The sands of time...

Revision!

We went over the some of the main things to remember about Close Reading, from a little crib sheet made up by one of my colleagues. Email me if you want this (though it doesn’t have anything new; it’s just a handy reminder, to be propped up against the Corn Flake packet on the morning of the exam).

We also discussed the suitability for our texts of various exam-type questions made up by another of my colleagues, and you tried writing one. No one handed theirs in, however, which suggests that you're not working quickly enough! Please finish what you wrote and send it to me, together with one or two essays. Email them to me by Tuesday at the latest, to give me a chance to mark them.

Next week, as I said last week, I’ll be there and will be happy to do any revision/marking/advice on demand.

Meanwhile, revise your texts! Learn quotes! Despite the evidence from the SQA workshop, I’d still recommend trying to get at least 5 relevant quotations into each essay (many more for essays on poetry) – so this means learning 10 for each of the play and the novel, since the relevance will depend on the question.

Feel free to email me if you have any problems with which you feel I could help: pdonaldson@stevenson.ac.uk

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.

I’m writing this at home without my record of work with me, but I’m sure I must have given you homework. If not, download the 2008 paper from the SQA website (http://www.sqa.org.uk/) and do that – at least passage 1. But as well as this, 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).

And then do one or more essays from the past papers. Limit yourself to 45 minutes per essay and force yourself to ignore distractions. Remember, if you get the mark you need in a few weeks’ time you never have to do this again!

Remember too that you must be able to write about the literary techniques of the novel, the play and the poem without even thinking, when May 15 comes. There will be no time to sit trying to work them out from first principles: you’ll be too busy concentrating on answering the question.

See you on the 22nd. Have a good Easter.