HELLO! Ok, so I am a mediocre english student in year 11 currently, with a teacher who barely teaches us, and now we have a SAC in less than a week for twelve angry men, and I am just so lost rn. I wish my school offered english language 🙁

DESPERATELY NEED SOME REALL FEEDBACK>
This was a start of a practice paragraph/essay i did>

As a response to the McCarthy trials of the 1950s in the USA, Reginald Rose illustrated in his legal drama Twelve Angry Men the shortcomings of the countries’ legal system to reveal the threat to the integrity of justice for the general society. However, through setting the entire play in a jury room of a courthouse, and following the deliberations of the twelve jurors deciding on a verdict for young boy on trial for murder, Rose conveys the strengths of the people involved in the system that are able to overcome the injustice. He therefore demonstrates through his drama that the strengths of the legal system in the USA during this time outweighed, and were able to overcome, the threats to the process. The flaws in the trial process are the main points for the jurors deliberations and despite many being ignorant to the legal system from the beginning, the cross-section of society that is provided in the jury room allows for the discussion to draw on many different perspectives to come to a conclusive verdict.
Rose demonstrates that a major flaw in the legal system is the unfair trial, that the jurors are left to overcome. The drama begins with the Judge concluding the trial, and calling the twelve jurors to “their duty to try and separate the facts from the fancy”. However, with a heavy bias for the verdict of guilty with “eleven to one” among the jurors, it is clear that the trial was not fair for the prosecuted, and rather was weighted towards proving him guilty. Evidently, the prejudice towards the boy because of “what he is” is seen to heavily weigh the way the facts were proposed, and how the jurors see him. Rose utilized the fact that the “boy’s been kicked around all his life” to bring to the surface the biased ideas of the McCarthy trials, and how that is used by some of the jurors as evidence to his guilt, while others, such as Juror 8, use for empathy towards the boy’s situation. Moreover, the witness testimony from the woman across the street, with her claims that she “actually saw the killing”, is quickly seen to be truth. Although, after discussions, Rose unravels the flaws in her story to depict the fallibility and subjectivity in ones memory that can cause one to state truth in their own mind, but in fact be false evidence. This brings forth doubt that would normally be overlooked by the jurors. Through the flaws illustrated in the evidence and trial for the boy, Rose is able to depict the unjust trial process as a weakness in the legal system in the USA.

    Ruby11

    Hi Ruby 11!

    I think there's some very promising things in your practice piece here. Here are my thoughts:

    • What's the prompt?
    • In the intro, don't use 'therefore' (or other similar words). It's an intro so you shouldn't be summing up anything here.
    • Because there's no prompt provided, I can't give you very precise feedback, BUT your intro does feel a little like you're going around in circles. For your SAC, make sure you keep that essay prompt in mind at all times and make sure you're diving into specific parts of it in each paragraph
    • Your topic sentence is not accurate - that the trial is 'unfair' is not a flaw, it is a consequence of the system being flawed. But what is the flaw? Is it that evidence was not cross-examined properly? That the wrong questions were being asked? The defence was not doing their job?
    • You have lots of quotes, which is great! However, you don't engage with the quotes - remember whenever you offer a piece of evidence, you need to explain how it proves your topic sentence/idea is correct. Eg, when you write 'However, with a heavy bias for the verdict of guilty with “eleven to one” among the jurors, it is clear that the trial was not fair for the prosecuted, and rather was weighted towards proving him guilty' - but how is this clear? Perhaps the prosecution has just done a great job? Why is this bias? (for the record I agree with you but your BP hasn't made this a convincing link)

    We have a whole series on the TEEL structure if you're interested - it's on our Youtube channel 🙂

    Good luck!

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