IOPS to resume Monday January 16th

Dear students - as many of you have been travelling during the vacation, I have decided to give you the first week back  to refresh your orals at home. (Students will also read  Beckett.) The order of speakers will be the same as the original list and we will confirm that together on Monday and Tuesday week with the same order but with new dates. I hope you all find this a fair system, to give you a few days to get into presentation mode after the holidays. HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL GRADE X1 STUDENTS, YOUR FAMILIES AND FRIENDS. MR C

Waiting for Godot - two famous actors explain that the play means something different to each member of the audience

Essay 2 - does TSLTT have a role to play in all titles?

1. Hi everyone! TSLTT is most useful in Paper 1, the unseen text. However, I do not insist on TSLTT as the only approach to a literary essay even in Paper 1. As you become more experienced you will develop your own style.
2. In the essay on the Literary Movements, Romanticism etc students are encouraged to look at these movements as ways of thinking about the world. You are not asked to analyse any one text in detail your reference to Wordsworth or any other Romantic writer would illustrate your argument about the distinguishing features of that movement. (eg The Romantic writers placed great emphasis on the importance of feelings and the senses, Wordsworth demonstrates this in his poem "The Daffodils" and 'then my heart with pleasure fills and dances with the daffodils." So in that essay, TSLTT is of limited use as the title seeks a general description of the main features of the different movements. It is in some ways a history of literary movements from the Romantic to the present and the implications of their way of looking at the world for their writing. 
3. In the essay on Beckett, TSLTT could help you to structure your answer. What is the significance of 'waiting' in the title and also in real life, waiting for a letter, waiting for a business merger, waiting for someone to propose marriage, waiting for someone to make up their mind....... In this play, the theatre audience or the reader, construct the meaning of the play from their own life experience. So "Godot" for you will be different not only from everyone else but also if you re-read or better still see it at different stages of your life. While this is true of all art, it is particularly true of Beckett.  I am re-posting the interviews with Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart, if you are one of the few students attempting the Beckett essay please do watch this short video - posted above this post.
4. In the final choice, I would expect that TSLTT would help students to comment on the two novels they have chosen and both compare and contrast both novels. You might write about the language in both novels in the same paragraph or separate paragraph. 
5. The template of TSLTT is useful for Beckett and the novels but less appropriate for the essay on the literary movements.

This post is in response to an intelligent questions from a student seeking guidance on the literary movement question and the role of TSLTT, so I thought it fair to share my ideas with you.                  Best wishes to you all.    

Essay 2 due Wednesday 28th

Dear students -

1. just a friendly reminder that the deadline for the second Eng Essay was postponed to Wed 28th at your request during the prep for your exams. It must be submitted as part of your assessment for the quarter. For HL students please use turnitin Essay 2 -there is space there now - for SL students you may email it to me with your name and class in the subject bar and "Essay 2" to help me collate data. If this is not clear, please check with classmates first and only email me if you cannot resolve the issue yourself. I am really busy now - see bullet point 2 below :)
2. Due to my recent medical leave, I will be marking everything during the holidays, Paper 1 Exam, two homework Eng Essays from each student and 1 TOK Essay from my class. That is about 3000 words for each of the 65 students in English or about 200,000 words and another 18,000 words of TOK.
3. Then I will collate the grades and draft the report comments. I am looking forward to it as what I have read so far has been very interesting. 
4. The IOP orals will resume on Tuesday January 10th and Monday first day back, you will be engaged in silent reading of "Godot" in class. I will use that time to complete your reports on the school computer system.

Wishing all of my students and your families a very pleasant vacation and best wishes for 2012. Happy New Year.

How many pages should one write in the exam?

There is no written guideline from the IB in their documents regarding word limit on Paper 1 but it's 1000-1200 words in the coursework essay. However, SL students should aim for 3 sides minimum going up to 4 or 5 sides of A4. HL students are generally expected to write no less than 4 pages and no more than 6 pages. PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS IS ABOUT QUALITY OF WRITING AND NOT QUANTITY.  It might be argued that the length of the original exam text will have some bearing on this too. Please remember that if you choose the prose text you are NOT supposed to comment on every line and every phrase. SELECT KEY PHRASES - COMMENT AND QUOTE-QUOTE-AND QUOTE AGAIN.  Let the RUBRIC be your guide as to how much you need to write to give a thoughtful, imaginative response to the text. Examiners do not reward page after page of poor analysis and poor writing, perhaps the reverse may happen. Please spend 10 minutes reading both texts before choosing one for your answer. Then spend about 20 minutes drafting a bullet point plan on the page on the actual answer sheet page. THAT STILL LEAVES 90 MINUTES FOR ACTUAL WRITING. You are free to deviate from the plan if you get new and better ideas as you write. No penalty for that but writing without a plan can get you in trouble. If you spend 30 minutes on mapping and bullet points - annotate the text too if you wish - the result will be much better than someone who just writes and hopes to make it up as they go along. Many students find this difficult to believe and feel that planning is wasting time. Nonsense! Every examiner I know favours the approach of student planning on the page where the examiner can see it - it shows respect for the process and that you are thinking before you write.

GRADE X1 -Thank you for warm welcome back today.

It was great to see you all again today and I enjoyed the classes with you as I always do! I hope you got some tips for your TSLTT on Wednesday. Good luck with everything. - Mr C.

Exam Preparation

• Scroll down and find the Brian Keenan extract - the youtube film is an optional extra but the text is key to our classes on Monday and Tuesday.
• Read the sample commentary I have emailed you and note the frequent use of quotation from the original text to support my claims in my commentary.
• TSLTT works well for both prose and poetry.
• HL students should read "NO SECOND TROY'
• SL students should read "TO WOMEN AS FAR AS I AM CONCERNED"
• Both poems are posted below and scroll down further as I have a general note of exam tips posted a few days ago.
• Email me if you have any concerns and I will include your queries in my lesson.
• Students should spend about 30 minutes preparing each of the texts before the lessons but there is no need to write more than a few bullet points in your notebook to help focus your response.
• There will be teacher input from me on key areas but you will also work in groups and you need to read the texts to be competent in your team work.

EXAM TIPS CLASSES MONDAY -read these texts and be prepared to discuss them

Standard Level Students Read before class on Monday

To Women, As Far As I'm Concerned - D. H. Lawrence

The feelings I don't have I don't have.
The feelings I don't have, I won't say I have.
The feelings you say you have, you don't have.
The feelings you would like us both to have, we neither of us have.
The feelings people ought to have, they never have.
If people say they've got feelings, you may be pretty sure they haven't got them.
So if you want either of us to feel anything at all 

You'd better abandon all idea of feelings altogether.

HIGHER LEVEL STUDENTS READ BEFORE CLASS ON MONDAY

No Second Troy 

Why should I blame her that she filled my days

With misery, or that she would of late

Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,

Or hurled the little streets upon the great,

Had they but courage equal to desire?

What could have made her peaceful with a mind

That nobleness made simple as a fire,

With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind

That is not natural in an age like this,

Being high and solitary and most stern?

Why, what could she have done, being as she is?

Was there another Troy for her to burn?

WB Yeats.

Brian Keenan's - "from an Evil Cradling" - see tips on Paper 1 and extract from this book below this post

HL and SL PROSE EXAM TIPS Paper 1 UNSEEN TEXTS SAMPLE PROSE

PAPER 1 SKILLS - SKILLS FOR WRITING COMMENTARIES on PROSE.



*************************************************************************************                                                An Evil Cradling: Brian Keenan.
Born in Belfast in 1950, Brian Keenan took a degree in English Literature at Coleraine University, worked for a while in Brussels and in Spain, and returned to Ireland to teach and then to work in community development.
After taking an M.A. in Anglo-Irish literature he went to Beirut in Lebanon to take up a post at the American University there.
In 1986, a year after his arrival, he was kidnapped by a Shi’ite fundamentalist group and held hostage for four and a half years. For some of the time that he was kept prisoner he shared a cell with John McCarthy, a journalist who ironically had come to Beirut to report on Keenan’s plight.

Questions:

1. What seems to be the narrator’s purpose for writing his extract?
2. How would you describe the language and what can you say about the style in which it’s written?
3. What do we learn about Keenan’s character and how is this communicated to the reader?
4. What is interesting about Keenan’s reaction to it and what does it tell you about his feelings about his own identity?
5. What genre of writing is this? How would you use the templates used in class to approach a commentary in the exam? (TSLTT) and (W-W-W-W-W)

**************************************************************************************
COME NOW INTO THE CELL WITH me, and stay here and feel if you can and if you will that time, whatever time it was, for however long, for time means nothing in this cell. Come, come in.
I am back from my daily ablution. I hear the padlock slam behind me and I lift the towel that has draped my head from my face. I look at the food on the floor. The round of Arab bread, a boiled egg, the jam I will not eat, the slice or two of processed cheese and perhaps some hummus. Everyday I look to see if it will change, if there will be some new morsel of food that will make this day different from all the other days, but there is no change.
I set down my plastic bottle of drinking water and the other bottle. From bottle to bottle, through me, this fluid will daily run. I set the urine bottle at the far corner away from the food. This I put in a plastic bag to keep it fresh. In this heat, the bread rapidly turns stale and hard. I pace my four paces backward and forward, slowly feeling my mind empty, wondering where it will go today. Will I go with it or will I try to hold it back, like a father and an unruly child? There is a greasy patch on the wall where I lay my head. Like a dog I sniff it.
I begin, as I have always begun these days, to think of something, anything upon which I can concentrate. Something I can think about and so try to push away the crushing emptiness of this tiny, tiny cell and the day's long silence. I try with desperation to recall the dream of the night before, or perhaps to push away the horror of it. The nights are filled with dreaming. The cinema of the mind, the reels flashing and flashing by and suddenly stopping at some point or place, where with strange contortions and twists it throws up some absurd drama that I cannot understand. I try to block it out. Strange how in the daytime it is only the dreams that we do not wish to remember that come flickering back into the conscious mind.
The guards are gone. I have not heard a noise for several hours now. Until tomorrow, there will be silence in this tomb of a place so far down under the ground.
Then it begins. I feel it coming from out of nowhere. I recognize it now, and I shrink into the corner to await its pleasure. What will it be today? That slow down-dragging slide and pull into hopeless depression and the heart's weariness. The waters of the sea of despair are heavy and thick and I think I cannot swim through them. But today is a day of euphoria. Up snakes and down ladders, my mind is manically playing games with me and I cannot escape. Today it is teasing me, threatening me, so far without the full blast of its fury. I squat and rock backward and forward, reciting half-remembered nursery rhymes like a religious mantra. I am determined I will make myself more mad than my mind.
Blackness, the light has gone. There will be none for 10 hours. They have given me candles. Small, stubby candles. I will not light them. I fear the dark, so I save the candles. It's stupid; it's ridiculous. There are a dozen or so hidden under my bed. I will not light them, yet I hate the dark and cannot abide its thick palpable blackness that weighs upon my flesh. I can feel it against my skin. I am going crazier by the day. In the thick sticky darkness, I lie naked on the mattress. The blanket reeks, full of filth. It is pointless to try to shield myself from the mosquitoes, their constant buzz, buzz, buzz everywhere, as if it is inside my ears and inside my head. In the thick black invisibility, it is foolishness to hope to kill what you cannot see but only feel when it is too late, upon your flesh.
The night buzzing of these insects is so insidious, I cannot take much more. I thrust my body back upon the mattress and pull the filthy curtain over it to keep these things from feeding on my flesh. I cannot bear the heat and smell of this rag over my body like a shroud. I must content myself, let the mosquitoes feed and hope that having had a fill of me they will leave me alone to find some sleep in this night heat.

TIPS-DECEMBER EXAM

TIPS-DECEMBER EXAM -IB ENGLSH - UNSEEN COMMENTARY – MR C

Note - there will not be any questions on the three novels studied for the IOP. It's not necessary to revise them. The December exam will be an 'unseen' based on Paper 1 of the IB exam you will sit in May 2013. The IOPs will resume in January but will not form part of your December Grade.

·         Two Questions - You answer one only – Prose or Poetry

·         Prose may be fiction or non-fiction

·         Poetry is not described using these terms  - all poetry is to some extent autobiographical but it’s better to consider it in the same way as visual art, sculpture or painting or music. Poetry represents a creative work by the poet. Your literary analysis should be a personal imaginative response to the thought and feeling of the poem. These notes are meant to provide guiding posts in the process of writing your response. There is no 'answer' in this process, rather an exploration of title, structure, language, rhythm, themes and tone.

·         The voice in the poem may be that of the poet or of a persona created to tell a story

·         In “Telephone Conversation” you might say ‘the narrator/persona uses the first person pronoun “I” to describe a telephone conversation/consider the voice and the audience

Prose – 2 main genres – Fiction – novel or short story?  (Extract)

Non-fiction writing - examples include Autobiography – Brian Keenan’s “An Evil Cradling”

Also Travel writing “Travels in Borneo” Redmond O’Hanlon

How to do well in prose unseens?

STUDY THE ASSESSMENT CRITERIA (Rubric)                                                                           MAKE SURE YOU KNOW WHAT EACH OF THE CRITERIA IS LOOKING FOR -

1.       Identify the genre

2.       Identify the narrator/ consider that the narrator may be a reliable or unreliable witness to the events described. If you are exploring an extract then total knowledge of the entire work is not expected but do focus on what is on the page in front of you. Evidence, that is relevant quotations in every paragraph garners marks - but quotes must be selected and woven into the fabric of your response.

3.       Always read the title at the end of the extract and refer to it in your introduction.

4.       Guiding questions are sign-posts for SL students and often give a clue as to the thought and feeling of the text.

5.       Visualise the text as a movie – OR slide show in the case of poetry. Take your time when reading the texts up to 20 minutes before you finally decide on which text to chose.

6.       Then use W/W/W/W/W

WHO –

WHAT-

WHERE=

WHEN- WHY-

FOR MAXIMUM MARKS USE TSLTT IN POETRY AND PROSE ANALYSIS

*HOW TO WRITE ABOUT LANGUAGE AND ITS EFFECTS? Here is a short example.

The last two lines of “To women as far as I am concerned” - a poem by DH Lawrence.

So if you want either of us to feel anything at all

You’d better abandon all ideas of feelings altogether.

 The final two lines acts as a conclusion to a series of statements – the poem is a form of argument or proposition regarding feelings and attempts by 'women' to define the indefinable, "feelings".          The word ‘abandon’ reflects a powerful choice by DH Lawrence to urge his lover to completely let go of the ‘ideas’ or attempts at rational logical reductionism of feelings.

TURNITIN BREAKING NEWS! Eng Essay now due on turnitin Wednesday 7th

Dear students - Mr Rasik has been working on fixing the turnitin problem. You may post your first Eng Essay "Genius of the Crowd' by Wednesday December 7th. Please try again and if you cannot gain access try first with another student helping you. If you still cannot get on then ask Mr Rasik for help. *** Wishing you all a great day in Surat. Wish I was there with you! See you in a few days.***

Hello from Mr C - see you all on Monday December 12th

Dear students - thank you for nice messages and emails. My operation was a success. I am ordered to rest for another week and will see you all then.
I am sorry I will not be online every day but I will try to answer any questions that you may have.


**************************************************************************
Here is an alternative version of the truth for all you TOK fans and conspiracy nuts.
*******************************************************************
 Alternative narrative:
The plastic surgery worked- for this knowledge claim to be true it would have to be extensive surgery- and I am joining the cast of Baywatch to replace David Hassselhoff.
However, I will first come back and see you all on Decmeber 12th -Monday week- and stay until you come through the IB with flying colours. So my Hollywood career is on hold.   Here is the background to the surprise offer from Hollywood. But don't worry I have turned them down. It's very sad that such a talented man has not found happiness and stability in his life, if these stories are true.
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hasselhoff