Essay advice from Year 10 (soon to become Year 11)
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Essay Advice
16/06/2016 by axonite
Category Exams, IGCSE, Writing | Tags: , commentary, exams, igcse, writing | No Comments
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Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare
13/04/2016 by axonite
Greek words for ‘Love’
The Greek language has four words for “love”:
1. Agápe – undeserved love. In Latin, it is c(h)aritas. As English has the verb “cherish” from this Latin noun, the correct noun in English would be ‘cherishing.’ It is unselfish love as taught by Christ in the Sermon on the Mount and summed up by St. Paul the Apostle in 1 Corinthians 13.
2. Philía or the love between friends.
3. Storgé or familial love, especially between parents and their children and also with close relatives.
4. Éros, which has a pagan sexual sense, a Platonic philosophical sense and a religious sense. The basic meaning is attraction. It is also used for a person being ‘pulled’ towards God.
Sonnet 116 (The Marriage of True Minds) is a declaration, an idealistic manifesto. “Love,” as Shakespeare defines it, is not some shallow self-serving physical attraction, a James Bond style seduction that is really only about bolstering one’s own ego, but rather a “marriage of true minds.” It is reliable and constant (“an ever-fixed mark”) rather than an ephemeral fancy that fades with the beloved’s looks or youthfulness. Thus, it is clear that he is not talking of ‘romantic’ love or physical attraction at all – as the term “of true minds” implies, this is a wider and more lofty ‘love’ that is irrespective of gender or appearances. It encompasses friends (perhaps more so than lovers). It survives arguments and trying times (“looks on tempests and is never shaken”). Shakespeare is so certain of his belief that he states that if he is proved wrong, then he “never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.”
No, it’s not this.
…and certainly not this either.
It’s more like this.
…and this.
These couples will remind you what love is really about
Couple married for 64 years die holding hands, just hours apart
…and these:
Category Exams, IGCSE, Poetry | Tags: , igcse, love, poetry, shakespeare, sonnets | No Comments
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Why Not be a Teacher?
08/03/2016 by axonite
Sir Thomas More: Why not be a teacher? You’d be a fine teacher; perhaps a great one.
Richard Rich: If I was, who would know it?
Sir Thomas More: You; your pupils; your friends; God. Not a bad public, that.
– A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt
materialism –
A tendency to consider material possessions and physical comfort as more important than spiritual values
– Oxford English dictionaryaltruism –
Disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others:
some may choose to work with vulnerable elderly people out of altruism
– Oxford English dictionaryTeaching, healthcare and social work, the “caring professions” (as they are sometimes called) are often derided in the language of politics and seen as unappealing to many due to the fact that they tend to be poorly paid (especially compared to other graduate professions). However, while this may be the case, using one’s talents to help others cannot be a bad thing. Conversely, choosing a career based on how much money one can make is probably not such a good idea. A recently overheard discussion (from two Year 13 students who shall remain nameless) reminded me of this, as one asked the other, “how much can I make in that job?”
Caution: The following video contains strong language.Category Careers, University | Tags: , careers, university | No Comments
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Sredni Vashtar by Saki
01/02/2016 by axonite
I have long been a fan of H.H. Munro (A.K.A. Saki). His caustic humour and fierce intelligence shine through in all his work – he has a peculiar paradoxical blend of civilisation and savagery. This particular story, Sredni Vashtar, is quite typical of his writing. Like many of his stories, it features dark humour, but this time with a macabre twist.
The boy in the story is similar to the one in The Lumber Room – clever, imaginative, isolated and engaged in a quiet war of nerves with a stultifying older relative who has power over him. In both stories, the younger mind prevails.
As you read, pay attention to how Saki manipulates our response to the protagonist, Conradin, and how he makes the ending so effective.
Here, Tom Baker takes a break from battling Daleks and Cybermen, and reads Sredni Vashtar. Enjoy.
Sweet Agony of the Short Narrative
Prezi
Category Exams, IGCSE, Prose | Tags: | No Comments
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The Phoenix by Sylvia Townsend Warner
01/02/2016 by axonite
As you read this short story, you should notice similarities with the first tale in the IGCSE selection (for 2017/2018 examination). Like Sredni Vashata, this story, The Phoenix, features cruelty, human folly, Natural Justice and a highly barbed sense of humour.
The Sylvia Townsend Warner Society
Analysis of The Phoenix
Article on The Phoenix
Category Exams, IGCSE, Prose | Tags: | No Comments
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Adverts for disgusting products
12/11/2015 by axonite
No one would have eaten Filboid Studge as a pleasure, but the grim austerity of its advertisement drove housewives in shoals to the grocers’ shops to clamour for an immediate supply.
Inspired by Saki’s story of advertising psychology, Filboid Studge, the Story of a Mouse that Helped, Year 8 students designed their own advertisements for less than appetising products. Here are a few of their ideas.
Category Advertising | Tags: , advertising, adverts, KS3, Language | No Comments
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Writing with Flair
28/09/2015 by axonite
So many voices offering advice – but here is one of the best:
Ray Bradbury was a writer of immense talent and incredible imagination. Even in his prose, we can see that he was a poet first and foremost, his imagery concise yet vivid. His advice (re-blogged from Open Culture) is this:
Don’t start out writing novels. They take too long. Begin your writing life instead by cranking out “a hell of a lot of short stories,” as many as one per week. Take a year to do it; he claims that it simply isn’t possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row. He waited until the age of 30 to write his first novel, Fahrenheit 451. “Worth waiting for, huh?”
You may love ’em, but you can’t be ’em. Bear that in mind when you inevitably attempt, consciously or unconsciously, to imitate your favorite writers, just as he imitated H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, Arthur Conan Doyle, and L. Frank Baum.
Examine “quality” short stories. He suggests Roald Dahl, Guy de Maupassant, and the lesser-known Nigel Kneale and John Collier. Anything in the New Yorker today doesn’t make his cut, since he finds that their stories have “no metaphor.”
Stuff your head. To accumulate the intellectual building blocks of these metaphors, he suggests a course of bedtime reading: one short story, one poem (but Pope, Shakespeare, and Frost, not modern “crap”), and one essay. These essays should come from a diversity of fields, including archaeology, zoology, biology, philosophy, politics, and literature. “At the end of a thousand nights,” so he sums it up, “Jesus God, you’ll be full of stuff!”
Get rid of friends who don’t believe in you. Do they make fun of your writerly ambitions? He suggests calling them up to “fire them” without delay.
Live in the library. Don’t live in your “goddamn computers.” He may not have gone to college, but his insatiable reading habits allowed him to “graduate from the library” at age 28.Fall in love with movies. Preferably old ones.
Write with joy. In his mind, “writing is not a serious business.” If a story starts to feel like work, scrap it and start one that doesn’t. “I want you to envy me my joy,” he tells his audience.Don’t plan on making money. He and his wife, who “took a vow of poverty” to marry him, hit 37 before they could afford a car (and he still never got around to picking up a license).
List ten things you love, and ten things you hate. Then write about the former, and “kill” the later — also by writing about them. Do the same with your fears.
Just type any old thing that comes into your head. He recommends “word association” to break down any creative blockages, since “you don’t know what’s in you until you test it.”Remember, with writing, what you’re looking for is just one person to come up and tell you, “I love you for what you do.” Or, failing that, you’re looking for someone to come up and tell you, “You’re not nuts like people say.”
Flaubert’s advice is even more direct. He urges writers to be precise and incisive:
“Make me see, by means of a single word, wherein one cab-horse does not resemble the fifty others ahead of it or behind it.”
Links
Writers help Writers
Corbett Harrison
Inspiration Station
Scholastic
Descriptive Writing
Category IGCSE | Tags: , IB, ideas, imagination, KS3, Language, writing | No Comments
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Exam paper practice
19/03/2015 by axonite
IGCSE exam paper practice piece.
Students were asked to answer the following question:
Re-read Background Material by Tony Harrison.Explore the ways in which Harrison makes looking at the photographs of his parents asignificant and moving experience.Here are a couple of the best:
background_material_01
background_material_02Reminders:
Look at the title first – extrapolate.
Very few people remember to do this (and thus fail to gain a genuine insight). In the case of this poem, while several people spotted the literal and figurative applications of “background” in the text, only two or three thought to state that the term often refers to the research that an author does prior to writing – thus, the implication is that Harrison’s parents (at least in this poem) have been reduced to mere data to serve his own storytelling. Again, one may wish to extrapolate on this.
State the author’s name.
It is often buried in the copywriter information.
Avoid slang and colloquial expressions.
A disappointingly large number of people used the terms “mum” and “dad.” This is formal work and demands a formal register.
This is a poem – not prose.
Show the examiner that you know the difference. Comment on what the poetic devices do (but remember that you also need to do this when writing about prose).
“Both are different” – this is impossible!
Avoid litotes.
Several people wrote expressions along the lines of “not many people” instead of ‘few people’ or “did not have much significance” instead or ‘had little significance.’
An idea, a notion or a belief?
An idea is an inspiration for action – it is not the same as a notion or a belief. “John had a great idea – he would build an automatic nail clipper.”
Do not scribble out.
Why draw the examiner’s attention to what you’ve done wrong?! Draw his/her attention to what you’ve done well.
Do not read in what is not there!
A few people decided to force a moral or theme onto the piece with no evidence from the text – or at least no attempt to suggest any. “They still love each other” – Do they? Prove it!
Category IGCSE, Poetry | Tags: , igcse, poetry, year 10 | No Comments
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The Joy of Comics
17/03/2015 by axonite
Comics (or comic books) are something that many people love to read, but of which parents often disapprove. Don’t despair. Comic books are good for your health! In Japan, businessmen openly read comic books on the train.Comics are a good way into reading, but should not be the
only thing you read. For me, it was discovering comics at the age of 8 that helped me improve my reading (from remedial to the most fluent in my class). Of course, it didn’t stop there, though. The interest in comics then ignited my love of books in general. It should be the same for you. Don’t let your Mum make you throw out your comics (I used to hide mine in the wardrobe until I was finally forced to ditch the lot – and they’d be worth quite a bit of money today!).
Category Uncategorised | Tags: , comics, heroes, KS3, Language, superheroes | No Comments
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Year 10 Imagist Poetry
02/02/2015 by axonite
The poet Ezra Pound, an innovator of Imagism, stated that there were three rules to composing Imagist poetry:
* Direct treatment of the subject.
* Conciseness of expression
* Composed in the rhythm of the musical phrase, not in the rhythm of the metronome (creating new rhythms instead of tired worn-out ones).Here are a few Imagist poems from Year 10:
He remembered the past,
like it was a slap in the face,
a reminder of when he had been a disgrace.Alinkar
She felt happy like a raisin, crinkling her face to form a smile.
Depression settled in like a paper cut, thinking it is nothing until the small bead of blood transforms to a stream.
He remembered the past like an old man’s hair, no longer existing.Hui Ling
The factory was quiet,
as the theatre past midnight,
empty but once filled with energy.The birds flew across the sky,
like streaks of gold and silver,
flying off into the brightening horizon.Sze Khun
The bird flew across the sky like my thoughts soaring across my mind as I daydream all day.
She felt happy like a singing lark then she got shot by a hunter.Ernest T
The old woman considered death as simply an old friend, who took her hand, smiling, and walked her into the darkness
She felt happy, her joy a hibernating creature, stirring fitfully from its slumber
Depression settled like a stream of maple syrup over a stack of pancakes that I had no appetite for
Aishah
The bird flew across the sky like a teleporter
Reaching destinations by the fastest route in a fraction of a secondThe sun came up like unreciprocated love
Blinding you before you realize it hurtsThe factory was quiet like a museum
Haunted and empty, without its exhibitsYu Tong
Depression settled like a stone on a grave slowly cracking it’s humanity away.
She felt happy like a seed of joy had been planted in her heart. blooming with lush petals of ecstasy.
Jia Wen
Depression settled,
Like a dense heavy blanket,
Draping itself around my shoulders
Dragging me down with itThe factory was quiet
As if the atmosphere was on mute
And God had forgotten to turn up the volume.Yin Jun (Chloe)
Category IGCSE, Poetry | Tags: , Language, poems, poetry | No Comments
