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English A1 HL Paper One


banks

What did you choose?  

36 members have voted

  1. 1. Prose or Poem?

    • Prose
      13
    • Poetry
      23


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24 hours later... what did you all think?

Personally, I didn't like the extract or the poem as much as some I've written commentaries on in the past, but they weren't horrific. I chose the poem because I wasn't quite sure what was going on with the prose. What did you chose and what did you write about?

Hope maths P1 went well, good luck for the rest :)

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24 hours later... what did you all think?

Personally, I didn't like the extract or the poem as much as some I've written commentaries on in the past, but they weren't horrific. I chose the poem because I wasn't quite sure what was going on with the prose. What did you chose and what did you write about?

Hope maths P1 went well, good luck for the rest :)

I think it could have been worse so I was happy enough.I chose the poem because I understood it and just like you, didn't quite know what the prose was about.IMO The poem was good and simple and I definitely think it will be the more popular choice.

Edited by Gee :)
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It was a nice poem, but I couldn't get much out of it (only about 5 sides of the paper :rant:

I read Dancing bear once and didn't really get it then I read it later when I was done and I saw a lot in it. But I think I did well with the Poem I wrote about 5 sides too. I hope i went into enough depth with everything, that's probably the biggest weakness I have with commentaries. Oh well done now!

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i should have done some practice before. i did the dancing bear, i should have done the poetry. i just felt like a challenge or i was just dumb lol, but i wrote some decent things, mostly about shifts in pace, tone, how it affected tension/atmosphere and how that was used by vanderhaeghe to position the reader. dancing bear symbolic of the blood clot in the Dieter's brain and death. my reading was about co-existing contrasts in unexpected situations, creatures, people. i didn't finish however... i spent 40 minutes plannning, 10 minutes over. in the end i wasn't able to start/finish a conclusion. Oh well! we still got paper 2 fellas... :D

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i should have done some practice before. i did the dancing bear, i should have done the poetry. i just felt like a challenge or i was just dumb lol, but i wrote some decent things, mostly about shifts in pace, tone, how it affected tension/atmosphere and how that was used by vanderhaeghe to position the reader. dancing bear symbolic of the blood clot in the Dieter's brain and death. my reading was about co-existing contrasts in unexpected situations, creatures, people. i didn't finish however... i spent 40 minutes plannning, 10 minutes over. in the end i wasn't able to start/finish a conclusion. Oh well! we still got paper 2 fellas... :D

No conclusion?! You're always best to cut your last paragraph short and write a conclusion, otherwise your presentation marks will suffer horrendously!

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i did dancing bear, and i thought it was a really good passage - then again, i'm pretty much in love with anything which has an actual plot rather than long descriptions of places, since i always feel like i'm repeating myself when i get those. i spoke mainly about Vanderhaeghe's use of language switching from descriptive and long to short and chaotic and how it gave us a clear image of Dieter's mindset, as well as the purity of dreams versus the harshness of reality. i really hope it went well, because i'm aiming for a 7, or at least a very high 6.

If anyone has any Paper 2 sample essays i would really love that, especially if they're on either Death of a Salesman, Doll's House, Hamlet or Translations! :)

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I did the poem. I found I could talk a lot about the nature of the strikingly human connection between the speaker and the blind mandolin player (and their necessities for each other), how the darkness of the tunnel is representative of his plight as a member of the alienated but, in turn, that the tunnel (and the darkness and emptiness) is what makes his music "resonate" in the heart of the speaker... blah blah blah.

I think I read too deeply into it... probably my biggest weakness :P But it's over so MEH!

I read the prose over once and was totally confused... I thought that the boy was suffering a stroke. But then I thought it was about murder. It was so confusing?! And what was the significance of the bear???

Edited by Schrödinger's Cat
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I understood it as the author's comment on our perception of our senses and life in general...it was perhaps a moral message of how a lack of something does not necessarily mean a flaw. like how the player's blindness is almost like a gift.... I know a lot of people who talked about escapism but i didn't pick up on that...

Oh that's such a good way of thinking about it! And what's that about escapism? I didn't get that at all... =P

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