Paper one has arrived and departed in the matter of two short hours! In this thread we have an analyses of the exam, and then a discussion from the students who endured it in the sweat of it all this morning.
Text one: Feature Article Extract
Question:
“How is the pleasure of discovery revealed in the feature article?” (2 marks)Techniques I found on the initial reading:• Pun in the title” “pedestrian activity”
• First person narration
• Present tense
• Ellipsis
• Imagery (description of Strongman and Beanie Man)
Relating to the pleasure of discovery:This question is a little peculiar because it specifies “pleasure” which doesn’t feature in the rubric and its also probably not a way you’ve considered looking at discovery before. It does make perfect sense with the text though, because observing the humans of the environment is a pleasure to Stephen Quinn. I would most likely talk about the first person narration and the imagery as being the two top features that reveal the pleasure of discovery in this piece.
Text two: Fiction Extract
Question:
“Explain how contrast is used in the text to highlight the child’s discoveries in the museum.” (3 marks)Some techniques I found on the initial reading (although this isn’t super necessary for question 2, it may be handy for question 4 if you choose this text):• First person narration
• Imagery – first seen in the first paragraph when discussing the bustle of people.
• Simile – describing the whale’s bones.
• Jargon – phosphorescence.
• The split environment, the water/ocean can be interpreted as a metaphor.
Talking about contrast: To be honest I think this is a tricky unseen text question. In the story, we don’t know who Eleanor is exactly. I assume that it is the boy’s grandmother, but it isn’t super important. You can definitely talk about the contrast between the experience in the museum and the dramatic/metaphorical experience in the ocean. The two environments make a good spot for contrast. Alternatively, you could talk about the contrast between the child at the start and the child at the end. In the beginning, he is confused, slightly lost, trying to make sense of where he is, and hoping to get to the dinosaurs. Towards the end, we see a contrast in his attitude and perspective, because of the way he’s discovered the mystique of whales. His attitude changes to pensive, wondrous and imaginative (also reflected in the split environments). I’m really interested to know how you all interpreted the contrast here!
Text three: Poem
Question:
“Explore how imagery is used in the poem to convey the wonder of discovery.” (4 marks)Techniques I’ve spotted on initial reading:• Enjambment
• Imagery
• Juxtaposition: “Burning with a cool…”
• Simile – “they peal like bells” and “tactile as fingertips.”)
• First person narration
• Stylistically: free verse poem (no rhyme scheme, sporadic use of punctuation).
• Metaphorical imagery: “Sharp braille of the skies.”
Imagery and Wonder:I think the content of the poem, talking so much about astrology, makes the poem shift towards the idea of wonder.
The imagery is really clear and is supported by the similes, the juxtapositions, and so forth. The last part to me is what stands out the most, the narrator is hoping that the male she is with makes the discovery he truly hopes for. She hopes that what he imagines and WONDERS about becomes “tactile” so that the stars become like “braille” to him. So that last little snippet of imagery works really well with the question, tying in discovery and wonder.
Is it just me or is this actually a really beautiful poem? Or is it just the environment of NOT being in an exam room that has helped me to appreciate the work?
Text four: Fiction Extract (6)Text four: Fiction Extract
Question:
“Compare the ways unique personal insights into discovery are revealed in Text 4 and ONE other text from Texts 1, 2, or 3." (6 marks)
Techniques I observed:• Rhetorical question
• Blind – a metaphor (which has been spelled out in the text as not just needing glasses, but just being unreceptive).
• Imagery
• Third person narration
Response:I think I would take text 3 into this analysis with me. What text did you choose to pair with text four? I think so much of this idea of “personal insights into discovery” relies on the metaphor of the persona being “blind” until she recognises the beauty of the nature around her. That’s a turning point in the extract that causes a renewal of perspective, and prompts the personal reflection as well as the reflection of the vibrancy of nature surrounding.
I would use text 3 here because the imagery, particularly the imagery that captures wonder and nature (astrology, in text 3), works perfectly well with the similar style observed in text 4. Although, in text 4, the female is plunged into the water, quite similar to text two. Let me know which text you brought into this!
Overall Thoughts on Unseen Texts
This was really tough. No visual text? That means more time spent actually reading and analysing the texts. I think Question 2 for Text 2 was really obscure (and kind of awkward?). The techniques weren’t obvious a lot of the time and potentially needed some extra time than what you intended to allocate. Tricky!
Creative Writing Section
“Compose a piece of imaginative writing that explores the relationship between place and individual discovery.”
Thoughts on the statement prompt: This works well, I think, because I haven’t come across an imaginative piece yet that doesn’t have a setting. So the use of place in the question works really well, because it most likely doesn’t ask you to actually add anything to abstract, but rather, it prompts you to accentuate it if it isn’t already a strong focus. I don’t think that this is too much of a stretch for students, considering that the vast majority of imaginative pieces have a relationship between a place and an individual – and hopefully there’s a discovery in there too.
Thoughts on the stimulus:This is where it gets tricky. Use ONE of the items on pages 8-9 as a key location in your writing. KEY LOCATION. Crikey. What I find most tricky about this is that all of the locations have a sense of isolation and disconnection with other humans, which doesn’t lend itself to the creative prompt well. Image one has a single person sitting in an empty audience, image two literally has no people, image three also has no people (unless that’s someone in the swag), image four has one person with their back turned to us, and image five also has no people. Of course, this doesn’t mean that you can’t add people into your location, but it doesn’t present itself smoothly for you.
What does it mean by key location? Key location doesn’t necessarily mean that your entire imaginative piece needs to be set in the location of the stimulus. Rather, the location can be used very briefly, yet significantly. You have flexibility here. The key location could be a feature in a flash back (or flash forward), it could be the setting for your entire discovery to unfold, or it could be the location that gave rise to discovery in the first place.
Essay
“To what extent do the texts you have studied reveal both the emotional and intellectual responses provoked by the experience of discovering?”Thoughts on the prompt:My initial thought: ooooh. Of course I wasn’t in the exam room, maybe
your initial reaction was: #!^*#!!
Emotional discoveries are seen fairly consistently across the prescribed texts and upon initial observation, “emotional” aspects of discovery are reasonably self-explanatory. Admittedly, thinking back to the way I approached my own prescribed and related text, I did not at all put emotional responses to discovery at the forefront of my study. Did it just seem like the most obvious way of observing discovery, so I overlooked it? Potentially.
Intellectual responses to discovery – what did you think? This was the bit that made me “ooooh.” In my own studies, and in my tutoring, I’ve emphasised that in one sentence, the rubric splits discoveries into physical, emotional, creative, spiritual and intellectual. Intellectual – right. By definition (thanks Google), intellectual means: relating to intellect. By definition, intellect means: The faculty of reasoning and understanding objectively, especially with regard to abstract matters. In your texts, did someone come to understand something differently? Was a perspective changed based on the exposure to new ideas and new logic? In Go Back To Where You Came From (my prescribed text) – intellectual impacts of discovery were profound and prevalent.
The tricky bit comes in when you have to focus on the responses provoked by discovery. One way of approaching the essay is to actually detail the entire process of discovery, by talking about the initial environments that fertilised discovery, and ending up with the responses to discovery. This works – as long as you are drawing clear links between the response to discovery and the initial perspective of the characters/personas in your texts. Alternatively, you could have focused the entire essay on the responses provoked by discoveries, and focus on weaving your own conceptual understanding in there. You could have taken an approach with the thesis that all people will have varying responses to discoveries – and then you can tease them out and apply it to the question specifically about emotional and intellectual responses.
One related text: *wipes sweat from forehead*
Overall Thoughts
It’s the second year of Discovery. In my opinion, they weren’t brutal, but they weren’t as kind as people had hoped, I think! This year has definitely given proof to the notion that you must adapt your notes and study style to the demands of the rubric, because they were reasonably specific this year. It was interesting to see no visual work in the unseen texts, and in my opinion, the first two texts were exceptionally bland to read. I loved the third unseen text, and the fourth was OK.
What Did You Think?
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Topic: PAPER ONE EXAM DISCUSSION! (Read 56381 times)