Need advice for English (1 Viewer)

[deathpool87]

I am currently in year 11 and am doing business, legal, ancient, IPT, general maths and English advanced. I am doing well in the other subjects 90 in legal, 94 in business , 93 in ancient, 76 in IPT, unknown for maths, for the half yearly however I had done terribly in English and only got 56%. I need advice on how to improve using techniques and analyzing texts as I am not very good analyzing texts and finding techniques. To put it simply im terrible at doing analysis and need some advice on how to improve. I can write essays just not English essays.

 

[Mdyeow]

First of all, think about what techniques are meant to do. I wrote a definition here which might be useful: http://5minuteessay.wordpress.com/2014/04/29/techniques-definition-hsc-english-not-just-bs/

Then, go through your texts looking for interesting phrases, descriptions, bits of speech, anything which stands out from the other stuff. List these all down.

Now, write down next to each one how it makes the audience think or feel (e.g. think that war is bad, feel happy, et c).

Then ask yourself for each one how this reaction fits with the broader sense of the text, and what the author might be trying to say.

Only after that should you go looking for the "techniques", i.e. the technical terms that describe how each of those interesting bits works.

I deal with this in more detail in my book, but hope this helps.

 

[strawberrye]

Perhaps if you could care to share with us how you usually analyse a text and find techniques and your thought process in writing an essay, we can more specifically assist you by suggesting personalised strategies to help you to improve your essay writing skills

 

[BLIT2014]

Try handwriting essays/paragraphs and hand them into your teacher to mark.

 

[rumbleroar]

I'm terrible with techniques as well but I think the main idea at English is you need to focus on ideas first. As soon as you have a really clear and strong idea, the techniques and analysis come naturally. Just constantly ask yourself - what is the text talking about (in relation to the module you're studying)? And maybe brainstorm about it first before you approach textual analysis. If you have no idea what your ideas are, how are you expected to produce good textual analysis?

My teacher told me a really good way of approaching textual analysis is to look at:
- Context (when was the text produced? Does the author's time have any impact on their composition - i.e. values, dominant discourse, etc.?
- Plot (what is happening in the text)
- Themes (what are some major themes in the text - these often influence the ideas explored, i.e. in Frankenstein, nature is an influential theme and is influenced by Shelley's contextual concerns over how ambition disrupted our relationship with nature)
- Key scenes (what are some really important scenes you need to analyse?)
- Specific techniques

Essentially you're looking at an inverted pyramid kind of thing to analyse texts - go from the biggest areas down to the smallest. Be sure to pick your techniques really well (there's heaps of online resources about techniques, so don't worry about not knowing them too well. Just know some really good ones like symbolism - haha my personal fallback, personification, allusion/intertextuality, etc.) because poor evidence can never really support a great idea.

Also know techniques for a specific text - i.e. visual techniques for visual texts, film techniques for films, etc. You always want to be using specific meta-language for specific texts because it shows markers that you know your stuff and you got this!

Also talk to your teacher about where you can improve on - it may not be a technical issue, but rather a conceptual one. I found that out literally a week before my trials and I'm pretty sure it saved my essay LOL