Sorry – the blog is rather rushed and rather late this week. Life has been busy!
We finished reading “A View from the Bridge”, with magnificent final performances from the actors (thank you for this) and discussed the dramatic techniques. I handed out notes (please ask me for these if you weren’t there). Homework is to do a critical essay on “View”– 2006 question 2 on a play which leaves you with mixed emotions. I would assume that these would be that you would feel at least a bit sorry for everyone, and would be able to discuss this in terms of the themes, the language, the setting, the structure, the set and so on – not necessarily all of these but certainly some of them.
We then studied the poem “Cynddyllan on a Tractor” by RS Thomas about Cynddyllan (pronounced Cun-thullan) the Welsh farmer, on his very first tractor.We decided that this would be suitable for a question on (among other things) the world of work, modern life, technology, contrast, colloquial language, imagery, a person…. We looked at an essay which was about a poem based on the world of work – fitting “Cynddyllan” nicely – and noticed how it kept referring to the question, as is the whole idea. Remember that you don’t necessarily have to be subtle; just keep reminding the marker that this is you, answering the question, as you show your mastery of the text.
Remember too that for poetry essays you must quote a lot – the essays are always going to ask you to discuss the poetic techniques, which you can’t discuss for long without quoting. The usual way to deal with poetry essays is to go through the poem more or less line by line – NOT by doing what the SQA calls a “guided tour” (of everything about the poem with nothing made relevant to the question) BUT by picking out things relevant to the question and making this relevance quite obvious.
We then started reading the first 2002 Close Reading about music, but ran out of time. We’ll get back to this next lesson.
We finished reading “A View from the Bridge”, with magnificent final performances from the actors (thank you for this) and discussed the dramatic techniques. I handed out notes (please ask me for these if you weren’t there). Homework is to do a critical essay on “View”– 2006 question 2 on a play which leaves you with mixed emotions. I would assume that these would be that you would feel at least a bit sorry for everyone, and would be able to discuss this in terms of the themes, the language, the setting, the structure, the set and so on – not necessarily all of these but certainly some of them.
We then studied the poem “Cynddyllan on a Tractor” by RS Thomas about Cynddyllan (pronounced Cun-thullan) the Welsh farmer, on his very first tractor.We decided that this would be suitable for a question on (among other things) the world of work, modern life, technology, contrast, colloquial language, imagery, a person…. We looked at an essay which was about a poem based on the world of work – fitting “Cynddyllan” nicely – and noticed how it kept referring to the question, as is the whole idea. Remember that you don’t necessarily have to be subtle; just keep reminding the marker that this is you, answering the question, as you show your mastery of the text.
Remember too that for poetry essays you must quote a lot – the essays are always going to ask you to discuss the poetic techniques, which you can’t discuss for long without quoting. The usual way to deal with poetry essays is to go through the poem more or less line by line – NOT by doing what the SQA calls a “guided tour” (of everything about the poem with nothing made relevant to the question) BUT by picking out things relevant to the question and making this relevance quite obvious.We then started reading the first 2002 Close Reading about music, but ran out of time. We’ll get back to this next lesson.
2 comments:
I HAVE READ IT!!!!!!!!
I've read the blog like a good little boy. My essay may not be brilliant (I'm not entirely sure whether I can justifiably call it an essay; it's more like a collection of pieces of analysis for your marking pleasure) but you will get something handed in, at the very least.
Post a Comment