the test, for social discussion about 25-30 minutes.

Phan The Hoai
Teacher of Literature, Binh Hung Hoa High School, Ho Chi Minh City