Oral Commentary

[exploretheworld]

I was wondering if anyone had any tips or advice for how to do the oral commentary for English. We haven't been give much practice yet and I'm getting slightly worried

In my school we can express a preference for one of the two texts that we have studied, Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald or Measure for Measure, Shakespeare.

[Bishup]

Ask your teacher or fellow peers because they will know best. However when you are talking about a literature piece you always have to take into account the theme since it is the most important thing in literature. Refer to characters, setting and plot but link it with something like impact on the reader and how it made you feel.

Give a precise example of this in the text, avoid story telling but find the part in the book where there is a climax or sentimental value or whatever and talk about that and link it to your theme and so on.

Ask your yourself a question for instance how does chapter 9/ Act2 scene 1 affect your reading of the novel as a whole.

My point ultimately is be specific to the text do not go too much into some strange philosophical point of view since they also want to know do you understand what the novel is truely about.

Hope this helped

[Vvi]

You need to practice with a classmate or your teacher. We practiced several commentaries, and on the day there were less freak outs than tehre would have been if we hadn't practiced.

Get a teacher to write a few guiding questions for you andask her to choose an extract from one of the texts between 30-40 lines long. You need to be able to talk about both texts, since "expressing a preference" doesn't mean you will get the one you want. Your class can't all do a commentary on teh same book, and there has to be a balanced mix sent to the IB for moderation.

When you get the commentary, you'll have 20 mins to prepare it. First annotate the extract like you would for an unseen commentary (highlight words, write notes all over it). Then structure all of your notes into a short, mini-essay like you would when writing a commentary. I suggest you write your topic sentences out in full, as these are the most important parts (introducing the ideas that will come in a paragraph). Bullet point ideas, quotes and explanations as it can be hard to find them again in the text at the same time as you are reading. When you talk about the extract, talk about tone/rhythm/whatever, and always link it to its effect on the reader. Don't just mention things and leave them hanging there: why are they there? How do they affect the reader?

When you speak, vary your tone. A flat monotone will not do you any good in expressing your ideas. Speak evenly, and take pauses. Don't panic if you can't think of a word; take a few seconds break to think of it and then try substituting another word for it.

Don't forget an introduction or conclusion; in your introduction, summarise the extract and the central idea that it expresses, and why it is important to the text as a whole (you will never get a random part of the book, commentaries are always on important parts of the book). In your conclusion, summarise the overall effect of the literary devices on the reader, and what message the extract conveys.

[Sandwich]

I was wondering if anyone had any tips or advice for how to do the oral commentary for English. We haven't been give much practice yet and I'm getting slightly worried

In my school we can express a preference for one of the two texts that we have studied, Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald or Measure for Measure, Shakespeare.

Is expressing a preference allowed?!

We had to pick totally blind at my school, and I (typically!) got exactly the novel I didn't want. It's pretty unfair (although typical of the IB, IMO) if they let the rules be bent at some schools and not others.

Anyway, the important things to do are to contextualise and show excellent knowledge of both where the extract falls in the play and also how things in it relate to the rest of the play (play or novel, I'm going to keep saying play ). Once you've done that you'll also want to look at language analysis and generally the style of the author. With Shakespeare that means the sort of language the character uses (do they get the iambic pentameter, or the slightly more prosaic 'normal' speech), how flashy their metaphors and similes are, how astute their references etc. With Fitzgerald, you'll probably be looking at description and how he builds up the characters. General 'style' points you should ask your teacher for-- authors tend to do things in certain ways and once you know what they are, you'll spot them everywhere. Jane Austen, for instance, introduces characters by listing good points and bad points alongside each other, the effect of which is presumably to let you see a balanced view and also so she can go on to reveal things about society through their characteristics. Random stuff like that

Work through it line by line after a quick contextual overview, is my advice, for structure.

So, context, style, literary analysis, aaaand if I were you, I'd read the mark scheme. As I recall, marks aren't evenly distributed between the marking categories (I think two of them are /5 and two /10?) so you should check it out.

[exploretheworld]

Thank you for the advice, it makes me feel better about it already

I don't know if expressing a preference is allowed, but our school has always done it.

[Vvi]

It's okay, our school let us give a preference as well. Although our teacher told us to choose 2 out of 4 texts that we would prefer to do, and you got one of those. She couldn't give everyone have the same one (most people said they wanted a war poem by Wilfred Owen+Siegfried Sassoon), so I knew when I told her that I preferred either Jane Eyre or the poems that I would get Jane Eyre. I jokingly said "By the way, the part where she has to watch after Mr Mason and is alone at night woul be GREAT to talk about", and ended up getting that part. Which didn't help me much, since I hadn't actually studied that part particularly, it was meant as a joke.

But you can usually figure out what important parts in the book are and revise them beforehand. For example, in Shakespeare plays soliloquys are very important (we also had Measure for Measure as an option, I hate Shakespeare though so I can't halp with analysis) and there will always be an extract chosen that has lots of imagery in it. For example, the Jane Eyre extracts we practiced with in class were always full of Gothic features and had lots of suspense and action. You should be able to figure out which parts contain these things and make notes on them beforehand.

You are expected to talk for about 10-12 minutes, and then your teacher will aks you 2 or 3 questions afterwards to develop some of your ideas. It doesn't matter that much if you haven't picked up on a central idea or some important features in the extract, as your teacher can ask you questions on these afterwards to give you a chance to make up for that.