QCE:Hi, what advice do you have for excelling in literature? I feel like a lot of it (especially the imaginative story IA3) comes down to the teachers personal writing preference, and because of this my marks tend to fluctuate as I never seem to nail it. Also, do you have any tips for writing a good thesis for the IA2?
Edit: IA2* not IA3
I'm so excited that Lit seems to be a popular subject in Queensland! I'll do guides for all the IAs asap, but for now...
My Lit teacher used to joke that they assigned the end-of-year exam essay marks by throwing all the essays down the stairs and giving the best marks to the ones that landed closest to their cat.
I don't think they
actually did this, but he made a fair point about the subjectivity of the course. Real talk: 75% of your mark is down to your teacher, so if you get on your teacher's bad side, you'll be fighting an uphill battle. And another 25% of your mark will come from assessors who have never met you, and don't know anything about how much effort you've put into your work.
But you can also use this to your advantage, since every assessor in the state, including your teacher, HAS to use the same
marking criteria... e.g. for the creative piece:
This can kind of be your checklist when crafting and editing your piece - so long as you have done a decent job in meeting each of these criteria, you'll be in a good spot to earn a decent mark.
But to really ensure a good mark, you should
work with your teacher, not against them! Don't try and think of it as battling against your teacher's bizarre preferences (even if that's what it feels like!) - think of it as
learning what your teacher's preferences are and how best to cater to them.For example, if your teacher keeps dropping hints in class that beginning your creative piece 'in media res' (='in the middle of things,' i.e. opening your story in the midst of the plot unfolding, rather than with a conventional narrative orientation), then guess how you should begin your creative piece!? Your teacher might not be
objectively right that this is a good way to open all stories, but they're recommending it for a reason, so you should take their advice on board. If they're less direct about their preferences, then you might need to put more effort into getting feedback from them. Try to make time after class or in any spare periods you have to sit down with them and go over your work to work out
why your marks might be fluctuating.
Most of my friends in Year 12 had the same problem - and they'd be bouncing from a C+ to an A+ without understanding why. It feels great when you're bouncing upwards! But when their marks plummeted from an A to a D, they'd feel awful. It wasn't until a few months before the exam that we went through all of their essays and worked out
where, precisely, they were losing marks that they could consistently score highly. So it's hard for me to say why your marks might be a bit up and down, but hopefully this is something I can help with throughout the year if you've got some sample paragraphs or creative pieces!
As for the specific IAs, I'll be sure to put out an article with creative tips soon! The best one I have for now is to
SHOW DON'T TELL! Never write something like "She was upset with her mother" - that's
telling us information. Instead,
show us this by writing something more descriptive like "She turned her head, her skin prickling as she forced herself not to make eye contact with her mother." Suddenly we have a much more interesting sentence that's subtly revealing information about this character and her relationship dynamics!
A good tip for this is to use the
five senses: sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. Rather than
telling us a character is upset, think about what 'upset' looks like, sounds like, feels like... or tastes/smells like... (the last two can be a little weird, but sometimes they work! e.g. "The last time she spoke to her mother, she had a bitter taste in her mouth for hours, and the stench of parental guilt seeped into her furniture and didn't leave for weeks"
)
Finally, regarding coming up with a good thesis, is this in relation to the creative (IA2)? Or for the analytical essays? Assuming you mean the creative, in general, the best thing you can do is
expand upon and complexify the author's thesis. So take the thesis from the set text you're doing for that unit and then add a new dimension to it in your story. This would ensure you still have adequate connections to your source material, but are effectively augmenting it (and aren't just retelling part of the narrative, or reiterating the same points that the author is making).*
*The syllabus only talks about a thesis in relation to the analytical essays, but I could totally understand why your teacher might use this term for the creative as well - could you let me know what you mean here? Sorry, I'm just not sure what each school is doing, haha!
Also, to turn this AMA back around - how are you finding Literature so far?? I'd love to hear what you've thought of the Units 1&2 course