MAY11 English A2 Paper 2

[Cynthia]

So how did everyone find this paper?

Personally, I had decided on doing the literary options earlier on, although the options were a bit catastrophic for the books I'd chosen to study (Great Gatsby, Of Mice and Men, and Death of a Salesman); there was nothing at all about religion and only very little stuff about the character development option, so I was a bit forced to write on passion. I wouldn't say it was my best text ever but not terrible either

[pete.king]

Wrote about the character development stuff. Could you only talk about Come of age books in that question?

[IceTea]

I chose the Religion topic. I thought it would be interesting to talk about it, in class it's always Passion or Characters evolution stuff that we talk about and the teacher always says that most of us do not explore the subject but summarize the book, so I was afraid of that.. (The Awakening, Kate Chopin and The Crucible, Arthur Miller)

[Eizhowa]

Wrote about the character development stuff. Could you only talk about Come of age books in that question?

I choose The Catcher in the Rye and Death of a salesman for that question. Discussed Biff and Holden (who else?), and I just focused on the definition that followed what "coming of age" books are - something about moral and shaping a person. I argued that both Biff and Holden were in a transition state and both "developed" during the work. Think I mentioned the words "come of age" once... The question doesn't specify that you need to choose coming of age books, and I considered the first sentence to be "fluff".

I basically chose death of a salesman because I only remembered those two works, and I do believe Biff share a lot of Holdens "lack of shape"!

I hope my moderator isn't ... mean.

[frankinafishtank]

I did the language and culture option and the question on "one language, one world". Did anyone else pick that one? I couldn't think of a huge amount of arguments and counter arguments but my main ones were; loss of culture, loss/gain of identity, and gain of communication. I also mentioned two articles we had studied in class but one of them wasn't really relevant so I'm not sure if they'll give me credit for that.

Edited May 11, 2011 by frankinafishtank

[diederik]

I chose the media and culture question about how new technologies endanger some of the old mass media. Wrote about how the internet threatens newspaper, think it went quite well.

[Alex1307]

I picked the SL literary option: How do symbols contribute to themes.

Easiest question ever! I used 1984 by Orwell and All My Sons by Miller. I noticed that a lot of people studied one of Miller's plays! I really liked All My Sons and I think paper 2 was not that bad this year

[sim_pod]

Used Hamlet and Great Gatsby to talk about how passion drives the plotline and both its presence & lack wreck characters. Personally, it was really not what I expected... In hindsight, I kick myself for deciding not to even revise for the Media & Culture unit, which had ridiculously easy questions by comparison.

[The Economist]

I chose the media and culture question which said that journalism focuses on the negative. I discussed this in terms of Capitalism and the "news values" saying that firms aim to maximize their profits and by focusing on certain news values such as drama and negativity, they attract more and more readers and achieve their goal.

[Guest]

I chose "does media have responsibility to the society?"