Paper 1 Discussion/Suggested Solutions

[taylorlucy]

A tricky paper, but with texts that presented lot of oppurtunities to make things up (referencing the rubric of course) and sound convincing even if you couldn't exactly understand what they were saying. My question is - text three asked you to discuss the 'use of language', yet there was a visual text included. Was this meant to be a curveball, to throw off people who didn't read the question and hence spoke about the image rather than the language? Or does 'language' incorporate both text and visual media?

Also, in past years has there been a correlation between the difficulty of paper 1 and paper 2? If it's unanimous that this was a hard paper, is there reason to believe tomorrow's questions mightn't be so bad? ((Just trying to find some optimism as I cry about the endless possibilities for the Hamlet question))

[huss1235]

hi Emily how would you compare this paper 1 to the recent two or 3 years is it harder in your opinion
thank you 

[portia1605]

Hi Emily,

I just sat the paper and found it so bad. I'm ranked first at my school (in top 15 schools) but I think the nerves got to me and I just messed up. The last question of the comprehension, I misread it and wrote about which one text was more effective. So I spoke about two texts, but said one was more effective than the other. How many marks do you think I'll lose?

Thank you

[Em444]

I did kind of the same thing. I said that regardless of the motivation, it was the unexpected insights that catalyse transformation. And kinda ignored curiosity and wonder because what's curious about an earthquake?

[taylorlucy]

This is where I get worried. For the essay, I said while those types of discoveries are in fact transformative to a degree, the most profound is the nature of the unexpected discovery due to its unforeseen essence and its provocation of the human capacity, whereby the response to it is the most telling insight of its transformative capacity.

It seems I went a little far-fetched.

Hey TheFreeMarketeer, I took a similar approach! Mine was a little haphazard - I wrote out my introduction with a thesis that mostly agreed with the question and said that regardless of the nature of discovery, it is ultimately transformative for the individual and etc etc. I got into my first paragraph, on Robert Frost's 'The Tuft of Flowers', which is basically about how the persona is alone and is sad that another guy has mowed his grass before he got to mow it and then randomly discovers some flowers and realises the other mower saved the flowers and BAM he feels a connectedness with humanity. And so mid-way through my essay I realised that this discovery definitely evokes a sense of wonder, but the discovery itself had no motivator - it happened by chance ((you can imagine my horror being 2 pages into my essay and realising i actually disagreed with the thesis I'd already provided)). So from there I turned my argument around so that my essay was about the listed motivators being transformative, as well as the value of unprecedented discoveries, and went back and tidied up my introduction to suit that at the end.

[maevecouch]

My essay was integrated but instead of exploring the notions of discovery amounting from need, wonder or curiosity, I focussed on the transformative part instead as it said "whether" so I believed it meant that the transformative aspect was more "intensely meaningful" . I did two solid integrated paragraphs. One on how physical discoveries are transformative and one on how self discoveries are transformative.
I'm hoping for a Band 6, so I hope that sounds ok?
If there is anything that I'm worried will affect my mark, it'll be those ridiculous short answers.

[ungmon]

Hmm, how did you guys interpret the "reader" in "How does the text invite the reader on a journey of discovery"? Does it refer to the voice of the poem, or us as readers of the text. I feel as if it's the latter (or at least, that's how I responded)

[adelaidecruz]

Hi Emily, so for the third text (which I agree is a very weird text to add) I talked about how he speculated about the past (something about the poles of the football goal being an altar where people praised gods) which coerced him to speculate about the future and that geographical travels are a form of time travel. In retrospect I feel like I went too far and didn’t notice the obvious techniques such as the question marks in the title itself. Do you think I’d get any points for that? :/ (I did more than that but that’s all I could remember haha)

[bowiemily]

hi Emily how would you compare this paper 1 to the recent two or 3 years is it harder in your opinion
thank you 

Definitely the hardest paper I've seen in a while. Even tops some of trials i thought were really difficult (ie. SGHS 2016)

[adelaidecruz]

Hmm, how did you guys interpret the "reader" in "How does the text invite the reader on a journey of discovery"? Does it refer to the voice of the poem, or us as readers of the text. I feel as if it's the latter (or at least, that's how I responded)

Hi I did the same approach as you for Text 2! I talked about how the composer’s use of techniques invited / provoked responders to discover the wonders of reading books.

[bowiemily]

Hi Emily,

I just sat the paper and found it so bad. I'm ranked first at my school (in top 15 schools) but I think the nerves got to me and I just messed up. The last question of the comprehension, I misread it and wrote about which one text was more effective. So I spoke about two texts, but said one was more effective than the other. How many marks do you think I'll lose?

Thank you

Hey there!
Look, it sounds that you were 'justifying' the texts anyway - and thats the main thing. As long as you were reaching this level of analysis (which is very impressive!), I really don't think you'd be losing any more than 1-2 marks.

[bowiemily]

Hi Emily, so for the third text (which I agree is a very weird text to add) I talked about how he speculated about the past (something about the poles of the football goal being an altar where people praised gods) which coerced him to speculate about the future and that geographical travels are a form of time travel. In retrospect I feel like I went too far and didn’t notice the obvious techniques such as the question marks in the title itself. Do you think I’d get any points for that? :/ (I did more than that but that’s all I could remember haha)

As long as you named *some* technique that is linked to the meaning of the quote, you'll be awarded the marks!

[bowiemily]

@Everyone that is worried about the essay question:

Ideally, it would have been best to base your thesis off the relationship between the three aspects given and transformation. But if you didn't, and still incorporated those three aspects somewhere in your essay, you will not lose a huge number of marks. Remember for tomorrow though to try and target all parts of the question provided in your response

[spragg_j]

My essay was integrated but instead of exploring the notions of discovery amounting from need, wonder or curiosity, I focussed on the transformative part instead as it said "whether" so I believed it meant that the transformative aspect was more "intensely meaningful" . I did two solid integrated paragraphs. One on how physical discoveries are transformative and one on how self discoveries are transformative.
I'm hoping for a Band 6, so I hope that sounds ok?
If there is anything that I'm worried will affect my mark, it'll be those ridiculous short answers.

i did similar as it said 'whether', i saw the transformative part of the Q as more important and so gave it more emphasis - hope this is ok - what do other guys think? Should we have given more emphasis to the motivations or the power of discoveries to transform?

[Atarplss]

Hi Emily, do you think it was fine to analyse the visual for text 3 from section 1?