Tips for writing A1 Essays - Paper 1, Paper 2 and WL1

[allxy]

About to take my mocks in 2 hours! Thank you! this really helped!!!

[agncsw]

On 5/4/2010 at 7:04 AM, teresad said:

My classmate sent me this for tomorrows exam and I found it to be most helpful, so I wanted to share it with you guys

A good way is to discuss the following for both prose and poetry:

· The five W’s – What? Who? When? Where? Why?

· Ambiguities

· Diction

· Imagery

· Tone

· Mood

· Structure

· Pattern

· Voice

· Syntax

Prose-specific:

· Plot

· Narrative point of view

· Characterization

· Chronology (Use of time)

· Setting

· Paragraphing

Poetry-specific:

· Layout

· Stanzas

· Metre

· Sound

Organization of Time:

30 minutes – Read the passage, over and over again until you feel confident about the passage and have absorbed its contents. Then analysis and structure your commentary with a thesis statement.

Exemplary Thesis Statement: A’s work B shows C through the following devices D to achieve overall effect(s) E.

Outline:

Introduction – Opener containing author and title. Discuss the main issues of your commentary, e.g. devices, in such a way that you are “attempting” to understand the meaning of the work (e.g. the overall effect). Do not present yourself in such a manner that you seem entirely self-assured in the introduction, but rather you have noticed something and plan to explore it further through the commentary. Conclude with the thesis statement.

Literary devices #1 (e.g. Structure, Diction, Imagery) – Open with the general intent of the paragraph – e.g. A uses archaic diction to rectify the Victorian setting. Then, discuss the evidence for this, showing the effects of these devices and the author’s intention with this. The closing sentence should present what device you were exploring and the overall effect you feel this had for the passage, and in its heightening of the “overall effect and intentions” of the passage.

Repeat this for every group of literary devices, mentioning all the relevant devices and aspects (see previous lists).

Conclusion – state that extent of the effect’s effectiveness. Then state the devices that contributed. Then conclude with a clincher.

90 minutes – Write, using proof from the text, in accordance with your previously made outline. Discuss the effects of the devices and show “professional” personal interpretation. Ensure that your vocabulary is eloquent and coherently verbose.

Tips:

1. The structure of your commentary is probably the single most important way of gaining (and losing marks). Write a strong Introduction and Conclusion (in a similar format as previously described) and ensure that every body paragraph has a strong opener with the intent of the paragraph and a clincher which emphasizes the addition to meaning that the devices provide. This is incredibly easy to do - but if forgotten, it will make a difference in your grade.

2. ‘So what?’ mentality – every single device you mention should have you thinking “So what?” what does this device do for the passage? How does it contribute to the overall effect or meaning? This will strengthen your discussion of the effects (key for HL). If you cannot mention the effect or the significance DO NOT mention the device!

3. Do not seem definitive, rather seem to “struggle” – use words like ‘perhaps’, ‘seems to’, etc, to ensure that you do not say “This is what the poem is, take it or leave it.” The examiner has most definitely read the passage well and will not be pleased to see a butchering of the text, which is definitive (and most likely pompous in their eyes). Also, this will allow you to point out the text’s ambiguities and describe their significance.

4. Use ‘the reader,’ ‘the audience,’ and possibly even ‘we’ to reinforce the reader.

5. Do not state the obvious – show your thought process and analysis. Example, in commenting on a passage from Life of Pi, where the author mentions the tiger and child are scared:

“link 1: the boat is sinking and tiger is too (obviously)

link 2: the tiger is scared (clearly implied by text)

link 3: fear is an emotion, therefore the tiger is experiencing human emotions (low level thinking)

link 4: if the tiger is experincing human emotions, the author is trying to humanize the tiger (slightly higher level thinking)

link 5: why is the author humanizing the tiger? perhaps the tiger is supposed to be a metaphor for a concept (higher level thinking)

link 6: what is the concept and what are the author's reasons? (thesis statement)

link 7: since these emotions are humans, there is personification going on (more higher level thinking).

An example of an explication written for a timed exam (non-IB specific):

The Fountain

Fountain, fountain, what do you say

Singing at night alone?

"It is enough to rise and fall

Here in my basin of stone."

But are you content as you seem to be

So near the freedom and rush of the sea?

"I have listened all night to its laboring sound,

It heaves and sags, as the moon runs round;

Ocean and fountain, shadow and tree,

Nothing escapes, nothing is free."

—Sara Teasdale (American, l884-1933)

As a direct address to an inanimate object "The Fountain" presents three main conflicts concerning the appearance to the observer and the reality in the poem. First, since the speaker addresses an object usually considered voiceless, the reader may abandon his/her normal perception of the fountain and enter the poet's imaginative address. Secondly, the speaker not only addresses the fountain but asserts that it speaks and sings, personifying the object with vocal abilities. These acts imply that, not only can the fountain speak in a musical form, but the fountain also has the ability to present some particular meaning ("what do you say" (1)). Finally, the poet gives the fountain a voice to say that its perpetual motion (rising and falling) is "enough" to maintain its sense of existence. This final personification fully dramatizes the conflict between the fountain's appearance and the poem's statement of reality by giving the object intelligence and voice.

The first strophe, four lines of alternating 4- and 3-foot lines, takes the form of a ballad stanza. In this way, the poem begins by suggesting that it will be story that will perhaps teach a certain lesson. The opening trochees and repetition stress the address to the fountain, and the iamb which ends line 1 and the trochee that begins line 2 stress the actions of the fountain itself. The response of the fountain illustrates its own rise and fall in the iambic line 3, and the rhyme of "alone" and "stone" emphasizes that the fountain is really a physical object, even though it can speak in this poem.

The second strophe expands the conflicts as the speaker questions the fountain. The first couplet connects the rhyming words "be" and "sea" these connections stress the question, "Is the fountain content when it exists so close to a large, open body of water like the ocean?" The fountain responds to the tempting "rush of the sea" with much wisdom (6). The fountain's reply posits the sea as "laboring" versus the speaker's assertion of its freedom; the sea becomes characterized by heavily accented "heaves and sags" and not open rushing (7, 8). In this way, the fountain suggests that the sea's waters may be described in images of labor, work, and fatigue; governed by the moon, these waters are not free at all. The "as" of line 8 becomes a key word, illustrating that the sea's waters are not free but commanded by the moon, which is itself governed by gravity in its orbit around Earth. Since the moon, an object far away in the heavens, controls the ocean, the sea cannot be free as the speaker asserts.

The poet reveals the fountain's intelligence in rhyming couplets which present closed-in, epigrammatic statements. These couplets draw attention to the contained nature of the all objects in the poem, and they draw attention to the final line's lesson. This last line works on several levels to address the poem's conflicts. First, the line refers to the fountain itself; in this final rhymed couplet is the illustration of the water's perpetual motion in the fountain, its continually recycled movement rising and falling. Second, the line refers to the ocean; in this respect the water cannot escape its boundary or control its own motions. The ocean itself is trapped between landmasses and is controlled by a distant object's gravitational pull. Finally, the line addresses the speaker, leaving him/her with an overriding sense of fate and fallacy. The fallacy here is that the fountain presents this wisdom of reality to defy the speaker's original idea that the fountain and the ocean appear to be trapped and free. Also, the direct statement of the last line certainly addresses the human speaker as well as the human reader. This statement implies that we are all trapped or controlled by some remote object or entity. At the same time, the assertion that "Nothing escapes" reflects the limitations of life in the world and the death that no person can escape. Our own thoughts are restricted by our mortality as well as by our limits of relying on appearances. By personifying a voiceless object, the poem presents a different perception of reality, placing the reader in the same position of the speaker and inviting the reader to question the conflict between appearance and reality, between what we see and what we can know.

SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVEMENT:

The writer observes and presents many of the most salient points of the short poem, but she could indeed organize the explication more coherently. To improve this explication, the writer could focus more on the speaker's state of mind. In this way, the writer could explore the implications of the dramatic situation even further: why does the speaker ask a question of a mute object? With this line of thought, the writer could also examine more closely the speaker's movement from perplexity (I am trapped but the waters are free) to a kind of resolution (the fountain and the sea are as trapped as I am). Finally, the writer could include a more detailed consideration of rhythm, meter, and rhyme.

Hope this helps,

best regards from Teresa in Iceland

 

Will forever thank you for this

[Nomenclature]

Cross-posted from a question I just answered, this advice is very general though:

Understanding the IB rubric is certainly one of the hardest parts of Literature A. Category C is also the category in which students lose the most points.

To answer what Category C is, it's important to first understand Category B. I really liked how my teacher described Category B; he said it was essentially "winking at the examiner". What he meant by that is you want to show you got "it"; you understood "it"—whatever that "it" might be. A lot of times, IB likes choosing texts for the Paper 1 where there is use of allusion, metaphor, double entendre, etc.; you want to show the examiner that you understood this. A lot of students worry about summarizing; but briefly acknowledging subtext is not summarizing. For example, one year there was a poem that ended with a euphemism to describe butterflies dying. You absolutely should include a brief sentence in your analysis literally stating that the butterflies die; it lets the examiner know that you are knowledgable about the text and understood the text. You want the examiner to read it and then look at you like the image below.

That being said, you also get points in Category B for correctly identifying literary devices. Calling a simile a simile will likely only get you a few points, and successfully identifying more complex devices such as tone shifts, foils, juxtapositions, structure (especially important in poetry), etc., will give you a significant amount of points. 

Now that you know the two aspects of Category B, I'll talk about Category C. Category C, for lack of a better term, is how "correct" you are in your analysis. Calling a simile a simile is great, but it's something most kids can do; in Category C it's much harder to get points. Examiners take a lot into consideration for evaluating this, but there's a few principles. First, if you identify a theme/tone/whatever, there should not be major contradictory evidence that you have to leave out or unconvincingly address. My hypothetical example: if you say the theme of a book is that all people are inherently and absolutely good, and then only analyse moments where characters act with compassion and don't mention all the parts where the villain murders innocent people because its inconvenient for your analysis, you will be docked points. I'm speaking hyperbolically, but this can happen to the best of us on a smaller scale. Second, you should come up with compelling reasons for every literary device you use for why it is significant and what does it add to the work.  For example, does it develop a tone? Then continue and identify a tone shift. Okay, what does the tone shift do? Oh, it illuminates a theme? What is that theme? Evaluators are going to consider how coherent your argument is, was it logical, and does the text support it. It's always a fine line because obviously examiners are going to award novel perspectives, but you also do want clear support in the text. In my personal opinion, I think it's better to have a slightly obvious thesis but then use harder to identify literary devices than trying to support an unique thesis with limited evidence. On one practice we did from some years back, a lot of kids had been docked points because they commented that the author developed a feminist commentary. The marking analysis said that there was not sufficient evidence in the text to support the idea of the feminist commentary, so that argument didn't score as well as others.

For the conclusion, summary should really only be one sentence. Two is pushing it (This rule does not apply for Paper 2, for Paper 1 You should really have no confusion; just end after the big reveal/walkoff to conclude your analysis). In the conclusion, you don't want to introduce new evidence; that is quotations or material that will be analyzed. You do however want to continue the logical progression of your already existing analysis, commenting on its significance and perhaps even drawing the most exciting/general conclusion; in my experience you can really impress examiners by not completely revealing the exact contents of the theme/commentary in the thesis; if you wait to reveal it in the conclusion after building up the entire paper starting with small literary devices and then to large literary devices involving the narrative (tone shifts are your friend), you can get points in organization.

P.S.  Examiners like when you treat a play as a play, poetry as poetry, etc. Thus, I think talking about how the author includes subtext in the script so that actors emphasize certain characteristics is valid and even recommended. If you can, talk about notes in italics because usually this is vital to the play's themes. Otherwise, the author would leave it to individual productions. You can even talk about a directorial choice would influence a theme of the play. Things like this that are unique to theatre aren't necessarily verboten. (This rule is especially true for internal commentaries)

Feel free to ask any additional questions (I'll try to write more concise responses) and good luck!

Edited June 12, 2017 by Nomenclature

[JeffThorsen777]

Thanks for useful information!