Personal Recount: Using FATS to Develop Dilemmas

Hi everyone, I’m Ms Atifa, an English teacher at Lil’ but Mighty. Have you ever had a tough time in a situation where making a choice seemed impossible? I’m sure that you have, and you might also know that such a situation is called a dilemma.

A dilemma refers to a situation where a difficult choice has to be made, and often, both of the choices carry some form of undesirability. For instance, imagine you and your best friend won tickets to a concert by your favourite artist. When you asked your parents if you could go, they firmly told you that you couldn’t. However, your best friend told you that you could lie to your parents in order to attend the concert without their knowledge. Your mind was fraught with the question: Do you listen to your best friend and tell a lie to your parents, or do you listen to your parents and miss an opportunity of a lifetime?

When writing a Personal Recount essay, you can use this particular literary device to add depth to the incident that you are retelling. In case you have forgotten, let’s briefly recap what a Personal Recount entails. This particular type of essay requires you to recount an incident that you have experienced which is related to the topic. When writing a Personal Recount, you can use the following structure to organise your ideas:

1. Introduction – start with an interesting hook to entice your reader
2. Background Information – this is where you provide important information that willhelp your reader understand the recounted experience
3. Recount
   • Rising Action – this retells the events the lead to the climax
   • Climax – this represents the most exciting part
   • Falling Action – this part recounts the events that resulted from the climax
4. Reflections – this last paragraph usually shows what you took away from the recounted experience

The Climax of the Recount would be the most important part of your entire essay. This would be where the writer encounters a problem and displays some form of struggle that needs to be overcome in the Falling Action. Hence, the Climax is a great place for you to introduce a dilemma.

When writing a dilemma, you can use the F.A.T.S. technique, which stands for:

• Facial Expressions
• Actions
• Thoughts
• Speech

Let’s see how we can apply F.A.T.S. to develop a dilemma according to the following essay question:

Write about a time when you did something just to impress someone which you later regretted. (O Level 2020 Paper 1 Section C)

First, think of a dilemma you would have that is relevant to the topic. To do so, use the 5W1H questions to help you, for example: Who did I want to impress? What did I do to impress him/her? Where did this incident take place? The resulting dilemma could be something like this:

The most popular student in school dares me to steal a book. Do I listen to him or do I refuse?

Then, plan how you can develop the dilemma using F.A.T.S. Take a look at the table below. In the left column are questions for you to consider to help you think of some ideas for each part. On the right are some examples of phrases you can use when describing the above- mentioned dilemma: