ELAT

Hello everyone! How did we find the paper? I found it really difficult What extracts/ points of comparison did you do?

I chose Texts B and F and looked at how they use a train journey as representative of 'life as a journey'. I loved the Dickens passage, but felt like I didn't entirely do justice to the last one. The annoying thing was that when the exam finished, I kept on thinking of things I could have talked about! But oh well!
I wouldn't worry about it - it's all over now! Plus there are loads of other factors they consider when inviting people for interviews. What texts did you use?

Dude. I think we wrote pretty much the same essay :')

I thought it was okay, although I could've done with more time to develop my last point and wrap things up was really rushing towards the end.
I did 'Amor Mundi' by Rossetti and 'Night Train' by Roberts. I have a feeling I didn't directly compare them enough D: d'oh
Which did you look at?

I chose Texts B and F and looked at how they use a train journey as representative of 'life as a journey'. I loved the Dickens passage, but felt like I didn't entirely do justice to the last one. The annoying thing was that when the exam finished, I kept on thinking of things I could have talked about! But oh well!
I wouldn't worry about it - it's all over now! Plus there are loads of other factors they consider when inviting people for interviews. What texts did you use?

I did (as seems to be quite popular) Dombey and Son, Amos Mundi and the train poem. I compared the different ways in which the train journeys were portrayed and where they overlapped, talking about how artificial and unsatisfying such a journey was was, the contrast between internality and externality. Then I compared all that to the nature in Rossetti's poem, and went on to say they were all metaphors for life and how it was basically existentialist and very pessimistic.

I think it was OK though, there was lots of LF&S to write about

I did the B and C? I just did the theme of the journey of death. Mine was dreadful. I panicked so didn't plan properly and just rambled on.... I didn't compare them enough either!

Wow. Your essays sounds amazing. I have no idea how anyone can come up with such amazing ideas in such a limited amount of time Congratulations though, I would have loved to have read your response!

I did Night Train + Questions of Travel. I said that the journeys portrayed in the poems were metaphors for life. I went on to say that because life is transient we need to be able to appreciate the natural, bucolic world and not artifice. I said that the objective correlative of the authors was to urge the readers to subsume themselves in nature and the 'wild' (talked about Apollonian & Dionysian dichotomy). I said that there was a paradox between the fact that we call ourselves communicative creatures (as humans) yet are unable to connect with nature. At the end though, I said that due to fact that poems themselves are an artificially created medium -the authors somewhat contradict themselves (as they are creating artifice in poetry) but that this does not really detract from what they are trying to say.

Ditto to that!

That sounds like a fantastic essay - honestly wow, they're all great points. I also did Questions of Travel, but with Amor Mundi, but I feel like most of what I wrote was pretty much on the surface
I compared the human experience of journeying in both, commenting on the inherent presence of the natural world in these journeys, themes of freedom/uncertainty, the value of journeying + the difference companionship makes to the experience.

I did touch on the more philosophical aspect of the uphill/downhill road choice in Amor Mundi though so hopefully it's not all utter rubbish...

Thanks so much such a lovely thing to say! Yours sounds very similar to mine - same points about the natural world, the need to communicate/ companionship... Wish you all the best with your app. What college are you applying to?

Hey,

I did the ELAT last year so I wish all you guys the best of luck. In terms of preparation, just keep going through the past papers to build up your timing skills and your ability to pick up things from unknown texts. It might also help just finding random extracts of literature off the internet and working on how to tackle unseen text. I'm assuming you know the structure of the paper, how many extracts you get and that they are all linked through a common theme so just being able to compare and contrast will help you immensely. I suggest always going for at least one poem as they are the easiest to annotate in the time your given.

Now onto your question. The hHey ....ELAT is especially important for being shortlisted for the interviews (or so I'm told). However, it does go towards your whole application so it's not too devastating if you have nerves in the exams because you'll still have your written work, your personal statement, your reference and your grades to back you up. The admissions team also take into account contextual data, so there are many variables in deciding who gets called for interviews and who gets an offer. Personally, I don't think I did great in the ELAT so I was surprised I got an interview let alone an offer

What I'm trying to say is that the ELAT and entrance exams aren't "all or nothing" so please don't beat yourself up about if it doesn't go great because that's what I did and I look back now thinking "What an idiot!" :P

Hope this helps Good luck!

Hello Everyone.. i am to sit my ELAT exam this year in November. I am completely lost how to prepare and to structure the paragraph. Any suggestions and advices are heartily welcomed.Please help!

Hello, I'm sorry you're not getting a response. My daughter did ELAT two years ago so this is a chinese whispers version of what she thought was interesting enough to pass on to doting parent.

(1) Get the papers marked by your english teacher.

(2) Use the mark scheme from the bottom up. i.e. What is a hopeless case and then what do you need to do get the next grade up. Keep going up from there.

(3) Look up "close reading" and how to do it.

That's it, I'm afraid. She did say that the work she did on ELAT was really useful for A2 so win-win!.