[Eldedu]

"...and flights of angels sing thee to thy desk".

IB English will be, for many of you as it is for me, the first IB exam of the May 2012 session. I'm resitting A1 HL to improve a 6 that while respectable I feel could be increased (plus I need to meet my offer from York :P)

I'm revising by:

- Rereading and taking notes on my texts (Gatsby, Pride and Prejudice, Madame Bovary, Mayor of Casterbridge)
- Reading online literature help websites (my favourite thus far is shmoop - google it)
- Notecarding literary techniques and getting them memorized (also helpful for my upcoming Spanish exam)

Anyone doing anything different/more intensively? Perhaps you know a good resource you wouldn't mind sharing? No better place to do it than here.

Best of luck to everyone on May 2nd and 9th.

[saachi]

Right, so Paper 1 is down, but can we bring this thread back to life to revise for Paper 2? What section are you all doing for Paper 2- Poetry, Drama, The Novel...? I'm doing Drama.

[supercali2]

I'm doing the poetry, with Philip Larkin, W.H. Auden and Derek Walcott. Oh and Chaucer. *shudder*

[saachi]

Haha :P I tried reading the Canterbury Tales for fun, and oh my god, I am not looking forward to doing Chaucer in university! (I've applied for English lit.).

What's your opinion on general questions? Do you think they disadvantage you, or are they equally scoring as whatever option you're doing?

[livi_lou92]

Hey, I'm doing drama too. My teacher said that the general questions are just as good, they won't disadvantage you, and that sometimes they're actually better than the questions aimed at a particular area of literature (e.g. drama) because they're less specific- there's more scope with the general questions

[DaitaG]

I am also doing drama! My texts are Shadow of a Gunman by Sean O'Casey, All My Sons by Arthur Miller, Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen and The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde.

My teacher said sometimes in terms of impressions, doing a general question may get you a little more harshly marked since it looks like you were simply not up to the challenge of the drama questions, however she did also say that if the general questions would produce an essay, it won't harm you too much.

Did you guys choose the poem or the prose for paper one today?

[livi_lou92]

Poem, I'm just generally not very good at analysing the prose! You?

[saachi]

Yeah I'm doing Drama too, but 'Miss Julie', 'A Streetcar Named Desire' and 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?'. Anyone doing one of those three?

I did prose. It didn't go so well

[deadsmurfette]

(Original post by saachi)
Yeah I'm doing Drama too, but 'Miss Julie', 'A Streetcar Named Desire' and 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?'. Anyone doing one of those three?

I did prose. It didn't go so well

I'm doing 'Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolf'. I actually quite like it. My other two plays though are 'The Wasps' which I don't like and School for Scandal which we haven't studied... WAOVW is the only one I feel confident with.

I did the prose today as well. I planned it all out so hopefully it was okay.

[-raisa]

I'm doing novels, and I absolutely have NO idea how to study!! I really think English is going to be the reason why I don't meet my offer

Any tips on how to revise?!

[saachi]

(Original post by deadsmurfette)
I'm doing 'Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolf'. I actually quite like it. My other two plays though are 'The Wasps' which I don't like and School for Scandal which we haven't studied... WAOVW is the only one I feel confident with.

I did the prose today as well. I planned it all out so hopefully it was okay.

Really? Wow, I suck at WAOVW. I mean I know it's supposed to be the Theater of the Absurd and Albee is trying to expose the meaninglessness of life, but honestly the book kept me engaged and bored at the same time. Martha's mad, absolutely mad!

I'm in the opposite position as you, VW is the only one I don't feel comfortable with

[DaitaG]

I did the poem. I think I ticked a lot of criteria boxes but it was a poor execution :/ opposite to what I usually do, so we'll see how that goes. What offers do you guys have to meet?

[rosefan42]

(Original post by deadsmurfette)
I'm doing 'Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolf'. I actually quite like it. My other two plays though are 'The Wasps' which I don't like and School for Scandal which we haven't studied... WAOVW is the only one I feel confident with.

I did the prose today as well. I planned it all out so hopefully it was okay.

Situation sounds weridly familiar haha, are you at Brcok?? Anyway, yeah WAOVW, Wasps, and School for Scandal - I've read and reread and rereread them, and I'm going to read them one more time this weekend, but apart from that I really have no idea of how to revise? I'm just really wary of using schmoop/sparknotes etc, because reading other people's interpretation of a play does tend to lead to regurgitating facts and phrases rather than a thought-through essay...I dunno, whatever works, works, I guess. I'm in two minds about the general questions; I'm a drama kind of person, so I do like the specific questions, but something about the general ones seems to invite more free thought and original ideas?

Also, not sure if we're allowed to talk about English 1 yet - it has been 24 hours, though, so I think it's okay? Anyway, I did the HL Prose, and that's all I'm going to say until we get confirmation that it's okay to discuss

[fliegendehollander]

Mine are
Importance of Being Earnest - Oscar Wilde
Hedda Gabler - Henrik Ibsen
Pygmalion - G.B.Shaw

Funny plays, two are.

[saachi]

(Original post by fliegendehollander)
Mine are
Importance of Being Earnest - Oscar Wilde
Hedda Gabler - Henrik Ibsen
Pygmalion - G.B.Shaw

Funny plays, two are.

Oh, we did Hedda Gabler for World Lit. I quite liked it, it's so full of- well, drama. I love how the social context comes into play, and everything about Hedda wanting to be a man, miss those questions about whether her suicide was a tragedy or liberation.

It's funny now, because Ibsen was critiquing the twentieth century Norwegian society, and now we're doing a play called 'Miss Julie' for P2 written by his rival August Strindberg, who unlike Ibsen is all about the order of society being maintained.

Scarlet Song, Medea, Hedda Gabler, The Visit, WAOVWE, Miss Julie, Streetcar... every single drama we've done revolves around crazy women!

[deadsmurfette]

(Original post by rosefan42)
Situation sounds weridly familiar haha, are you at Brcok?? Anyway, yeah WAOVW, Wasps, and School for Scandal - I've read and reread and rereread them, and I'm going to read them one more time this weekend, but apart from that I really have no idea of how to revise? I'm just really wary of using schmoop/sparknotes etc, because reading other people's interpretation of a play does tend to lead to regurgitating facts and phrases rather than a thought-through essay...I dunno, whatever works, works, I guess. I'm in two minds about the general questions; I'm a drama kind of person, so I do like the specific questions, but something about the general ones seems to invite more free thought and original ideas?

Also, not sure if we're allowed to talk about English 1 yet - it has been 24 hours, though, so I think it's okay? Anyway, I did the HL Prose, and that's all I'm going to say until we get confirmation that it's okay to discuss

haha I am... hello

[deadsmurfette]

(Original post by saachi)
Really? Wow, I suck at WAOVW. I mean I know it's supposed to be the Theater of the Absurd and Albee is trying to expose the meaninglessness of life, but honestly the book kept me engaged and bored at the same time. Martha's mad, absolutely mad!

I'm in the opposite position as you, VW is the only one I don't feel comfortable with

I think it helped that I quite enjoyed the play, and I agree with you about Matha being mad haha, although I do feel sorrry for her at the end. Don't worry, I can barely understand what one of my plays is about.

Whenever we talk about VW our teacher always talks about appearance and reality/truth and illusion.

[onejpu2]

I'm doing The Importance of Being Earnest, Streetcar, and Hamlet. Debating whether I should also revise Rosencrantz & Guildenstein Are Dead ( we were meant to read it, but I never did..oops). Can one get by with only 3 dramas? Also, when revising, is it best to just reread the texts, making notes of themes/characters/etc, or to actually sit down and write on some sample prompts? Lastly, how vital is it to quote the text in the essay because I have no clue how one is supposed to remember lines that end up somehow magically fitting perfectly into an unknown prompt, but the best scoring sample essays my teacher showed us all did this...?