Exam - is there an emphasis on quotes?

[mel_77777]

With the questions and essay in the VCE exam are quotes a requirement?

Personally, i dont think its reasonable to ask for quotes when there are 9 texts in total!


>>> If anyone has any philosophy practice exams relevant to this year's texts, it would be amazing if you could get them uploaded. Thanks

[Menang]

Yes, I would definitely be memorising quotes.

I'm aiming for... 8-10, give or take a bit, quotes per text. And yes, it's a reasonable amount.

Memory isn't hard. It just takes time and effort, but pretty much everyone can do this bit of the course - it's just rote learning!

Just as a point of reference, I memorised over 80 quotes last year for Revs (which I see you did too) so you should be used to it by now!

[Aurelian]

Do not memorise quotes.

[Ghost!]

Yes, I would definitely be memorising quotes.

I'm aiming for... 8-10, give or take a bit, quotes per text. And yes, it's a reasonable amount.

Memory isn't hard. It just takes time and effort, but pretty much everyone can do this bit of the course - it's just rote learning!

Just as a point of reference, I memorised over 80 quotes last year for Revs (which I see you did too) so you should be used to it by now!

Wow! I know we're advised to include a few here and there, but I rarely use more than two per text.

Do not memorise quotes.

Care to elaborate as to why? Personally, I wouldn't but curious as to why you discourage it.

[Aurelian]

Care to elaborate as to why? Personally, I wouldn't but curious as to why you discourage it.

This isn't English - this is Philosophy. It's about understanding ideas and being able to express them pithily, and then critically evaluating them. You won't get marked down for using quotes, but you certainly won't win any favours either. What quotes suggest to a philosophy marker is either "this person is trying to impress me with their unnecessarily detailed knowledge of the text" or, and this is the main reason why you shouldn't quote, "this person is trying to veil their superficial understanding behind direct quotes". Given that like, over half the texts are translations of some sort, direct quoting doesn't even necessarily have the "proximity to authorial meaning" you might think it does anyway.

On top of that, aiming to memorise, as Menang said, "8-10 quotes per text" is just a massively inefficient waste of time.

I just scanned through my mind essays and literally the closest thing I ever came to quoting was when I put "thinking thing" in inverted commas while talking about Descartes.

Do not use quotes. If your teachers are telling you to use an extensive amount of quoting, particularly longish quotes, ignore them.

[mel_77777]

Do not use quotes. If your teachers are telling you to use an extensive amount of quoting, particularly longish quotes, ignore them.

Thank you!!
 My teacher has emphasised the need for quotes, in fact he marked me down on an essay because i failed to provide ENOUGH quotes. I took a look at the assessment report of last year and the high range responses displayed did not appear to have any quotes within them.

[mel_77777]

Just as a point of reference, I memorised over 80 quotes last year for Revs (which I see you did too) so you should be used to it by now!

WoW! That is really impressive, i hope you did well.  I did not memorise anything for that rev exam, nor did i memorise all that theory for my biology exam and hence i got a pretty lousy study score. I personally do not like memorising things, so this year i have tried to steer clear of subjects which incoporate a heavy load of memorising. Thank god, philosophy does not require the memorising of quotes!

[Menang]

Oh wow, I've actually never heard of not memorising anything before, Aurelian!

You did amazingly well, so I'm thus sure it's entirely possible to get a good study score without memorising quotes, but personally I've always gone by quotes.

Hannah Gould (if you've heard of her - she's a bit of a legend at MacRob) came to give us a little talk last term and she recommended (strongly) memorising quotes. There're obviously different camps to this one.

Personally, memorising for me is easier than writing essays and can be done when you want to study but are too tired for difficult thinking. It's also a convenient thing to do on public transport etc. So normally I just memorise anyway.

[Ghost!]

CBF making a new thread, so I'll just keep things going here.

My teacher seems pretty certain this year's section D will be on Knowledge/Truth/Science, has anyone else heard anything different?

Also! How many essays are most people finishing the year with! I'm surprised, I've probably only got five or six... oh well, I'll write more soon. Particularly interested in a response from Aurelian on this one, considering you're our guide in VCE Philosophy!

[EvangelionZeta]

Oh wow, I've actually never heard of not memorising anything before, Aurelian!

You did amazingly well, so I'm thus sure it's entirely possible to get a good study score without memorising quotes, but personally I've always gone by quotes.

Hannah Gould (if you've heard of her - she's a bit of a legend at MacRob) came to give us a little talk last term and she recommended (strongly) memorising quotes. There're obviously different camps to this one.

Personally, memorising for me is easier than writing essays and can be done when you want to study but are too tired for difficult thinking. It's also a convenient thing to do on public transport etc. So normally I just memorise anyway.

Will say that quoting is bad practice for if you ever go into academic philosophy - it's much more concise (and in my opinion, easier) to just express arguments simply in your own terms unless you're writing some weird interpretation paper.  And lol @ Hannah Gould - funny kid, that one. 

[Aurelian]

Hannah Gould (if you've heard of her - she's a bit of a legend at MacRob) came to give us a little talk last term and she recommended (strongly) memorising quotes. There're obviously different camps to this one.

I do know who Hannah Gould is, and I still disagree. I'm not saying you're going to fail if you quote or anything, it's just indicative of a bad approach to philosophy in general and seems to discourage genuine critical engagement with the ideas, hence my disapproval. You'd be far better off just reading over your texts if you're 'too tired to study' instead of learning quotes. Up to you though of course Whatever you find works best in terms of study should always be what you do, regardless of what anyone says - whether me or Hannah Gould

CBF making a new thread, so I'll just keep things going here.

My teacher seems pretty certain this year's section D will be on Knowledge/Truth/Science, has anyone else heard anything different?

Also! How many essays are most people finishing the year with! I'm surprised, I've probably only got five or six... oh well, I'll write more soon. Particularly interested in a response from Aurelian on this one, considering you're our guide in VCE Philosophy!

I don't really know why your teacher would think that... Personally I would've guess the opposite, since the trend over the past few years has been knowledge, mind, knowledge. But... well you all should know about the problem with such induction now

Seriously though, just prepare equally for both, and don't try and second-guess; it could turn out very badly.

As for essays... I believe only did three distinct essays? That's excluding practice exams though, but the essays I did in those practice exams would only have a superficial difference from those three 'archetype' essays.

The thing with Section D is basically there's only a really finite number of topics they could possible ask. For mind, for instance, there really isn't any way they can avoid asking you a question which isn't something very similar to the following;

"Examine and evaluate the dualist claim that all human beings consist of a separate mind and body. In your response refer to the views of both Descartes and Armstrong."

They might hide it under the guise of something like AI (which, incidentally, would be my main prediction for this year's exam), but an AI essay is still almost the exact same essay, just with a slightly more specific focus.

[WonderBunny]

I don't think I used any quotes on the exam last year and I got an A+. They certainly aren't necessary for a good score. My teacher recommended just learning the terms the author uses and using them in the exam, like the "thinking thing" example above. So I used terms like "the forms" and "unselfing" (Iris Murdoch), but no actual quotes.

[tullfrog]

I think that using quotes, but explaining them can be helpful. For example, Whilst I agree with the Aristotelian notion that "man is born for citizenship" in the sense that humans are inherently social creatures....