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Holy ****!!

rhapsody!

Comparitive study for english.
Longest thing I've ever written in my entire life. And I can't find my notes anywhere.

But seriously, mine came to about eleven A4 pages and my handwriting is fairly small so for some in my class it could come to... god.. unimaginable figures.

Does anyone think the crap involved in english is absolute, well, crap? It's bad enough we have the play, the poetry and the rest, but the comparitive study is just ridiculous!!

I'm not back to school for a week so I suppose in that time I should look for the pages, and I'll try.

I just think it's so stupid the amount of complete boll0cks we have to write.

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PurpleFistMixer

You don't have to write that much. The longest comparative I ever wrote was 8 pages (my handwriting is fairly large), and that was something I did over a week. In the exam I wrote 6ish... possibly 7.
Quality over quantity anyway. You only get an hour or so to do it anyway, so they're not expecting a dissertation.

littlneutralone

Careful now :pac: I definitely overspent time on comparative in both the mocks and the real exam (nullifying the purpose of the mocks incidentally), could have written far better Othello essays. Wrote maybe 5/6 pages in both cases. Probably because I always started with Comparative. It's easy to get caught up telling the stories of the texts, writing reams without comparing enough. I'd give you tips but I never learnt how to not do that...

Does anyone think the crap involved in english is absolute, well, crap? It's bad enough we have the play, the poetry and the rest, but the comparitive study is just ridiculous!!

That was my motto baby...English should be split into Language and Literature, Language a compulsory subject if they have to, Literature most definitely not. Fair enough if they want us to develop skills of comprehension. But dissecting the same irrelevant play for two years...it upsets the mind.

insinkerator

Just remember that you have three things to write about so theyarent expecting anywhere near as much detail as the would for something like your shakespearian play.

And while writing it, the key to the essay is compare. You could write one of the best english pieces in the entire country, with the most flowery language an fantastic in depth analysis, however if you dont obviously compare the three texts(for the purpose of the comparitive the film is referrred to as a text) then you will get nothing higher than a C because you didnt answer the question. Aim for 4 to 6 comparison words per page, eg Similarly, Just Like, opposite to, in complete contrast, unlike

Just out of interest, what texts are ye doing for the comparitive?

rhapsody!

^^^

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon
Philadelphia Here I Come by someone something Sheridan..
Cinema Paradiso

Our teacher is alright, but she never lets us do the other option, there are two right? Like.. theme and issue and then another one. But during the year she only did theme and issue. Our theme is "Isolation".

It's so... ughhh..

I loved English, I still do, I try to write every day. I hope to publish one day. But English at school just completely drains me and nowadays I've found I can write nothing creative!

We're doing Macbeth. And anyway, we all know Shakespeare was a fraud. LOL. :P

insinkerator

I hate the curious incident of the dog in the nightime, we read it in second year as a "class project" but our teacher was a lazy bi*ch and instead of actually reading it, got the tape book and played it. It might not mean much to you now, ut have a flick through the book, at times he lists out long lists of signs he can see. Something that, when being read, can be easily skipped, nope we had to sit there and painstakingly listen to the whole book.

However it does give a fantastic insight into what the life of an autistic person must be like.

I didnt any of the three for my comparitve so im afraid i cant be of much help. And also your teacher is seriously taking a risk by only doing one. In the LC you get a choice of two from three. for example las year, we had Cultural context, Literary Genre and Theme. Ad on the paper ws LG and theme i think. im pretty sure theme and issue are one question,(dont quote me on it though:)) meaning ye could end up with nothing to write on the LC.

Ya english in school isnt the nicest. The course is too long and its too focused on the asthetics than the basics. 5 marks out of 50 are given for spelling? WTF? its no wonder people cant spell any more.....

Dave147

rhapsody! wrote: »

^^^

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon
Philadelphia Here I Come by someone something Sheridan..
Cinema Paradiso

Our teacher is alright, but she never lets us do the other option, there are two right? Like.. theme and issue and then another one. But during the year she only did theme and issue. Our theme is "Isolation".

It's so... ughhh..

I loved English, I still do, I try to write every day. I hope to publish one day. But English at school just completely drains me and nowadays I've found I can write nothing creative!

We're doing Macbeth. And anyway, we all know Shakespeare was a fraud. LOL. :P

Isolation is your theme? Thats ridiculous, thats not even close to being the point of Cinema Paradiso, CP being my favourite movie of all time.. There is so much to that movie it's just amazing.. I presume you are watching Tornatore's original Nuovo Cinema Paradiso and not the Directors Cut. I suppose if you have a good teacher you could make isolation work, but it takes from the beauty of the film. Enjoy it, please.

Dave147

Enjoy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sBm6RfCHow

Alfredo: Living here day by day, you think it's the center of the world. You believe nothing will ever change. Then you leave: a year, two years. When you come back, everything's changed. The thread's broken. What you came to find isn't there. What was yours is gone. You have to go away for a long time... many years... before you can come back and find your people. The land where you were born. But now, no. It's not possible. Right now you're blinder than I am.
Salvatore: Who said that? Gary Cooper? James Stewart? Henry Fonda? Eh?
Alfredo: No, Toto. Nobody said it. This time it's all me. Life isn't like in the movies. Life... is much harder.

brianthebard

11 pages is way too much op, the poor examiner. I wrote five pages max in my lc and got 67/70 for the comparative. Quality always wins over quantity. tbh even if you are making good points in an essay that long they will get lost, the examiner won't have the patience or inclination to go through it with a fine tooth comb, and in the end you will lose out.

PurpleFistMixer

rhapsody! wrote: »

Our teacher is alright, but she never lets us do the other option, there are two right? Like.. theme and issue and then another one. But during the year she only did theme and issue. Our theme is "Isolation".

There's actually 3 (possibly 4 but there's only 3 on in any given year), when I did it it was Theme/Issue, Cultural Context, or Literary Genre. You do 2 to cover your bases... We did the first 2.

I did The Curious Incident... in 4th year... It was okay, but I'd hate to study it. I think the whole viewpoint of him being autistic gets kinda laboured. Interesting insight etc. (though I have to wonder how well a non-autistic person can really explain it), but meh, give me some flowery descriptions already.

ryanj

if you're finding that theme a struggle, just pick another one - there's no specific theme etc that you have to pick...

Aisling(",)

oh god.
have most people got this prepared gong into 6th year?
we studied two of the texts individually-philadelphia here i come and jane eyre- in 5th year but we havent even watched our filim yet we think its going to be the truman show.
what themes are most people following?our proposed one is the journey of self discovery and so far its the only one weve worked on aswell as the differences in cultural context.

and op 11 pages!!wow!
i can do some waffling but thats unreal.id probably only do 5 or 6.

Dave147

Forget about the OP having 11 pages and small writing, that's going to contain a fair amount of waffling.. I did theme of love, 3 texts were Macbeth, Wuthering Heights and the film was Cinema Paradiso.. I absolutely loved english, but I was able to express myself very well but at the same time not trying to fill as much paper. I knew my **** so to speak so wasn't worried about the real nerds in my class trying to write 400 pages and all this crap. I think I wrote 6 pages before my leaving cert, teacher read it and thought it was fantastic. I guess I was lucky to be studying my favourite movie and one of my favourite books lol, got myself a B1 in honours then

:D

Basically, don't do the post mortem about who wrote what etc, worry about your own and you'll be just fine, and no, you don't need to have this prepared by now. Have it prepared by next June!

ryanj

I've got to agree with dave147 - I wrote 4 pages for the comparative and I ended up with an A1, so its definitely not about length. One bit of advice which I tell all my students/grinds students is that it is essential to know how and what you are going to write before you seriously begin studying - sit down now, or at the start of september, and plan how you will write your answer. Make sure you know what your answer needs (how many comparisons etc, how to best fit the PCLM in etc), how it should be best formed etc. When you know this it will make it all seem like a lot less work, which it will be, because you'll know what you need to look for in each text and what you need to use. This could, I'm only speculating, cut down on the 11-page length, as maybe this length was because of one not knowing how they should/want to form their answer and compensating for this by writing as much as possible in the allotted time. I'm not criticizing this at all though; everyone does this. If the 11-page length was not down to this, planning before you prepare your answer would/could allow you to cut some length anyways.

andyman

We're starting Philadelphia Here I come the minute we go back tomorrow. We already have one text done which was The Plough and the Stars, which was pretty good and it's quite easy to cover the Theme/Issue that we're covering which is relationships.

I have a lot of notes on it as well. Too much if you ask me. Hopefully when we get Philadelphia done then just go for the next comparitive. We've got 4 poets covered (Longley, Montague, Mahon, Walcott) and will be covering a couple of more next year (Most likely the two females). And we've got all character questions on Macbeth covered in huge detail.

muffinman

I wrote 2.5 - 3 pages of (pretty small) handwriting for the Comparative and got an A1.. Quality not quantity may be a cliché but it's 100% valid.. Stick to the point and only write what's necessary, i.e. don't ramble.. Have key points prepared but don't learn off an answer, as the posing of the question varies. Get English Key Notes by Tony Lake and structure your answer around his.. It helps you isolate what's needed and is really good for all of Paper 2..

Jello

Yeah I always find myself sorta stuck for time in English exams. Comparative isn't too bad though, I find Macbeth much worse.

We're doing A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce (worst book ever - complete sh*te with no plot whatsoever, just Joyce rambling on about youth and other crap for about 300 pages:mad:, I can hardly remember most of it even), The Crucible by Arthur Miller (haven't read it yet) and the film Inside I'm Dancing (pretty good actually).

Can't see myself writing more than 5 or 6 pages for it though.

KnifeWRENCH

Don't worry - we did absoultely nothing on the Comparitive in 5th year, and we got everything covered in 6th year. There's no need to write 11 pages! :eek: I only wrote about 4 in my exam. As long as you do what the question asks and compare the texts, and not just outline the plots, then you will get very high marks.

I answered on Cultural Context in the exam (we had studied Theme or Issue but it didn't come up) Great thing about Cultural Context is that it's nearly always the same question, just worded differently. Great thing about Theme or Issue is that the question is broad and you can answer about anything.

The English course is definitely long and demanding, but the point of it being Higher Level is that it's some bit challenging. Comparitive is not that difficult once you've answered a few sample questions and know how to approach them.

yurmothrintites

I never wrote more than seven pages for my comparitive and I wrote less in the exam.

I did Pride and Prejudice, Juno and the Paycock and A Room With A View.....can't remember the themes though

Keep it short and sweet, stick to your point and don't overexpand on your ideas.

rhapsody!

square_igloo wrote: »

Don't worry - we did absoultely nothing on the Comparitive in 5th year, and we got everything covered in 6th year. There's no need to write 11 pages! :eek: I only wrote about 4 in my exam. As long as you do what the question asks and compare the texts, and not just outline the plots, then you will get very high marks.

I answered on Cultural Context in the exam (we had studied Theme or Issue but it didn't come up) Great thing about Cultural Context is that it's nearly always the same question, just worded differently. Great thing about Theme or Issue is that the question is broad and you can answer about anything.

The English course is definitely long and demanding, but the point of it being Higher Level is that it's some bit challenging. Comparitive is not that difficult once you've answered a few sample questions and know how to approach them.

Yes I do think outlining the storyline was my main problem there. Even the teacher said it was abit too much.. :P
I think she might only be pressuring us to write alot because in that way I suppose we'll be well prepared for the exam.

-- And what's this about decreasing exam time by 20 mins... that's insane. Like it isn't bad enough already!

yay_for_summer

We started comparative after Hallowe'en of sixth year. And got it all covered no problem, so no, you don't have to have some of it done in 5th year. Actually we did The Plough and The Stars in 5th year and decided we didn't like it so didn't do it - a month wasted on that and we still got everything done.

Also, 11 pages?!?! I wrote six the first time I did a comparative and was told it was way too long and I wouldn't have time in the exam to do that. The teacher was dead right, four, maybe five pages was all I had time for. It is possible to fit all your points in that - you don't have to explain anything.

Best tip I got was to assume the examiner knows your three texts well, so when you say for example in PHIC "when Gar's friends don't know how to say goodbye properly" you don't have to write reams explaining how they show this. Just show how it's similar/different to a situation in another text.