(1) What on earth is CITCAT???

When talking CISCAT we are talking INTRODUCTIONS. CISCAT is essentially a checklist of everything you need to demonstrate when writing an introduction.

Introductions

In an introduction you are being assessed on the following 5 skills.

• Do you understand the issue and its context?

• Can you identify the text and its details?
• Can you demonstrate an understanding and analyse the authors contention?

• Do you understand and can you communicate the author’s intended audience
• Can you identify the author’s tone and how it might affect the intended audience?

So how does CISCAT relate?

CISCAT is a check list of these skills and provides a way to remember what you need to demonstrate in your INTRODUCTION.

Context and the Issue

S- Source

C-Contention

A-Audience

T-Tone and its effect on the intended reader

Lastly…

This is the key to high level responses and greater complexity…

• It is important that you are demonstrating an understanding of the article and the issue. Show me that you understand the issue and what the author’s opinion and writing tone is.      
• Remember you are not showing me that you can read or hold an opinion on the article or issue.
• You shouldn’t simply mention CISCAT you need to SHOW AN UNDERSTANDING of CISCAT as well. You are showing a mastery of your skill in identification and analysis.

Just a little note: CISCAT should only be discussed once in a LA essay, in the introduction: remember you are introducing your understanding of the article and you only introduce once! If you are presented with supplementary material's (comments, images, graphs, letters) These should be introduced as well. But certainly not to the same extent. I would look at introducing the name, author and publication. (But again this is NOT a hard and fast rule.

A second note: If you are looking at how to put CISCAT into an introductory paragraph go here