How to Write the 2025 CAPE Communication Studies Module 2 Essay

Ajouté : 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Not purple actually beating the love man allegations and ending up in the newspaper for it. The module two extract for the Cape communication studies 2025 paper could not be more un-serious because somebody from CXC sat down, went through all the extracts from Miguel Street and said out of all of them, we need this one. In this video, I'll show you how to link register and dialect to facts versus opinion so that you can write a very strong essay. I'm Camille Smith. I've spent the last five years helping students marshal the CXC exams and I'm so glad you're here to join the community because A, in the Caribbean, if you need academic support, you're a link genius. All right, guys. Welcome back.

[00:00:41]So, module two.

[00:00:45]The module two question wants you to write an essay again in no more [clears throat] than 500 words. So, usually module one and module two is 500 words, that's your cap, right? Your word limit. And in this one, they want you to discuss one possible reason, so the reason for one dialectal variety found in the extract.

[00:01:05]And they want you to identify two grammatical features of the dialectal variety used by a specific character, so by Hat.

[00:01:16]Giving an example of each, of course.

[00:01:20]And explain two language registers evident in the extract.

[00:01:26]No, don't don't don't. This one This extract was taken from Miguel Street by um V.S. Naipaul, all right? It's not the first time CXC has actually taken um the extract from Miguel Street. They have taken the extract from Miguel Street in 2018 as well, but the >> [laughter] >> the extract is very different. The extract is very different, but anyways, here um this extract, they were talking a lot.

[00:02:00]It's basically a group of men chatting this one man business.

[00:02:04]So, the main character or the main person So, the person who is who the people who the men are talking about is called Papo. And essentially, Papo did go on place named Amira beat beat beat assaulted assaulted assaulted said um his wife's lover. So, wife was cheating and then Papo never liked that and um yeah.

[00:02:34]He assaulted the man.

[00:02:38]I don't condone violence. I don't condone it at all. But anyways, moving on.

[00:02:45]So, essentially, throughout the extract, you're seeing where the men are using Creole to discuss this. And actually, I found it quite interesting that the one No, one of the main points in the extract where um it's not seeming to be narration where standard English is used is the newspaper headline for when Yeah, the newspaper headline that says um What did it say?

[00:03:14]Man [clears throat] assaults wife's lover in Amira or husband assaults wife wife's lover in Arima, not Amira.

[00:03:25]Arima. I really should not be doing these things from memory.

[00:03:29]Anyways, so basically, what I'm going to go through in this is talk a little bit about how you can basically form an essay [clears throat] based on what basically the message or the main message for this is, all right, this extract. So, essentially, you're seeing in the dialogue where the men are discussing that they are using Creole English, right? So, a lot of you have asked me if you have to state which country. No, if you don't know, you don't have to. You can just say Creole English or Caribbean Creole English, right? But V.S. Naipaul I need to go sleep. V.S. Naipaul is Trinidadian and he uses Trinidadian Creole to basically write this.

[00:04:19]So, if you're feeling nice, if you're feeling dandy or fancy, you and you want to be a little bit extra, you can say Trinidadian Creole as one of the dialects or varieties used.

[00:04:32]There's also Caribbean Standard English, right? That is used. But you have other dialectal varieties that you can use like, for example, American English and sometimes from um profane English. I think those have shown up a bit as sometimes in on other papers, but I haven't seen it here.

[00:04:51]But anyways, yeah. No.

[00:04:55]As for the reason for using one of the dialectal varieties, um usually in these extracts, Caribbean Standard English is used for narration.

[00:05:07]However, in this one, in this particular extract, along with narration, whenever we for the newspaper headline, I I made argument that it's used to basically um separate fact from opinion. The reason why I'm saying this is because throughout the entire extract where the men were discussing popple, right? They were using Creole English, right? And by using Creole English, they're stating their opinions. They're stating what they think about the matter, right?

[00:05:40]While, you know, narrating it, telling what happened. But you can't you can't trust hearsay. You cannot trust hearsay.

[00:05:49]However, whenever when we had that one switch that wasn't a part of the narration um that was in standard English. It was the newspaper headline that says husband assaults wife's lover in Arima.

[00:06:04]Arima. [clears throat] And um in that case, that was a neutral fact.

[00:06:10]It was it happened, right? There was no no added There was no added um opinions or There was no added information to it.

[00:06:20]It just stated what happened. The man assault his wife's lover, right? And that was a neutral fact.

[00:06:29]And so I I think yeah, I really you could state that. So a reason for say um >> [clears throat] >> standard English was to separate fact from opinion.

[00:06:42]Yeah. But if you can't explain that really well, that would be good. But um other things you can say are um standard The Creole English can be used to establish identity within like the working class in this case because the men that were were here, they Did they state what they did? No, they kind of stated what their hobbies were.

[00:07:10]Oh, okay. Okay, working class because yeah.

[00:07:14]Popple was a part of this community and Popple had his own workshop. Yeah, it was stated in the in the extract. And so you can get an idea of who these men are a part of this community, right? And so that establishes identity and shows you gives the reader insight into what who they are, like what they do for work, where they might um fall on the socioeconomic um spectrum, stuff like that.

[00:07:45]So, to establish identity, that could be another reason for the dialectal variety. As I said, all these notes are in our on my website, links in the description box below.

[00:07:59]Um but I won't dwell on that too much. I won't dwell on that too much because that's not the meat of the issue.

[00:08:07]As for I believe that Hat was the man is the name of the man telling what happened to Popo, right? And so, they want you to most of the dialogue that you see is from Hat, and they want you to basically state what grammatical feature do you can identify in the Creole used by Hat.

[00:08:28]So, I'm taking like a screenshot here of a part of the paper so that I can show you how to develop your um your the dum your body paragraph. But, essentially here in the here in the extract, you see a lot of um the use of he his, him, right? So things she going back back with he he don't have to tell me where he gone.

[00:09:04]He gone looking for he wife, right? So, here we're seeing a lot of a pronoun variation because instead of and you see this a lot actually in Bajun Creole or Barbadian Creole and Trinidadian Creole.

[00:09:18]I don't think you see this this particular form um this particular grammatical feature a lot in um like Jamaican Creole, but you do see it a lot in Trinidadian Creole as well as a Barbadian Creole.

[00:09:35]And so, I would say for example uh he uses uh Mhm, I don't know. Let's say a myriad of pronoun variations in his speech, right?

[00:10:03]For example, when he says do do do I should probably put a space there.

[00:10:15]He gone looking for he wife.

[00:10:27]Instead of the What is standard English alternative?

[00:10:41]Mhm, do do do his wife. No, I don't need to put the whole thing again because being very conscious of your word limit, I beg. Be very conscious of it. Like, protect it.

[00:10:55]His wife, right?

[00:10:57]And you can go ahead to say um this is uh common in the grammar of Trinidadian Creole and it further helps to establish the character identity.

[00:11:28]Those makes it clear for the reader to what? To what? Makes it clear for the reader to know or to gain a concrete uh Yeah, let's do that. Note that. A concrete idea of the story's setting. So, something like that.

[00:11:57]Yeah.

[00:11:58]Something like that is what you want to go for when you're discussing like the grammatical feature. In terms of the language registers used, it's a mixture of the informal and formal register.

[00:12:10]Most often, that's what you'll find, right? A mixture of the informal and formal register. And actually, you see the informal register mostly in the dialogues because there there are lots of contractions in it.

[00:12:22]Um so, for example, you don't care or you're don't care.

[00:12:27]Um then you have the formal register where you have a standard English narration, but also the again, bringing back that newspaper headline. That newspaper headline was written in the formal register, and it was then again used to just state a neutral fact, which basically separated from the emotive um descriptive language and more opinionated um recounts of events when Hat was speaking using Creole, right?

[00:13:04]So, I think I don't think, I know.

[00:13:09]>> [laughter] >> I always say I think, but I know that that's what I centered my essay around, my sample essay. Basically, the separation of fact versus opinion in this particular extract and how language how the author used language to do that.

[00:13:26]So, if you can synthesize an idea and show show that you've interacted with the material and thought about it a little bit, that's how you get like very high mark.

[00:13:37]But anyways, in terms of structuring an essay, again, you want to go for an introduction.

[00:13:44]However, it's not really the same. I don't really use the same approach when it comes down to doing this for the module two. So, for the hook, it's the same approach.

[00:13:57]>> [laughter] >> I need to not laugh like that. It's like SpongeBob-esque. SpongeBob.

[00:14:02]Stop. So, for the hook, I do a statement that basically or nah, you know, for I introduce I introduce the extract. So, who wrote it to what? So, the extract So, the extract The module two extract was taken from Miguel Street by V.S. Naipaul. So, this extract by um this extract by Okay, this extract taken from Miguel Street by V.S. Naipaul explores or recounts the events and I then give a brief summary in like two sentences, no more than two sentences, of what exactly is happening in this extract, right? So, introduce the extract.

[00:14:48]Then go on to give a summary in no more than two sentences.

[00:14:57]Then, after you do that, you go for your thesis again. So, the thesis here tells you what the essay is going to talk about. So, in this case, you're going to talk about dialectal varieties, um language registers, and grammatical features of Creole.

[00:15:14]Again, how how you'd like to approach that is totally up to you. You can state what the dialectal variety is, or you can go ahead and um list what you'll discuss. I think in this essay I actually did the list list in the sample essay I did the list approach just to show you how you can tend to change it up a little bit the like I changed the essays up a little bit so you can see different approaches to basically writing the same essay. But I am yeah, went for the list approach so I said like this essay will explore one or this essay will one discuss one reason for using Creole to identify two grammatical features used by heart, three explain two registers evident in the extract. So that's how I did the thesis for this essay.

[00:16:06]Um then you want to go into the body paragraphs and it's the same rule >> [laughter] >> the same rule regardless of whichever module you're doing, one body paragraph, one focused idea. So in this body paragraph I will be talking about um the reason. So identify please for the love of God identify >> [laughter] >> identify the That was not an F.

[00:16:31]Identify the dialectal variety that you're going to focus on then state the reason provide evidence >> [music] >> and then explain how it supports the main message of the extract. You want to repeat that for all the questions until you get down to the conclusion.

[00:16:57]And for the conclusion you're going to do the same thing. So restate the thesis. In this case you might just want to state the answers that you actually put then state your key points and wrap up with an overall message.

[00:17:18]Yeah, yeah.

[00:17:20]Yeah, yeah. And I you got yeah, boy.

[00:17:23]I'm chronically online. Can you Can you tell?

[00:17:29]But, yeah. That's how you approach the module to essay.

[00:17:34]In the next video, we're getting granny online whether you like it or not. So, if you don't know what a message point is and how to link those to rhetorical appeals, the next video could be a very good watch for you. And as usual, all notes and sample responses are available on my website, linked in the description below. And if you found this useful, consider subscribing. And as usual, watch another one.