Literature exam!!!!!!!

[skinny]

Hey kids, just wondering something regarding practising/studying for the Literature exam:
My texts are Hedda Gabler (play), A Passage To India (novel), Bypass (other lit) and Philip Larkin poetry.
Theres no way im doing poetry at allll, i did badly in the sac.

My problem is that Hedda Gabler has only been on the study design for 2 past years, and Passage for only one. So I can do 2 actual past exams to practice for Hedda Gabler but only one for A Passage To India. I wanna do more than that otherwise I dont feel I would have practised enough.
Our teacher said just pick your own passages which makes sense and I'd do that but....if i was to photocopy passages from my copy of the text there are annotations and highlighting ALL OVER THEM! So that wouldnt really be practising very well would it?
What should I do?
Please reply. Any advice will do! 

[sugary_sweet]

It would be handy if you're able to scan, crop and edit. Otherwise, try borrowing a copy from the library or your teacher.  

The scanning thing would be inefficient though.

[skinny]

oh good idea! ill go to the town library and get them out then jsut photocopy random pages. thanks heaps! 

[iamdan08]

Perhaps you could look on the internet and try and find a free e-version of the books. Then you could simply copy and paste. I did Lit last year and initially thought there is no way i'm doing poetry, however there were only 12 poems set by vcaa and since 3 are on the exam (comapred to 3 extracts form a novel with 400+ pages) i liked those numbers and decided to do poetry. I suggest you write as much as possible because trust me, you get better with the more you write. Really try and think deeply about the text and come up with ideas that other people might not come up with. I also suggest you hand in your essays to your teacher for feedback, and continually try to improve. Good luck!

[skinny]

yeah fair point. well we've done 10 poems from philip larkin so when you think about it yeah, theres a fair good chance at least 1 of the 3 we did for our sac will be one of the 3 on the exam. ill see what i can find otherwise thanks guys!

[vexx]

this is a random question, but since it's just writing a response from passages. how do you study for the lit exam?
is it just what was said above and photocopying pages and writing a response for random sections ? anything else?

[sugary_sweet]

I guess familiarise yourself with the underlying concepts, characterisation etc. so that you'd would have a solid understanding to draw from when writing your piece

[iamdan08]

Yeah develop a deep knowledge on themes and characters, particularly how scenes are interconnected and how they contribute to the authors message and underlying purpose for writing their piece. The way i studied was just writing, reading heaps of different sources on my chosen text and thinking about them. I found the best study was just writing, because i found that the more i wrote the easier i could write.

[vexx]

^ Ah i see thanks to both above.. this doesn't seem too bad to study for (on a comparison to english). but this seems really difficult to know what to write about in a passage, do you just have to write everything that seems important? how can this be structured - or doesn't that really matter?
or shouldn't i be asking these questions since i haven't started lit yet (i'm doing it next year).

[iamdan08]

I guess you need to really discuss in depth about what is happening in the passages, how characters, themes, symbolism, imagery, language etc are developed and how it adds to the overall meaning if the book. I tended to discuss as much as i possibly could, particularly how the writer used language to convey meaning i.e. choosing certain words to emphasise a particular point or to create an image. Look up and have a read on literary techniques, especially if you are considering doing poetry!

[vexx]

I guess you need to really discuss in depth about what is happening in the passages, how characters, themes, symbolism, imagery, language etc are developed and how it adds to the overall meaning if the book. I tended to discuss as much as i possibly could, particularly how the writer used language to convey meaning i.e. choosing certain words to emphasise a particular point or to create an image. Look up and have a read on literary techniques, especially if you are considering doing poetry!

Thanks! I'm sure this will all become clearer once i actually start doing the subject.