How to Write a VCE Argument Analysis

Section C is one of three sections in the VCE English exam, and each is worth 20 marks. The exam specifications (Word document), the official description of the exam from the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA), say you'll be asked “to analyse the use of argument(s) and language to persuade an intended audience to share the point of view expressed in an unseen persuasive text”. “Language” covers the written and spoken words, and “visuals” covers any images or graphics.

The same document is clear about what you don't need to do: “Students will not be required to evaluate the relative merits or successes of argument(s).” In plain terms, you aren't judging whether the argument is strong or whether it worked. You're marked on your understanding of the argument, your analysis of how words and images persuade, evidence from the piece and clear writing.

The contention is the writer's overall position: what they want readers to agree with by the end. The arguments are the reasons and steps they use to get there. Evidence, in your response, means short quotes and details from the piece.

After each exam, VCAA's assessors write a report on what they saw in students' responses. Their report on the 2025 exam (Word document), updated on 9 April 2026, is quoted throughout this guide.

For how Section C fits with the other two sections and the reading time, our guide to the VCE English exam covers the whole paper.

A good place to start is the background information above the piece, before the piece itself. The 2025 report called it “crucial information about the text's context and audience”. It gives you clues about the writer and publication, so you can infer who the piece addresses and what matters to them. In 2025, the writer was presented as a “local resident”, and the report noted that most students used this to work out how he built trust with his readers.

On your first read of the piece itself, you can look for the writer's contention and the order of the argument: where it starts, how it turns and where it lands. The report observed that “not all students were able to explain how the sequencing of the ideas or the connection between them reflected the text's purpose”. Order matters because writers often arrange their steps on purpose, such as winning goodwill before raising a worry.

On the second read, you can mark the moments that do the most persuading, including any image. You don't need all of them. The report says students “were not expected to laboriously identify and discuss every element” and were instead “expected to select what was most pertinent to the process of persuasion”.

VCAA doesn't set a format. The 2025 report says “There was no preferred structure or content”, and that students “were free to adopt their own strategy”. Many students write an introduction followed by body paragraphs that take the argument's stages in order. One of the high-level responses in the report took a different route, organising its paragraphs around the different groups of readers the writer was targeting.

The introductions the report shows from high-level responses set out the context, the audience, the writer's purpose and the contention in a few sentences. They don't stop at naming the type of text or its tone. One introduction that noted the writer's “inclusive and explanatory tone” without analysing it drew the comment that “it was unclear why this information was included”.

Your paragraph lengths can follow the argument's stages. The report describes a response built on a fixed three-body-paragraph plan, where one paragraph had to cover half the article and the result was “long and cumbersome paragraphs”. A piece with four clear stages can have four paragraphs. Within each one, you can discuss the argument, the language and any image together. The report says high-level responses “integrate these into a cohesive analysis” rather than “systematically ‘checking off’ a list of elements”, which it saw often in mid-range work.

Section A's essay on a set text is planned differently, and our guide to writing a text response walks through it.

The report puts the main point plainly: “identification is not an assessment criterion.” Naming a technique, a tone or an image isn't what's being assessed. What the assessors look for is an explanation of how that part of the piece works on its intended readers to move them towards the contention.

The report's examples show the gap. A sentence like “This makes the reader feel shocked” claims an effect without showing how it happens. The report also found that lower-middle responses “often stressed very familiar linguistic devices”, such as inclusive language and rhetorical questions, and gave “generic analysis rather than exploring how the specific example contributed towards persuasion”. Long technique names don't replace an explanation of how the words persuade.

A practice routine can be as simple as one Section C piece under time from the 2024 or 2025 exam on VCAA's English exams page, then the Section C part of that year's report to compare what you wrote with what the assessors described.

Your English teacher is the person who can mark that practice and tell you what to work on next. You can ask whether they'll look at a timed paragraph or a practice response outside a set task. Bringing one specific question, such as whether your paragraphs explain the order of the argument, makes their comments easier to act on.

One-to-one help with Section C

If your teacher's notes keep saying you describe rather than analyse, or you run out of time before your last paragraph, that can be a good time to work on it one-to-one, alongside your teacher. A VCE English tutor at TMJ Tutoring can work on argument analysis with you, building on your teacher's feedback and following your school program, in person across metropolitan Melbourne or online.

The topic can change from one practice piece to the next. What carries over from one to the next is the way you read it: working out who the writer is talking to, then following how they lead those readers to their view. That habit is what you bring into the exam, whatever the topic turns out to be.

Is the school SAC the same as the exam task?

Not exactly. A SAC (school-assessed coursework) is a task your school sets and marks during the year. In Unit 4, the study design, VCAA's official outline of the course, asks you to “analyse the use of argument and language in persuasive texts, including one written text (print or digital) and one text in another mode (audio and / or audio visual)”, and to “develop and present a point of view text”. Your school decides how that is set and assessed, so your teacher can tell you the format of yours.

Do I have to write about the images?

Yes, when the piece includes one, because the criteria name visuals alongside written language. In 2025 the image of a frightened dog caught most students' attention, and the report noted that most could say what idea the image presented. Beyond that, the report looked at whether students could explain “the contribution that the images made to the development of the argument”.

Will these rules still apply in 2027?

Yes. The specifications quoted here belong to the current English study design, which runs for Units 3 and 4 until the end of 2027. The 2027 exam is set to the same task unless VCAA announces a change.

We checked these official sources on 6 November 2026.