What academic articles on your text should you use? Would you recommend the State Library of Victoria? How do you amalgamate the historical context of a text and stylistic features in a text response to comment on the views and values of the author?
The State Library is a good database, but Google Scholar is probably your best bet for proper academia. You might have to wade through a bit, and certain texts will have more resources than others, obviously.
A regular google search can return some helpful results too. eg. for anyone studying a more recent novel, some reviews will often look at things from a more sophisticated perspective. Again, some wading is necessary.
How you incorporate historical evidence/ V&V will depend on your text, but in general: try to do it at the end of your paragraphs as a neat way of wrapping up, and ensure you don't get too far away from the text at any point. My advice is to ensure every sentence is linked to the text. It doesn't have to be all character/quote analyses, but if you find yourself spending two or three lines on an author's back story or something, cut it down because chances are you won't get credit for it.
thank you
just another quick question:
whats a better way of phrasing this?
'.society will pay for the consequences'
'society will suffer the consequences'
or
all hell break loose
Not entirely sure what you're asking, but "society will pay" sounds a bit menacing. Like, Scooby Doo villain "You'll pay for this! And you're little dog too!" type menacing. "Society will suffer the consequences" is much more formal and essay-appropriate. Then again, if this is a slightly creative or hybrid piece then you might be angling for a more persuasive tone of voice, so it's up to you.
'All hell breaks loose' is a pretty widely accepted phrase. Unless it's an issue with repetition I wouldn't be too concerned with changing it.
If it
is a repetition problem then you might want to rephrase some of your arguments to avoid redundancy.
With most of these phraseology/vocab questions, I'm happy to help (and I understand the frustration) but it's probably best to try and work through them yourself. You won't have access to the forums in the exam room; you'll have to trust your own intuition and learned abilities. The more you practice working through this sort of stuff, the easier it will be
In your opinion, what makes a text response essay impressive?
I'm desperately trying to avoid saying 'one that fulfills all the criteria,' but as I've said previously, ticking all the boxes is actually quite an achievement. (See earlier posts if you need help identifying/ clarifying these.)
On a personal level, I'm always impressed whenever I read something I've never thought about before, and I'd imagine this would be doubly true for an assessor who spends a whole term teaching a text, knows it inside out, then is assigned a pile of 200 essays on one of two topics; often there's not a very wide margin for individuality, but it's always nice to see someone using more sophisticated evidence to illustrate an idea in an interesting way.
There is a spectrum for this sort of thing, of course. I might write a wonderful essay about how the tensions in 12 Angry Men perfectly mirror the culture of groupthink observed in certain giraffe collectives. And I guarantee the assessor will have never read that before, but seeing as it's an irrelevant waste of ink, I'm more likely to piss them off than impress them.
Relevance is an always has been the primary criterion, but don't neglect your ideas and writing style either.
Hey Lauren,
Do you know any supplementary that involves an individual who doesn't want to change/immerse themselves into their past through escapism from the present day? I'm trying to find supplementary that is complementary with Willy Loman from Death of a Salesman but all I have right now is Gatsby.
Thanks
Zezima's example of Abbott sounds pretty solid, and contemporary media stories always make good links for a context piece. Be careful with the political angle though. For your SAC you'll be safe so long as your teacher isn't overly partisan (or if (s)he is, you're writing something that caters to this bias) but in the exam you have no idea who you're going to get. There are some fairly safe assumptions you can make, eg. (S)he is against genocide, so I can safely condemn such actions. Party politics is a little trickier, and I usually advice steering well clear of any definitive judgments, even in a persuasive piece.
Some other examples you might consider:
-metathesiophobia: a genuine medical condition, an irrational fear of change. Some documented cases might be of some use.
-regression: (in psychological terms) is a defense mechanism, eg. me running away from all my commitments and 'regressing' to my 5 year old self --> refusing to do chores, "running away" from home, and going back to calling myself 'Auren.'
-
The United States of Tara: was on the ABC a few years ago and featured a woman with DID (=Multiple Personality Disorder) One of her 'alters' or alternate personalities was her teenage self (swore a lot, drank to excess, dressed like an uncouth woman etc.) Not that I'm encouraging binge-watching instead of studying, and some general research/ wikipedia-ing should suffice, but it certainly got me interested in the phenomenon.
Apologies to everyone for my delays recently. I'm going through some stuff that's taking most of my time and energy, but I should be back to normal soon. The aforementioned swot-vac guide and an updated/ properly formatted directory version of this thread are on my to-do list. I know most of you are entering into a busy SAC period so I'll endeavour to help as much as I can.
Best of luck!