Nearly there...

The class just began at 7.15 and we looked at critical essays: the markers’ instructions from 2008 and some actual students’ essays. I gave out 10 essays and we looked at 2, finding ourselves surprised but (I hope) encouraged by the leniency of the marking. We’ll look at the rest next week; we'll also go over the marking of those close reading answers that was the homework for this week.

If you weren’t there yesterday – not many were – and would like these exemplar essays, do email me and I’ll send them as an attachment. I’d really like you to read them and think about them before the class rather than spending time reading them during the class.

I also, cruelly, made the class write a critical essay in 45 minutes. If you weren’t there, please do this for next week, again in a strict 45 minutes. If you were in class, you might like to do the other one at home; or any essay or close reading.

Here are the titles:

Choose a play in which a character is at odds with one or more than one of the people around him or her.

Show how the dramatist makes you aware of the character’s situation and discuss to what extent this led to a greater understanding of the concerns of the play.

and

Choose a poem which presents a character to whom you react with sympathy, dislike or laughter.

Show how the poet arouses this response from you and discuss how important it is to the overall impact of the poem.

Do come along next week if you can.

The final week, the 12th, I imagine you might prefer to stay at home and revise, but I will be there as usual at 5.45 and available for any tuition on request, so do feel free to come that evening too if you want. If no one turns up by 6.15, then I’ll go, but I’m happy to stay if anyone wants to discuss anything to do with English.

Vitamins and revision

Nothing interesting is going to happen from now on, I’m afraid, people!

This week we went over in some detail the answers to the 2008 Close Reading and I gave you out the workshop materials for the 2005 one, together with students’ answers (unmarked). We looked at the question on both passages and considered if any of them strayed from the “2 marks for turning up and writing something” rule. Please take on the mantle of a marker and grade the various attempts at the other questions for next week!

Also consider doing some critical (literature) essays – and do them within 45 minutes!

We also considered the language on the label of Allyson’s Vitamin Water bottle. Remember to practise your analytical skills as you live your life between now and May 15. Read adverts, labels, leaflets, newspaper articles – anything – and look at the sentence structure, word choice and so on.

Next week we shall be loking at some actual students' essays and the marks awarded to them by the SQA, and then doing a timed essays on literature. So come prepared! No more spoon-feeding…

However, the class doesn’t start till 7.15 because some people have to do reassessments. Do some revision….

Happy Easter

Sorry that this is rather a late post.

In our most recent class, we mainly looked at two pieces of writing: one on garden birds and one on Wikipedia. The first was humorous and the second more serious; but both used sentence structure, word choice, imagery etc. Do pause in your reading over the next weeks and ask yourself the sorts of questions that the SQA does – just to give yourself confidence that you do, indeed, know how the question setters will have been thinking.

Homework is the 2008 Close Reading, passage 2. But as well as that, you must revise – look at the Language Skills book if you’re at all uncertain about Close Reading, but also re-read the novel and the play and learn – well, I’d suggest four poems, ideally, off by heart and memorise what there is to say about them. Do also read my notes on the novel and the play and look up the internet – you’ll find lots of other things there, for inspiration and reassurance. Learn quotes: 10 per novel, 10 per play and lots and lots for the poems (which is why it’s easier to learn them off by heart, in my opinion).

Write some literature essays - you choose questions from the past papers and try to write answers in forty-five minutes. It's no good doing a wonderful essay in two hours... I'll happily mark anything you do.

See you on the 21st. Have a good Easter.

Digging

Today we read the last poem that we’re going to: “Digging” by Seamus Heaney. This contrasts the lives of the poet’s father and grandfather with his own: they were men who earned their living by hard physical work with a spade, while he is an academic and poet who makes money by writing. We noticed the structure of the poem. It begins and ends similarly, and in between there’s the verse about his father digging up potatoes and his grandfather digging peat (turf, as he calls it).

It’s in free verse - apart from the little bit of rhyme at the beginning. If you mention this, you need to think of why Heaney might have done it. Maybe it’s to give the effect of growing enthusiasm: he starts more conventionally and then gets carried away?

You might want to write about the very vivid use of various senses: smell, sound, touch.

The main image is that of the pen as a gun – something powerful or even dangerous (in the wrong hands?). We remember the proverb “The pen is mightier than the sword” – in other words writing is powerful and can change things. The last line - “I’ll dig with it” - has connotations of digging things up, having a dig… making the world a different place by writing about it.

This could be used for a question about the world of work, nostalgia, a surprising ending, family…

We then watched the second half of the “View from a Bridge” film, which despite its crackles, unconvincing accents and old-fashioned hairstyles I thought was quite evocative. I liked the very close-up camera shots as the film went on; they gave a real feeling of the claustrophobia of being crammed together in a small flat with all that tension. I also liked the way Eddie ran after the immigration van, yelling at Marco, and then turned to see all his neighbours lined up against him.

Homework: 2008 Close Reading, passage 1, about the countryside; and a literature essay, your choice.

Next week is the last class till April 21 and then it’s all getting very close…

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.

Where was the popcorn?

Today we watched the first act of the rather – very – ancient, scratchy film of “A View from the Bridge”. As you will remember, it started very differently from the play but soon morphed into a fairly accurate, word-for-word version of it. If any of you can bring yourselves to comment, I’d be interested to know whether you want to watch the second half at any point. Failing that, you could just tell me, of course, or email.

Should you be enthusiastic enough to want your own copy, you could get it from http://stores.blowoutdvd1.com/-strse-23/A-View-From-The/Detail.bok

(I was quite sad to think of the actress who played Catherine – I imagine that she thought this was her big break and I don’t think I’ve ever seen her in anything else. However, I’m not much of a film buff so maybe she had a starry career that I’m just not aware of.)

Then we looked at the rather unpleasant “A Study of Reading Habits” by Philip Larkin, in case a question came up on two poems by the same poet. We considered the similarities with “Poetry of Departures” (eg colloquial language, use of rhyme/rhythm, cynical attitude, change of attitude between beginning and end, references to reading) and the differences (eg different “voices”, PD features an adult while SRH features the change from childhood to adolescence to adulthood, SRH much more colloquial, dated language).

SRH could also, of course, be used by itself, as a poem expressing dissatisfaction, unpleasant emotions, a personality…. etc

Then we read “You’re” by Sylvia Plath, a much more positive poem about a mother’s love for her unborn baby. It’s structured as a list of images describing the baby, all very sweet and loving and a bit unusual- comical at times. It could be used for a question on a poem which is happy/positive/image-filled/requiring thought/featuring a relationship – etc. Or it could be used to contrast with a gloomy/negative poem such as “Anthem for Doomed Youth” or SRH.

Homework – 2007 Close Reading, passage 1, about Glasgow University library.

Next week: Personal Study. One hour (plus extra time if relevant); bring in text and up to 2 A4 sides of notes, but not whole essay. Notes to be submitted with essay. For those who have the unit, class starts at 7.30 pm.

Prelim and Personal Study

Not much to write on the blog this week, since the evening was spent on paper 2 of the prelim. Hope you found it reasonably satisfactory. The questios were all actual exam ones from different years, though some of them were slightly tailored to match the SQA’s currently favoured wording. Remember, however, that in the actual exam in May, none of us knows what the questions will be, so there’s no guarantee that there will be a particularly suitable question for any of your texts. In fact I’d be very surprised if there weren’t reasonable ones for “A Patchwork Planet” and “A View from the Bridge”. Fingers crossed.

As far as poetry is concerned, this is far less likely to be the case. For any one poem – or even for any three or four – all we can say is that there might be a suitable question or there might not. Most people find poetry questions more straightforward than drama or prose ones, simply because there’s far less of the problem of which bits of the text to select for highlighting in your essay. However, because the poetry questions are usually much specific, you shouldn’t rely on being able to use one of them. Nevertheless I would try to have a few up your sleeve for use if the opportunity arises.

I hope everyone feels up to speed on the Personal Study. It’s really just a literature answer, with all the usual SECT sort of things, but using your own choice of novel/topic. Remember that you must bring in notes, which will be submitted with your essay. You can consult your text as you write.

No homework. This will start again next week. From now on, we’ll mainly be practising Close Readings and literature essays.

By the way, this blog is regularly visited by readers in Sheffield, Belfast and Brighton. Welcome!