zenger69 said:
I'm doing a speech as major work but I believe the questions I ask will probably benefit everyone regardless of their medium (though i could wrong).
I was reading the notes from the examination centre for 2004 and I had a few questions:
1) How do you integrate form, values and meaning into your major work?
2) With your investigation how do you evaluate and synthesis your research rather than analyse?
3) Is it easy getting 49/50 (A Range)? What is a respectable mark?
Thanks
1) Form: Look at structure, how it is presented (I just did a whole Uni essay on the interaction between Form and Content in narrative texts, if you'd like some info on this pm me
)
Values: What are your own values? What do your characters value? This is just something that requires a little bit of thought. I'm sure you already have "values" in there, it's just a matter of finding examples and sticking a great big fluro yellow "I'M A VALUE!!" sticker on it
Meaning: Assuming that you're writing something that was designed to say something, have an impact, teach a lesson or raise awareness about something (or all of the above, even though they're kinda the same), THAT is meaning.
As mentioned before, you're very likely to have already written something that has all of the above - you just have to think about it a little. Writing with the intent of "putting in more form" is not only going to halt the creative juices, but give you a headache - just write for now, and do all the linking later.
2) I would assume that "evaluating" means not only to analyse, but to evaluate with your own opinion a bit (although I'm not really all that savvy with speeches or terminology.... jhakka.... goldendawn... help!). As a banal example: You *could* say that the HSC is stupid because it causes so much stress and is over in a year. However you could also say that the stress caused in the HSC leads to long-term blah blah blah... Ok, let's pick a new example... don't just use research to support what you're saying. Someone else wrote it - that means there's a pretty good chance there are some (even if only minor) differences of opinion, or new ideas you've never seen before. Learn from these - argue with these - debate with them! Don't just quote them and say "this quote says _____".
3) I think it's fairly difficult getting49/50, even more so because english is subjective to the max. A lot of people including myself had big discrepancies of 10 marks or more between the internal and external marks (yup - 10 marks OR MORE!). I wouldn't say that it's because the works themselves were particularly "bad" or "good", but it's subjective. To an extent, doing EE2 is something of a risk because you really can't guarentee with any degree of surety exactly how well you will do.
Naturally, the postmodern stories tend to do a little better, as does innovative exploration of some hard-core theoretical concept. A word of caution. Don't throw your entire MW away simply because it's not going to top the state. A MW is a good MW, even if the Board disagrees. Furthermore, trying to write about something you don't know much about ("working" the system) is going to give you a major headache, as well as putting you at risk of making a fool of yourself.
