A review of a review?

[Wingtips]

Hey guys,

I know there's a certain freedom when writing up lit essays. But I was wondering if there's some sort of basic structure or set of required questions to answer when formulating a response to the 'considering alternative viewpoints' task? Like whether or not an intro or conclusion is required, etc.

Cheers

[nisha]

Did these last year in Lit 1/2. Uhhh...to answer your question, intro's and conclusion's are obviously always required for anything you do in Lit.
Basic Structure?

Ok, i did plenty of research on "alternative" viewpoints of the film and what others thought of it in regard of PLOT, THEMES, CHARACTERISATION...(their opinion does not really count) and use their ideas as your base structure. Mostly, in alternative viewpoints sacs, you use the Argumentative Essay Structure-intro, PRO-TOPIC B1, CON-TOPIC B2, conclusion.
For example, i dis Casablanca, as my film, and compared and contrasted the ideas of its "relevance" to society and as a romantic film-it does not have the conventional "happy ending" which made it stand apart from all the other romantic films at the time(b1), and then I went on to the ARRANGEMENT of the film and commented on the unusual friendship between Louis and the main character( the name escapes me) which made it a different romantic film....(b2). As you can see, they all go back to the contention that Casablanca was not a typical romantic film.

I loved Literature in year 11, however but pls dont take my advice verbatim, since I never really paid any attention to Literature and it was my bludge subject while I could concentrate on the others. I'm pretty sure what i wrote is correct, because I recall putting a decent amount of work in it, but I'm pretty sure you should be fine:)

[Wingtips]

Thanks for the help. I kind of didn't make myself clear, it's more of an analysis of a review that someone has written about a film. And not a variety of viewpoints on the particular film. Oh and I didn't think you needed intros for everything. I thought passage analysis' didn't require an intro.

[nisha]

Well, in that case, see if they are really being biased, as to whether the elements of the film was good/bad. Eg. PLOT: bad: I hated the plot, it made no sense to me, it is stupid. good: the plot seems individual in its own light to shine on the specific purpose of the film.

Look to see their agenda, and what words "connotate" to help you establish this, and then look at the film on a whole and see if their comments were justified (do you agree/ disagree?).

In the relation to introductions,  I am always familiar (and in my school this was practised) that passage analysis for an EXAM OR SAC required essay-like structure, while if it was just a class activity/assignment then it would just be a few paragraphs outlining the review and your (fresh) opinion on it. It depends what you need it for. 1/2 classes are a little more relaxed, and you can tend  to do whatever you like (as long as you have quotes from the reviewer and film to back you up) but i can imagine that 3/4 will be a bit ore clean-cut and formulaic, in the way they want it set out. In the end if everyone has the same structure (as they did in my class) then more emphasis (and marks) are given to WHAT you write and how to express you opinion (by having an objective view of the film and how the reviewer reviewed it).
If you need extra help, PM me, or google "review of a review of (insert film text here)" and you should be fine:)

[EvangelionZeta]

Did these last year in Lit 1/2. Uhhh...to answer your question, intro's and conclusion's are obviously always required for anything you do in Lit.
Basic Structure?

Ok, i did plenty of research on "alternative" viewpoints of the film and what others thought of it in regard of PLOT, THEMES, CHARACTERISATION...(their opinion does not really count) and use their ideas as your base structure. Mostly, in alternative viewpoints sacs, you use the Argumentative Essay Structure-intro, PRO-TOPIC B1, CON-TOPIC B2, conclusion.
For example, i dis Casablanca, as my film, and compared and contrasted the ideas of its "relevance" to society and as a romantic film-it does not have the conventional "happy ending" which made it stand apart from all the other romantic films at the time(b1), and then I went on to the ARRANGEMENT of the film and commented on the unusual friendship between Louis and the main character( the name escapes me) which made it a different romantic film....(b2). As you can see, they all go back to the contention that Casablanca was not a typical romantic film.

I loved Literature in year 11, however but pls dont take my advice verbatim, since I never really paid any attention to Literature and it was my bludge subject while I could concentrate on the others. I'm pretty sure what i wrote is correct, because I recall putting a decent amount of work in it, but I'm pretty sure you should be fine:)

Disagree with first statement - I didn't have intros or conclusions in any of my exam essays.  I would recommend having them for the review of a review SAC though.

And Wingtips, there's no set structure - really, it's just about planning things out so that you address everything that needs to be addressed.  My personal recommendation is you do the intro, a paragraph or two analysing the review, and then two or three paragraphs explaining your own assessment of the review, and then a conclusion.

[VivaTequila]

Did these last year in Lit 1/2. Uhhh...to answer your question, intro's and conclusion's are obviously always required for anything you do in Lit.
Basic Structure?

Ok, i did plenty of research on "alternative" viewpoints of the film and what others thought of it in regard of PLOT, THEMES, CHARACTERISATION...(their opinion does not really count) and use their ideas as your base structure. Mostly, in alternative viewpoints sacs, you use the Argumentative Essay Structure-intro, PRO-TOPIC B1, CON-TOPIC B2, conclusion.
For example, i dis Casablanca, as my film, and compared and contrasted the ideas of its "relevance" to society and as a romantic film-it does not have the conventional "happy ending" which made it stand apart from all the other romantic films at the time(b1), and then I went on to the ARRANGEMENT of the film and commented on the unusual friendship between Louis and the main character( the name escapes me) which made it a different romantic film....(b2). As you can see, they all go back to the contention that Casablanca was not a typical romantic film.

I loved Literature in year 11, however but pls dont take my advice verbatim, since I never really paid any attention to Literature and it was my bludge subject while I could concentrate on the others. I'm pretty sure what i wrote is correct, because I recall putting a decent amount of work in it, but I'm pretty sure you should be fine:)

Disagree with first statement - I didn't have intros or conclusions in any of my exam essays.  I would recommend having them for the review of a review SAC though.

And Wingtips, there's no set structure - really, it's just about planning things out so that you address everything that needs to be addressed.  My personal recommendation is you do the intro, a paragraph or two analysing the review, and then two or three paragraphs explaining your own assessment of the review, and then a conclusion.

^this is essentially it.

I grappled with the idea and always struggled in trying to figure out how I was meant to structure my essays in English and Lit. Finally I realised that it didn't matter at all how you structured your piece, so long as you develop a meaningful response to the stimulus throughout. Honestly, it's not about having a killer introduction and conclusion, or their absence thereof, but rather about just writing some prose that develops meaning.

[Wingtips]

Thanks for the help EZ and VivaTequila I'll take it on board and see if something descent results.  Still battling with the idea of no set structure; so that recommendation helped  me out heaps.

[Envisionation]

Biggest advice is to use the alternate piece you're given as a leapboard into your own analysis. Own that essay. Make it your bitch. VT's right in that structure is not really vital in Lit; my friend and I have completely different writing styles, his characterized by a smattering of short, sporadic ideas that congeal into a cohesive thread by the end and my a strongly direct basic 5-6 progressive analysis style, and we wound up respectively with 50 and 49. What's important is that you be absolutely confident of your own ideas so that you can use the alternate viewpoint to either contrast or support them. Just remember that if you're disagreeing with the critic, to provide a strong analysis of your own.

[Incommensura]

Worth noting, although the two before me have pretty much said it all, that "no set structure" doesn't mean "no structure". This is true of so many things... There isn't a particular structure you need to have, but you need some structure so that you're making a coherent argument, not repeating yourself and covering all the bases you need to cover.

I have always been a really lazy essay planner but I never ever ever wrote an essay in any subject without at least a dot point telling me what each paragraph was going to cover so that I knew what shape the whole thing was going to take.

So I'd experiment with different ways of doing it (fwiw I also basically used EZ's for alternative viewpoints) and see which one works best for you in terms of getting across everything, being concise and clear and saying all you want to say. I only say this because whilst it's true there's no correct structure for anything in Lit, too many people take that as a kind of carte blanche to write rambling structureless essays when really everyone needs a structure, even if it's different to everybody else's.

[Envisionation]

Agreed. Might have been misconstrued to mean "Lit has no structure", which is untrue; the point is to create a structure which one is comfortable to write in and able to effectively communicate ideas strongly. It's worth adhering to tried and true structures early on, but once you really grasp the base concepts, absolutely experiment with it.

[Envisionation]

Also, umbrella DP buddies. <3