Hey humans,
This is probably more applicable to the Literature students, and I have put it up on the Literature topics
Hopefully, some of you will find use for it. Just to give you an idea of how you could possibly improve
- Read your books before school goes through them (this means in the summer holidays). the thing with literature is that since a lot of the times the wording is hard to understand (or even if it isn't), when you read a text once you pick up on things, then when you read multiple times you stop paying attention to the things you picked up on first and start picking up on new things.
- Make annotations as you go. For my last few books, namely, The Catcher in the Rye, and the Great Gatsby, I annotated pretty much every single line. To the point where my book had doubled in volume just because there was a page worth of sticky-notes slotted on every page. I find that this helps tremendously to sort through ideas, to actually process and follow the story line, and also when you are constructing essays. For my latest essay, I literally put a number of my annotations together to form paragraphs (this saves a tremendous amount of time, especially since I had a number of tests the following day.
- Read practice essays. Read those which relate to your books, and those that don't. Also if you want to get the really high marks, I would recommend going beyond just those year 12 level essays. When studying, I go on google scholar and read through thesis' and uni level essays. Especially when doing 3/4 you want to go beyond to really secure the top marks
- Linking to the above point, when reading through essays, pay attention to the terminology. Especially the Literary Discourse; which is the associated wording like Grammatical and Lexical Language in Stylistic Analysis (this goes under the prose generic convention of language). Learn words like diction, discourse, Aesthetic, chiasmus, cacophony, anthropocentric etc.
- Learn the literary periods and have a general idea about what happened in each era. The Literary eras are: postcolonial, romantic, post-modern, Renaissance, the enlightenment era, Victorian Era, Modern Era etc
- When you finish an essay, go through it and put various 'lower level' words into a thesaurus, and try and find more articulate language. This makes you sound better and smarter---> definitely a plus point.
- Discuss essays and ideas with others. You will derive one meaning from a text and someone else might derive a whole other: This expands your idea box, and you may be able to use other people's ideas as a new way of thinking and reading.
- Expand your terminology. I have one girl in my class who keeps a dictionary next to her in bed and every night will flip through it learning like 5-10 words. I, on the other hand, learn a word from putting my 'lower-level' words into a thesaurus and then using it in everyday speech. YES, people will make light jokes about it (in a friendly way), but using words like those long 10 letter words in everyday speech will make you used to them, and it's a lot easier to remember what 2+2 is in a test situation because you are so accustomed to the answer than 218635 multiplied by 724. You will need to work one answer out, and thus spend time on it. If you are already accustomed to it, it will come to you easily.
- Learn the different reading practices, some are
- Moral Criticism, Dramatic Construction---(360 BC to present),
- Formalism, New Criticism, Neo Aristolean Criticism (1930s to present)
- Psychoanalytics, Jungian Criticism (1930s to present)
- Marxist Criticism (1930s to present)
- Reader Response Criticsim ((1960s to present)
-Structural/ Semiotics ((1920s to present)
- Post Structural/ Deconstruction (1966 to present)
- New Historicism/ Cultural Studies (1980s to present)
- Post Colonial (1990s to present)
- Feminist (the 1960s to present)
- Gender/ Queer Studies (the 1970s to present)
- Critical Race Theory (the 1930s to present)
Some extra things I didn't have in before:- Learn essay formats, and follow them. You can loose marks if you forget to break up the paragraph, or have one that spans 2 pages
- Edit your work, and leave time for this at the end of every test. Just the last five minutes will be fine, but this is a really important point that often gets overlooked.
- Make sure your writing is succinct and most importantly READABLE. I just recently went through one of my essays with a teacher and there were numerous words that were unreadable, thus diminishing the power of the sentence. You loose marks for these, easy marks that were deserved, but not given because of illegibility
- Improve speed: Get a passage, time yourself and see how quick you can make a skeleton essay, and how quick you can write body paragraphs. Improving thinking and writing speed really helps in time pressured situations --> this is really helpful in an exam scenario
- Be well-acquainted with the syllabus and marking key. This is your best friend. At the end of the day, this is what you are getting marked on and expected to be at the standard of. Every essay/project, go back to the syllabus and make sure you address the points
Lastly, Enjoy the subject (or at least try and find something about it that you like...interest does improve marks)
In the next couple of days, I am also working and planning on posting a Literary Terminology glossary. I don't know how applicable this will be for the English students (it will help with novel study mainly), but I am hoping it will definitely be of some use to the Lit students
Hopefully, you have found some of this helpful
Maryam
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