this does sound really sophisticated and I'm not sure if I can pull it off...
this whole year I've just used a chronological method, going through the article and analysing until I've run out of ideas... however, I realised that for comparatives, this isn't very efficient -- so if faced with 2 pieces to analyse, should I try to find similar key players in both and then compare and contrast each author's use of techniques etc to argue these mini-contentions? Or would you recommend doing a big comparison paragraph at the end of these essays?
It sounds really hard, but in reality it's not
that hard (for most articles). With a bit of practise, you'll be able to easily list things the author tries to present in a certain way: e.g. the author, the audience, the opposition, the government, dolphins, soft drinks, taxes, trees, whatever. They use certain
language to try and present these in certain ways, and you then analyse
why they present them like this, and how it influences the reader's perception of the overall contention.
Couple of examples:
Spoiler
First piece in
Weekly Letter-to-the-Editor LA Practise Club!, 'this ordinary bloke'.
Players include (the top two are important, the others minor and you probably wouldn't discuss them much/at all):
- the author (this is a huge one, how is he trying to present himself, and why?)
- politicians
- the people reporting back about the camps
- the people in the camps
For these, you then have to think:
1. How does he present them? What does he want these to look like?
2. How does the language he uses contribute to this?
3. Why does he want the readers to view them like this?
4. How does this contribute to his overall point?
Spoiler
Read this.
Here's where it's great for a comparative; for instance, imagine they both talk about the Government, so you have a paragraph on the govt. You can contrast the language they use and show how this builds up different pictures of the govt - e.g. one might label the govt as 'meddlesome' and 'intefering', while another might label them as 'supportive' and 'innovative'. And then at the end of the paragraph, having discussed the different ways they try to influence the reader, you'd show how these different ways contribute to their overall different contentions.
Whenever I'm writing, I seem to write really long body paragraphs, because it seems like the only way for me to explore ideas/analyse with enough depth to make me happy, and also means I don't have to come up with as many ideas so to speak. This means I can only churn out 3 body paragraphs in the given amount of time. However, upon reading all the sample pieces, it seems most people write more, shorter paragraphs, and I'm wondering if my longer paragraphs would be penalised in some way??
My writing was just like yours (except in LA where I'd do like 5 shorter bodies). If you're still addressing the prompt thoroughly and exploring all your ideas, can't see why they'd penalise you - don't stress. If you really want, you can generally split one paragraph into two similar, but slightly different ideas.
thanks for the response, just wanna make sure:
can someone confirm that you must address a context prompt completely?
the teachers at our school have taught us that you do not need to use the whole prompt. eg in a handout they gave us "You must use the prompt in some way, but you do NOT have to use every part"
I know you probably want someone else's proof, but I promise I've heard basically this from Lauren.
Weaker scripts did not show critical thinking about the idea the prompt was communicating or ignored the prompt altogether. The more successful responses explored the core ideas of the prompt instead of treating it like a text response. Students need to be reminded that there is an important distinction between the Context they have studied and the task they have to complete in the
exam. They are asked to ‘explore the idea’ that is represented in the prompt; students should not present prepared responses that relate to the concepts/issues central to their Context study and ignore the idea the prompt is communicating. While the prompt can be seen as a springboard for effective writing, the ideas of the prompt must be explored. It is important to demonstrate an understanding of the core of the prompt.
Okay, sure, from one prompt there are millions of possible ideas and you do have to be selective in what you cover - maybe that's what your teachers meant. But what's most important is that you address the
core of the prompt, the key ideas of the prompt, what it's all about. Just jumping on a word you like doesn't address the implications of the whole sentence.
In the example you gave about 'threatening or comforting', if you
simply addressed the comforting, you would have
missed the core of the prompt! The prompt doesn't just say 'here are two unrelated ideas: the landscape can be threatening, or it can be comforting - pick one and discuss'. It says, the landscape can be BOTH. In other words, what you have to discuss is how the landscape doesn't just affect us in one way, how it can have
multiple and even contradictory influences - and why is this? Just discussing how it's comforting misses that whole point. Don't see the prompt as a string of words you can randomly choose or discard; it's a sentence with a core idea that you must address.