Monthly Archives: May 2008

Literature Essay Tips

If you are in Year 11 you will have to write three literature essays at the end of the year. In this post I will give you a few tips on how to write a good essay.

When writing a literature essay you should:

  • select topics carefully to ensure so that you can deal with the demands of the topic before beginning
  • •take note of the key words in bold to guide your answers
  • •keep to the topic
  • •avoid trying to use rote-learned essays from previous years’ papers
  • •use the planning space provided and structure your ideas
  • •support your ideas with appropriate evidence / examples from the text
  • •provide sufficient evidence to enable you to achieve the standard, using the suggested minimum word length as a guide
  • •understand the requirements of the standard eg in the short texts essay you must answer on at least two texts, and your answers need to show sufficient balance across both texts
  • answer both parts of the topic and refrain from presenting only a plot summary
  • •proof-read your answers, particularly for extended texts. Often a student’s punctuation lets them down.
  • Students also often include detailed examples as “add ons” using only commas, resulting in rambling “run on” sentences. There is also a tendency for students to use conjunctions to amplify ideas, which results in long, grammatically incorrect sentences.

Mutant Ninja Dogs

Our very own folk parody duo Tangible Titans are on Youtube. Here is their video of ‘Mutant Ninja Dogs’, a song that they feel highlights a real life crisis that is occurring in the world today. The Titans are trying to illustrate the true horror of small dogs through song, in the hope that it might change the world.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

All Quiet On The Western Front

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Those students studying war poetry may be interested in ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’. This is a classic of the cinema, now in the public domain. The film is adapted from a novel by German author Erich Maria Remarque and it follows a group of German schoolboys who are talked into enlisting at the beginning of World War 1 by their jingoistic teacher. The story is told entirely through the experiences of the young German recruits and highlights the tragedy of war through the eyes of individuals. As the boys witness death and mutilation all around them, any preconceptions about the enemy and the rights and wrongs of the conflict disappear, leaving them angry and bewildered. This is highlighted in the scene where Paul mortally wounds a French soldier and then weeps bitterly as he fights to save his life while trapped in a shell crater with the body. The film is not about heroism but about drudgery and futility and the gulf between the concept of war and the actuality.

Making a Persuasive Speech

Vodpod videos no longer available.

The slideshow gives you some tips on how to deliver a persuausive speech. All Year 12 students will deliver an oral presentation this year and the first task will be to deliver a persuausive speech.

I have an expanded version of this slideshow that includes video that I will add to the Year 12 wikis.