Just came upon this really handy list of online resources for Macbeth – definitely worth a look!
http://webenglishteacher.com/macbeth.html
Weird, this is possibly the shortest blog post on this site…
This is also brill – Shakespearean language side by side with modern translation!
http://nfs.sparknotes.com/macbeth/page_10.html
Cultural Context
Cultural context looks at the society the characters live in and at how their culture can affect their behaviour and their opportunities.
Think about where and when each text is set.
Think about the values and attitudes that matter to these characters and about how they formed these beliefs – did their culture influence them?
The most powerful forces in a society include religion, gender roles, attitudes towards sex and marriage, social status/class, job opportunities/emigration, (wealth/poverty), politics, authority figures, stereotypes/ethnic identity.
Sample questions – 70 marks
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
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“The main characters in texts are often in conflict with the world or culture they inhabit”
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“The cultural context can have a significant influence on the behaviour of the central character/characters in a text”
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“Understanding the cultural context of a text adds to our enjoyment of a good narrative”
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Write an essay in which you compare the texts you have studied in your comparative course in the light of your understanding of the term the cultural context.
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“A narrative text creates its own unique world in which the reader can share”
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In simple English you need to be able to talk about
how their culture affects their behaviour (or do they rebel) AND
what you liked/learned from exploring these different cultures.
Sample questions – 30 + 40 marks
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(a) Discuss the importance of social class in shaping your understanding of the cultural context of one text you have studied
(b) Compare the importance of social class in shaping your understanding of the cultural context of two other texts you have studied.
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(a) Show how this statement might apply to one text on your comparative course. In your answer you may refer to the roles and status allocated to either males or females or both. (30)
(b) Compare how the roles and status allocated to males or females, or both, aided your understanding of the cultural context in two other texts on your comparative course. (40)
_______________________________________________________
“Understanding the cultural context of a text allows you to see how values and attitudes are shaped”
(a) Discuss in relation to one text you have studied (30 marks)
(b)Compare the way the values and attitudes are shaped in two other texts you have studied. (40 marks)
_______________________________________________________
Imagine that you are a journalist sent to investigate the cultural context of the worlds of the three texts from your comparative course.
(a) Write an article on the cultural context you found most interesting. (30)
(b) In a second article compare the cultural contexts of the other two
worlds with each other. (40)
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“The cultural context of a narrative usually determines how the story will unfold”
(a) Compare the way in which the cultural context influenced the storyline in two of the texts you have studied (40 marks)
(b) Show how the cultural context influenced the storyline in a third text you have studied (30 marks)
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(a) With reference to one of the texts you have studied in your comparative course, write a note on the ways in which the cultural context is established by the author.
(b) Compare the ways in which the cultural context is established by the authors of two other texts on your comparative course.
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I’ve just been browsing the site, checking that all the links are working and that the index includes all the posts that are relevant to all you poor sods out there who are doing the Leaving Cert. Anyway, it occured to me that the index page has expanded to such an extent that it’s hard to see the wood for the trees now so…
With this in mind here’s a simple checklist with links that you can refer back to whenever you need them. This may sound obvious but I’ll say it anyway – any words that appear in BLUE are clickable and will take you directly to the blog post in question…
So here goes nothing!
1. Comprehensions – begin with the General Advice post, then take a look at the different Types of Comprehensions which appear. You need to get practice in Describing a Personality and exploring the Feelings & Atmosphere created in a text. If you want help Answering Style Questions, once you’ve downloaded the spreadsheet of techniques have a look at this Sample Comprehension Answer which examines common mistakes.
Don’t forget that you must be confident discussing Visual Texts so this Sample Visual Text Answer should come in useful, along with these tips for discussing Book Covers and this wonderful post from my mate Michelle on The Art of Photography.
This is not an exhaustive list. Off the top of my head I know in the past students were asked if they considered a piece of writing funny and had to explain why – not an easy task but this post on Comedy might help.
One year recently students were asked to explore the enduring power of the mysterious in tv, books and film but I haven’t gotten my head around answering that one myself yet (which is weird really because I obsessively read my way through over 50 Agatha Cristie novels when I was 14).
You also need to be able to clearly distinguish between the language of information, language of argument, language of persuasion and the language of narration/description because sometimes they specifically ask you to identify and comment on the features of one type of writing (informative/argumentative/persuasive/descriptive) which are evident in the text. Sometimes this is phrased slightly differently and you are asked to comment on features of speech writing, or travel writing or autobiographical writing or on the journalistic style used in a newspaper/magazine article.
Occasionally students are asked to comment on the Title of the passage, or to suggest an alternative title. You could be asked to select a quote(s) used by the writer and comment on how effective and appropriate it is. You can also be asked to trace the logic employed in a text or to discuss how effectively the writer has constructed their argument to bring you around to their way of thinking.
Ultimately, practice practice practice is what will help you to improve – by all means read these blog posts to your hearts content but then DO SOMETHING with them. Apply the knowledge by practising using past exam papers or whatever speeches, articles, stories, travelogues you want.
If yet more individual written work sounds too hideously boring, sit down with a friend, pick a text (any text), come up with sample questions based on what usually comes up and discuss what you’d put into your answer. This is a really effective way of getting the brain active and bouncing ideas off someone else is always a good study technique.
Perhaps you could draw your own infographics for information, argument, persuasion, narration, description, speeches, articles, short stories, personal essays etc… We’ve been doing this to some success in class recently, it really forces the brain to clarify things.
2. Question B – begin with the General Advice, then make sure you get clarity around the layout and style required for the following:
and don’t forget Speeches/Radio Talks and Articles which can come up both here and in the extended essay section. Personally I don’t think you should choose the same Question B and extended essay (ie write two speeches, or two articles) because you can’t really show off your range of skills to the examiner if you do this. Pay close attention to the wording of the question – for example a ‘report’ and a ‘news report’ are not the same thing! One is an informative document compiled from surveys and questionaires on a particular topic, the other is a newspaper article reporting on an event or incident which has just occured.
3. Composing – this is the section that requires you to write an extended essay (in a particular genre) twice as long as the Question B above. It is worth 25% of your overall grade in English.
You may want to begin with the Six Rules of Essay Writing, then check out the type of Essay Topics that come up and some Sample Essay Titles I gave my Leaving Certs for their house exam. Read this blog post if you’re searching for Inspiration.
Then there are the questions: What is an Appropriate Topic? How do you move from Word to Paragraph? How do you achieve Originality vs Cliche? And a discussion of why you really need to Trust Your Voice.
There are four basic genres that recur in this section: Short Stories, Personal Essays, Speeches/Debates and Newspaper/Magazine Articles. Very ccasionally you’ll see a “series of 3 diary entries” or “a descriptive essay” in here too.
Short stories – so you need to be familiar with the Language of Narration/Description and you might want to check out Sample Short Story 1 and Sample Short Story 2.
If you want to buy and read a collection of short stories try the newly released “Silver Threads of Hope“.
Personal Essays – you need to be clear on the difference between a personal essay and a short story but the Language of Description remains central to this genre. You may want to check out Sample Personal Essay 1 and Sample Personal Essay 2.
If you want to buy and read a collection of personal essays try “A Page in the Life”, a collection from the Marian Finucane radio show (they are each only 500 words long however – your personal essay would need to be in the region of at least 1200 words in the exam). Two of my favourite personal essays are available online “I’m still alive and writing is my fighting” and “The five funniest things people said to me when my father died” – even though they were published in a newspaper and a magazine respectively their style falls into the category of the personal essay.
Articles – get reading newspapers and magazines and start paying attention to the style used. You may want to check out this Sample Newspaper Article.
You could also get a giggle a day by regularly visiting www.thepotato.ie an Irish satirical website which proves that you can make something up and still make it sound utterly convincing if you adopt the appropriate journalistic style. Also see our Links page for a longer list of online newspapers.
Speeches / Debates – ensure you understand the difference between them. Debates almost exclusively make use of argumentative techniques whereas speeches combine argument and persuasion. Check out these sample debate topics; better still practice writing one!
Check out this debate “Does God Exist?” on this link – but feel free to skip the first 12 minutes which are just introductions. Of course if you’ve taken part in the Concern Debates, the Mental Health Public Speaking competition or any form of public speaking through your local Dail na nOg or Soroptimists society then you’ve at a real advantage going into the exams.
If you want to buy a book of famous speeches I recommend “Speeches that Changed the World” and “Great Irish Speeches“. Alternatively, just browse speeches on youtube or better still check out www.ted.com for mindblowing talks on every topic imaginable!
If you’d like to try some collaborative writing with your mates you could either use edmodo (see this post on the benefits of online collaboration) or you could just use google docs – all you need is a gmail account, click on “drive”, start a new document and then email the link to the people you want to write the piece with you…
I think that’s it folks! There are so many links in this post it’ll be a miracle if they’re all working so if any of the links lead you to the wrong place please send me a message and I’ll fix it.
Hope this helps,
Evelyn
Eek… it’s nearly Christmas! So here comes shopping, frosty mornings, eating til you want to vomit and then eating some more, boxes of disgusting biscuits, crazy relatives visiting and books, books, books. The best thing for me about two weeks off school is having the chance to sit down and read. So in the spirit of spreading my reading addiction, here are some old favourites that I recommend!
Searching for the meaning of life? Try “The Happiness Hypothesis” by Jonathan Haidt.
You could also read “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” by Robert Pirsig – my favourite book when I was 17… tough going though, requires intense concentration!
If you feel like evolution, science and basically everything in the universe is a bit of a mystery to you, read “A Short History of Nearly Everything” by Bill Bryson. You will feel smarter AND know more stuff by the time you get to the end.
In my youth I wrote some pretty bad poetry. It would have been a lot better if I’d had this book because I might actually have had half a clue what I was doing!
I also love love love stand-up comedians and secretly wish I could join their club – 
except I’m not really that funny so instead I semi-stalk them in print hoping some of their funny will rub off on me (wow, that sounds weird when I read it back…). Two of my faves are “The Naked Jape” by Jimmy Carr and Tina Fey’s autobiography.
The next lot are books I randomly grabbed off the bookshelf because I love them and they are fab!
Finally, some recent publications. I’ve just had the incredible privilege of having my teacher of the year speech published in Gene Kerrigan’s brilliant analysis of the boom and the bust “The Big Lie”. If you have a vague nagging sense that your head’s still spinning and you don’t quite fully grasp what the hell just happened to our country, this is the one for you!
Meanwhile if you’re the kind of person who likes to look to the future instead of lamenting the mistakes of the past try “An Optimist’s Tour of the Future” by Mark Stevenson (see above!).
Finally, if you’d like to know lots of random fascinating facts about the universe, try “A Neutron Walks into a Bar” and if you’re up for a hilarious take on Irish History try “1916 and all that”…
Posted in Comprehensions, Discussions, Teachers
Tagged book recommendations, christmas presents, leaving cert english
For their house exam, my students have 1hr 30mins to write a work of inspired creative genius. So no pressure then! They’ll have to choose between a speech, a debate, a personal essay, a newspaper article or a descriptive essay and they have no idea what the topics will be… eek! (I’ll post them here on Friday after the exam).
So today, with the exams looming tomorrow, they asked me how the hell they can prepare. As well as revising the stylistic features required of each genre (speech, article, personal essay, descriptive writing) and the six rules of essay writing, here’s what we came up with:
How to prepare when you don’t know what the topic will be…
Update: as promised, here are the essay topics my students faced into for their house exams on Friday last:
Write a composition on any ONE of the following:
1. “Write a lighthearted speech, to be delivered to your classmates, on your pet hates in life”
2. “Write a newspaper article in which you uncover and expose a scandal”
3. “Write an entertaining descriptive essay for a competition under the title “If I ran this school“.
4. “Write a debate speech in which you argue for or against the motion that “The future of publishing is digital” (I got this from a mock paper)
5. “Write a personal essay entitled “I’m weird but that’s OK“.
Comments Off on Seeing Blind
Posted in Composing, Leaving Cert Paper 1, MSM students
Tagged Essay, leaving cert english, paper one, prepare
