HL English A1 2013 Paper 1 - Interpretations?

[braindead]

I did the extract from an Abraham Verghese text, can't remember what it was called, but it featured an unnamed narrator and a woman called Tsige/the Queen. Anyone else do that one?

[Matsu]

Hi guys I'm having a doubt about my paper 1... I did my commentary on the prose Cutting for Stone.

Where is the setting when the surgeon talks to tsige? Was it in Ethiopia or in America?

I wrote that it was in America and a friend of mine wrote that it was set in Ethiopia.. I'm so confused!!!!!!

It was America

Is this structure ok (for the poem)?

1) Nostalgia of Childhood

2) The security of the memory

3) the lamenting of childhood/loss of youth

Seems like an OK structure. I think it's completely valid to organize your commentary thematically. As long as your structure is clear and it followed your thesis statement, you shouldn't get docked for it.

[Matsu]

I did the extract from an Abraham Verghese text, can't remember what it was called, but it featured an unnamed narrator and a woman called Tsige/the Queen. Anyone else do that one?

Only like 2 or 3 of my class of 75 did that O_O. A lot of us had a hard time finding a lot of meaningful stuff to talk about so we just went with Soap Suds. What did you talk about, out of curiosity?

[Smile44]

What was the significance of the tower of Babel?

[IBisfunjustkidding]

What was the significance of the tower of Babel?

I basically said it meant that silence breeds confusion, which re-emphasizes that communication is a vital part of life but not just for humans.

[braindead]

I did the extract from an Abraham Verghese text, can't remember what it was called, but it featured an unnamed narrator and a woman called Tsige/the Queen. Anyone else do that one?

Only like 2 or 3 of my class of 75 did that O_O. A lot of us had a hard time finding a lot of meaningful stuff to talk about so we just went with Soap Suds. What did you talk about, out of curiosity?

I geared the main body of my argument towards the integration of immigrants into an unfamiliar culture - fortunately I'd read a small amount of Verghese before, so I knew this applied directly to the extract's context. More specifically, I discussed the tone of the extract mirroring the shift in emotions of the initial excitement at discovering a new society, before the nostalgic and regretful sensations of missing their home country. I referred to the initially joyous mood of the choice in lexis transitioning to a more sombre tone as parallel to this, I think.

[JohnSmith]

SL anyone?

[braindead]

I managed to wedge in a brief discussion on the possibility of interpreting the text with a Freudian critical reading - the suggestion of a mother-son relationship is quite blatant, as is the "who would stop [kissing cheeks] first? Not I.", loaded with subtle sexual suggestion with the abruptly simple sentence structure. I actually preferred it to Soap Suds - that poem seemed a bit too linear in its boy-to-man transition, but maybe someone got something more complex from it?

[Yap]

Hmm... Interesting...

My main focus was actually not so much about the "story" itself, but what kinds of literally techniques I could find. I don't know if I did it right but so far I know the English A course lays emphasis on the student tracking literally conventions.

My main discussion was the initial tension in the beginning of the extract, until Tsige speaks to him and when he realises when he found the right place, in which the language and thoughts becomes far more centralised around the two of them. Then I mentioned other things too, concluding that the extract was euphorically nostalgic from the perspective of the first person narrator.

[Bennyboii]

The English A1 TZ2 SL paper was actually okay, my friend and I both avoided the prose section because it looked rather complicated. The poem was much easier to understand and read however it was more difficult to find techniques within the poem as they weren't really that obvious :/ Wrote about 5 pages but I don't know if anything I wrote made sense :/

Edited May 4, 2013 by Bennyboii

[kspr]

I did the SL TZ2 exam and I did the poem, actually it was easy but there was a lot to write about, much easier that the past papers in my opinion...

[Bennyboii]

I did the SL TZ2 exam and I did the poem, actually it was easy but there was a lot to write about, much easier that the past papers in my opinion...

Yea the past papers were much more difficult than the exam as well as the specimen paper being similar to the exam

[kspr]

Although I hate how this year we HAD to answer the guiding questions....that was really annoying..

Edited May 4, 2013 by kspr

[Bennyboii]

Yea, the guided questions were awful! Spent half the time figuring out what to write :/ Thank god its over tho =]

[BJD]

I did the extract from an Abraham Verghese text, can't remember what it was called, but it featured an unnamed narrator and a woman called Tsige/the Queen. Anyone else do that one?

Only like 2 or 3 of my class of 75 did that O_O. A lot of us had a hard time finding a lot of meaningful stuff to talk about so we just went with Soap Suds. What did you talk about, out of curiosity?

That's actually interesting because 100% of my HL class (there's only four of us) did the prose because we felt as though that was the easier option! I actually liked that extract but I don't know how I feel about the examiner reading my interpretation! I hope I did fine.

[BJD]

I did the extract from an Abraham Verghese text, can't remember what it was called, but it featured an unnamed narrator and a woman called Tsige/the Queen. Anyone else do that one?

Only like 2 or 3 of my class of 75 did that O_O. A lot of us had a hard time finding a lot of meaningful stuff to talk about so we just went with Soap Suds. What did you talk about, out of curiosity?

I geared the main body of my argument towards the integration of immigrants into an unfamiliar culture - fortunately I'd read a small amount of Verghese before, so I knew this applied directly to the extract's context. More specifically, I discussed the tone of the extract mirroring the shift in emotions of the initial excitement at discovering a new society, before the nostalgic and regretful sensations of missing their home country. I referred to the initially joyous mood of the choice in lexis transitioning to a more sombre tone as parallel to this, I think.

That's very lucky that you have read Verghese before, I did not speak about the transition of two culture but I did highlight that the alternation between the Amheric dialect and English was due to the multicultural aspect of the extract also relating that the queen was an embodiment of the narrator's past therefore she speaks the dialect you know? I also did mention the joyous mood and transition to the sombre mood and that the ellipsis in the reported speech acted as a structural division for a tone change. I tried to be innovative with it, hopefully it pays off.

[ib:)]

I did the poem "Language as an Escape from the Discrete" as well! For all of my practice papers I'd chosen poetry, so I didn't want to try the prose for the first time! (For those of you who wrote on it, what did you make of the Lime slush??)

I talked about the speaker's fear of the separation (the discrete) that not being able to communicate with beings/ people creates. One thing I mentioned was the structure and how that aides in meaning, particularly the progression of sentience, and the structure moving from small and detailed to large, sweeping generalizations. (It goes from the small, "intricate" and least sentient wasps, to the cat, to the idea/children in general, to "the illiterate body," which I took to mean the entirety of beings/things that can't communicate with the speaker.) I took the silences to be a lack of language and communication, and the last line of the poem was the culmination of the point I was making... that silence (lack of communication) made the Tower of Babel (a Biblical allusion which essentially results in dividing humanity). In my conclusion, I said that although the poem ends on a dark note, the reader can take hope from the title, which suggests that language can overcome/escape the division caused by the lack of communication. In this way, the reader can console themselves both in the fact that by using language, the author/speaker has overcome their fear of "the discrete" and that by reading the poem, the reader themselves have also bridged this gap.

Throughout the essay I talked about various lit and sound devices, as you would expect.

Any different interpretations and or thoughts on mine?

I chose the poem too. I talked about many of the same things, but I looked at the progression from an insect to a human child in a different way. I discussed how a wasp is very different from a human, a cat is more similar to a human, and that the narrator was once a human child. Therefore, the narrator's inability to communicate with increasingly similar creatures becomes more and more frightening as the poem progresses. It was very smart of you to look at it your way though, I hadn't thought about it that way.

I also talked about how the chaotic structure of free verse matched the chaotic nature of silence. I took the simile "drains my marrow like a roof's edge" as a comment that a fear of an inability to communicate should be just just as common as a fear of heights. I mentioned personification, allusion, repetition etcetera too.

Thoughts?

Edited May 5, 2013 by ib:)

[Phua Zhi Qi]

SL paper 1 prose.... i didn't learn how to analyse poems though...

[Matsu]

I did the extract from an Abraham Verghese text, can't remember what it was called, but it featured an unnamed narrator and a woman called Tsige/the Queen. Anyone else do that one?

Only like 2 or 3 of my class of 75 did that O_O. A lot of us had a hard time finding a lot of meaningful stuff to talk about so we just went with Soap Suds. What did you talk about, out of curiosity?

I geared the main body of my argument towards the integration of immigrants into an unfamiliar culture - fortunately I'd read a small amount of Verghese before, so I knew this applied directly to the extract's context. More specifically, I discussed the tone of the extract mirroring the shift in emotions of the initial excitement at discovering a new society, before the nostalgic and regretful sensations of missing their home country. I referred to the initially joyous mood of the choice in lexis transitioning to a more sombre tone as parallel to this, I think.

I like!! I don't think I really know how to analyze prose despite the fact that it's supposed to be easier... Poetry is all I know Really like your points though, should be a level 6/7 easily

[braindead]

Thanks for the encouragement! My English teacher insists she'll punch me in the face if it's not a 7, so I hope so too.

I usually prefer the prose extract, just because the IB will always, always give us something with some sort of structural progression, which is the essence of any piece of literature - a progression of theme of some sort. Plus, prose is typically more character-oriented, whereas poems are often more abstract in their references. This means when analysing prose it's a lot easier to elbow words like anthropomorphism (which looks really smart haha) into your argument. That's how I see it, anyways.