ATAR Notes: Forum
VCE Stuff => VCE English Studies => VCE Subjects + Help => VCE English & EAL => Topic started by: JaidynM on May 16, 2015, 06:46:43 pm
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My school is doing Whose Reality? for context (with texts The Lot, and Death of a Salesman) and our teachers have been telling us to 'adopt a lens'. Although I'm still not 100% sure what they mean by that, I've figured that it's basically writing with a theme; some examples we were given were beauty or war. So rather than using external sources from a variety of different places, our teachers are saying that it should just be related to a specific theme that we choose to write about.
For past VCE English students, is this a good thing to do? Did you write like this? I'm yet to come across an essay, on AN or in the examiners reports (or anywhere really), that adopts a lens so I'm a little hesitant as to how I should go about using external sources.
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So your essay is essentially about beauty (for eg), only insofar as it relates to reality? If you're wanting to write a standard essay on the prompt, I think anything that jazzes it up a bit or gives you a more specific focus is good - I've definitely seen similar things done, just not described the same way.
Essays have big obstacles such as sounding vague, generalised, superficial - and they all seem to trot out the same well-worn and largely meaningless, totally unoriginal ideas on the context (paired with examples treated in a really shallow, predictable way). They also are difficult to prepare for in advance. I think giving yourself a specific focus could help with all of these.
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That does make sense, thank you!