Various

Again, a short blog because it was a short class – the first part was taken up with the Personal Study. Congratulations on your mainly very good prelim marks, by the way – though it’s possible that your actual exam marks won’t be quite so starry (though they might – as I explained, paper 2 is a bit of an unknown quantity to us at the moment).

We then read Dylan Thomas’s “Do not go gentle into that good night”, a villanelle (Google it if you’re not sure what this is) which is open to considerable interpretation. The basic message is that we shouldn’t die without protest because there will always be regrets: wise men will regret that they didn’t light up the world with their insights; good men that they didn’t change the world; wild men that they hurt people; serious men that they didn’t have more fun. There are lots of metaphors suggesting these things, for which you may like to find other meanings, and this is fine as long as you can justify them. The word choice is very powerful: particularly words expressing anger and other emotions.

This could be used for questions on a poem which unfolds its meaning only after study (and even then isn't crystal clear) ; a poem about death; a poem with a specific poetic form (you wouldn’t have to explain what a villanelle is, but you’d write about the effect: the almost hypnotic repetition, the musical, chorus-like impression, the emphasis of the limited number of rhymes…), a poem with contrasts, a poem addressed to a person (his father)….

We then went over the 2007 Close Reading, passage 2, about the digitisation of the Bodleian

and the boy sitting in the courtyard of Cambridge University Library. This is homework – and if you didn’t do the first passage then I’d be happy to get both together next week. Or not.

Busy busy busy

Sorry for the late appearance of the blog this week. It’s been a bit frantic (though frankly all you non-commenty people don’t make it feel very worth my while to write it anyway).

Last week was the essay reassessment (you all passed, by the way; well done) so the class proper didn’t start till 7.30 pm.

We revised the three standard Analysis questions and how to do them the SQA way: context, linking and imagery.

Then we discussed Larkin’s Poetry of Departures - a rather nasty poem but a potentially useful one for such questions as one on contrast (language, ideas, etc), one where some knowledge of the poet’s life is useful, one that gives an impression of a personality, one using rhyme in an unusual way…

Homework – yes, I realise it’s a bit late if you haven’t done it yet – 2006 question 2 on “A View from the Bridge”. I gave out an outline showing the sorts of things I’d say if I were writing this essay.

Do ask me for any handouts that you didn’t get and would like.

Prelim in two and three weeks!

The first blog entry

It’s impossible to make a brief blog entry which covers the past 10 weeks, but if I had to sum up in four words the advice I’ve been trying to give you about passing Higher English, these would be the words: you need to ANALYSE.

Paste this up on the ceiling above your bed, write it in plastic letters on the fridge and if necessary tattoo it on the back of your writing hand. (You may do this metaphorically if you prefer.)

Waffling is out. It’s a myth that this is what English teachers want their students to do. Analysing is in, giving evidence from the text to justify what you say.

This goes both for the language and for the literature parts of the exam (and for the assessments, apart from the expressive essay). You’ve got to show HOW the writers do what they’re doing: HOW they show character, make their writing emotive, structure their novel/play/poem and so on.

This week we looked at argumentative essays and particularly at their structure. Fairly obviously, you should move logically from one stage in your argument to the next, sometimes using linking words and phrases such as “similarly… furthermore…. however….” to show the connection between one paragraph and the next. Your homework is to write an argumentative essay, which by SQA definition shows both sides of an argument in a fairly balanced way.

At the beginning of chapter 9 of "A Patchwork Planet" there's an abrupt turning point in Barnaby's fortunes when Sophia's aunt accuses him of theft.He's terrified when a policeman comes to interview him - he presumably thinks that his past record may count against him.We noticed his childish reactions to this unfair accusation. (What are they?)

However, Martine persuades him to come out to work and tells him her plan that he should sell the Corvette and buy Everett's truck with her.

And then, apparently to Barnaby's surprise, they start kissing and end up in bed together.

Afterwards, Barnaby remembers an occasion when he was married to Natalie and she was angry at him for being late home when - for once - it wasn't his fault. His attitude then was, "If you think I'm such a villain, just watch: I'll act worse than you ever dreamed of." (What is the relevance to his current situation?)

The chapter ends wonderfully well, with Mrs Dibble telling him that all his clients support him and that she wants him to buy the business from her when she retires. He then contacts Sophia to apologise for... not returning her calls. At the end of the chapter, rather like at the end of the previous one, he feels that "I really might have moved on in my life". So this turning point in the structure seems to have been reversed and he's on course again.

In a big rush as usual at the end, we looked at the rest of the first “Paranoid Parenting” Close Reading and will tackle the remaining questions next week in class.

Do look at this website, which has an interview with Anne Tyler about "A Patchwork Planet": http://www.bookbrowse.com/author_interviews/full/index.cfm?author_number=313

(Sorry that some of these paragraphs have no space between them. I can't persuade these spaces to occur. Please imagine them.)