English Comparative studies

Funkstard · 16-05-2006 10:04pm #1

Does anyone know roughly how many comparative words should be in your essay? Some of you 'tute heads know thing. My theme/issue essay is clocking in at 16, and even though I got a b1/a2 off my teacher I think it's too few

PrettyInPunk · 16-05-2006 10:11pm

16 pages??what the ****?

your comparative should be around 4 pages// or so i thought..

claire h · 16-05-2006 10:32pm

Funkstard wrote:

Does anyone know roughly how many comparative words should be in your essay? Some of you 'tute heads know thing. My theme/issue essay is clocking in at 16, and even though I got a b1/a2 off my teacher I think it's too few

As in... the number of times you're comparing texts to one another, the things that they write the Cs for? Sixteen is plenty, 'specially if the points made are valid.

Funkstard · 16-05-2006 10:59pm

Yeh, jesus not 16 pages! It's 6 and a half I think. 16 is plenty? good....the revision course i did at easter, the teacher told us that you pretty much can't go longer than 3 sentences without making a comparison. That seems ridiculous. I don't have one for the first page and a half though which is a bit long though, but that's all the introduction & my anchor text.

GrumPy · 16-05-2006 11:05pm

Funkstard wrote:

Yeh, jesus not 16 pages! It's 6 and a half I think. 16 is plenty? good....the revision course i did at easter, the teacher told us that you pretty much can't go longer than 3 sentences without making a comparison. That seems ridiculous. I don't have one for the first page and a half though which is a bit long though, but that's all the introduction & my anchor text.

meh, english is a weird ass subject, you could get a b3, and someone else could recorrect it and give you a d1. Aslong as I pass, I'll be happy (gonna r4pe art, history and geog for points)

Aoibheann · 16-05-2006 11:25pm

Funkstard wrote:

Yeh, jesus not 16 pages! It's 6 and a half I think. 16 is plenty? good....the revision course i did at easter, the teacher told us that you pretty much can't go longer than 3 sentences without making a comparison. That seems ridiculous. I don't have one for the first page and a half though which is a bit long though, but that's all the introduction & my anchor text.

You should try and make links between the texts in the intro.. like say for theme "each text deals with the theme of X but in different ways. Text A explores q aspect, Text B another, Text C another." or something like that, maybe phrased somewhat better, I dunno, I'm not much help really!

GrumPy · 16-05-2006 11:30pm

Aoibheann Brady wrote:

I dunno, I'm not much help really!

YEAH, ffs, screw you and stfu

(only jokin, good advice, structure early on in the question gives a good impression)

Raphael · 17-05-2006 7:35am

Funkstard wrote:

Does anyone know roughly how many comparative words should be in your essay? Some of you 'tute heads know thing. My theme/issue essay is clocking in at 16, and even though I got a b1/a2 off my teacher I think it's too few

You need to have 10. You get a potential 7 marks for each comparison, so once you have ten you can potentially get all 70. If you only have, say, 5, you're getting marked out of 35

Gangsta · 18-05-2006 3:12pm

Not true. I wrote 3comparisons in the mock and I got 55/70.

Raphael · 18-05-2006 3:50pm

That's great. Key word there is mock though. The people that correct the mocks mightn't be the ones that correct the LC. They could just be broke undergraduate students afaik.

It's not just the points themselves, the examiner goes through the essay and basically looks for keywords like "is similar to" or "contrasts". They put a C in the margin for each of those. They need 10 for it to be out of 70.

Funkstard · 18-05-2006 4:22pm

So the PCLM marking scheme doesn't really apply to the comparative q?

Faerie · 18-05-2006 4:48pm

Funkstard wrote:

Yeh, jesus not 16 pages! It's 6 and a half I think. 16 is plenty? good....the revision course i did at easter, the teacher told us that you pretty much can't go longer than 3 sentences without making a comparison. That seems ridiculous. I don't have one for the first page and a half though which is a bit long though, but that's all the introduction & my anchor text.

Every 3 sentences! That is insane! You have to back your comparative statement up so there will be no comparative phrases/words used in that paragraph. The way I do it is I make a statement like 'In text A the role of women in society is viewed in a traditional way', and I go on to back up my point in the next paragraph. Then I make a statement like 'Similarly in Text B the women occupy a traditional role in society' and I go on to back up that point. And I get A1s in English so that teacher's statement is ridiculous!

Raphael · 18-05-2006 9:54pm

Funkstard wrote:

So the PCLM marking scheme doesn't really apply to the comparative q?

It does. The number of comparisons just affects the potential marks

Say you're filling a bucket with water. Now, the PCLM affects how much water you put in the bucket. But the 10 comparisons affects the size of the bucket. Get me?

ThrownAway · 22-05-2006 3:04pm

Out of Cultural Context, Vision and Viewpoint and Theme and Issue which is the most likely to come up?

Do you have to learn all three or could you get away with just two??

I've only got Theme and Issue covered.

Garret · 22-05-2006 7:36pm

Vision and viewpoint isnt on our course this year. Its literary genre and the other two you mentioned. Out of them, cultural context and theme or issue are prob gonna come up

:| · 22-05-2006 8:00pm

Garret wrote:

Vision and viewpoint isnt on our course this year. Its literary genre and the other two you mentioned. Out of them, cultural context and theme or issue are prob gonna come up

*crosses fingers and prays* theme or issue!

ThrownAway · 22-05-2006 9:50pm

Thanks, I'm really leaving stuff to the last minute but my teacher was very unclear about the whole thing when I asked her... that and I was out of school too.

Funkstard · 25-05-2006 12:13pm

Just another point, quotes aren't of much importance in the comparative are they? My teacher gave me a b2/b1 in an essay, saying I needed to have a quote to back up every major point. There was 2 paragraphs nearly the length of a page and he said it was too long without a quote.

I was talking to my gf about it then and her teacher in the institute said that you don't need any quotes in the comparative. It's not the ****ing single text, it's about comparisons & contrasts in each text. It's this **** that really pisses me off, my teacher telling me such tripe. I mean I have 5 or 6 quotes in the whole thing, and IMO that's more than enough.

ThrownAway · 25-05-2006 3:07pm

Yeah 5 or 6 quotes tops should be fine.

PrettyInPunk · 25-05-2006 4:30pm

Funkstard wrote:

Just another point, quotes aren't of much importance in the comparative are they? My teacher gave me a b2/b1 in an essay, saying I needed to have a quote to back up every major point. There was 2 paragraphs nearly the length of a page and he said it was too long without a quote.

I was talking to my gf about it then and her teacher in the institute said that you don't need any quotes in the comparative. It's not the ****ing single text, it's about comparisons & contrasts in each text. It's this **** that really pisses me off, my teacher telling me such tripe. I mean I have 5 or 6 quotes in the whole thing, and IMO that's more than enough.

a qoute or two would do no harm but you most certainly dont need one to back up every point!

English Comparative studies

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