A bit of a blank

I have a problem here: I'm sure I imparted some pearls of wisdom about something or other before we watched the second half of the film; but I can't remember what they were. A challenge to you: what did I say?? Do comment.

Then we did watch the rest of the 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. But maybe it all just seemed convincing to me because it just reminds me of my youth: all those frocks and rickety chairs and everything in black and white...

Homework is passage 2 of 2007 about libraries (and you could also do passage 1, if you haven't) - and I would suggest that you also try a literature essay, your choice. If you don't have the past papers, last year's is on the SQA website - http://www.sqa.org.uk/ and go to Services for Learners, NQ subjects, drop down to English.

Watching the film

A very short blog today: we watched Act 1 of the very grainy, scratchy (but quite effective, I thought) black and white film of "A View from the Bridge". It was made in 1961 (though it looked more like 1861) so the clothes, set and so on would be quite authentic for the period. We'll watch Act 2 next week so if you don't want to see it, don't feel you have to come to class.

Homework for next week is 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 haven’t done the first passage yet then I’d be happy to get both together next week. Or not.

Not very inspiring...

Sorry – very boring lesson today going over the Close Reading prelim. Hope you now know why you didn’t get full marks. If not, ask me!

By the way, Matt has kindly given me a copy of the film of “A View from the Bridge”. It starts very differently from the play but soon morphs into a fairly accurate, word-for-word version of it. If any of you would like to comment, I’d be interested to know whether you would like to watch it at any point. Failing that, you could just tell me, of course, or email. Bear in mind that it's fairly old (1961), black and white and quite scratchy. However, if you haven't seen it, it would be a good and fairly restful way of revising the play. It lasts about 2 hours so we could do it over either 1 or 2 weeks. Or not.

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

Homework – paper 1 of the 2007 Close Reading about Glasgow University Library.

Prelim paper 2

Not much to write on the blog this week, since the time 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” but... who really knows?. Fingers crossed.

As far as poetry is concerned, this is far less predictable. 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.

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

By the way, this blog is regularly visited by people in Brighton, Sheffield and Belfast. Can't imagine why, really - but hello to you.