AH English Dissertations

this year I'm doing all but Maths. Which is a shame - Maths was always my best subject!

But seriously, it's not that tricky. I mean, Engish is such a skive. You can fail the exam and still get an A guys! Relax!

^^^I'm panicking about mines coz I can't find any notes for "Captain Corelli's Mandolin"... I'm doing a comparative study of the fictional presentation of love and war in "birdsong", "Cold Mountain" and "Captain Corelli's Mandolin"

I've recently finished my dissertation, did it on Hard Times and Germinal. I have not really done any creative writing - what have you guys done and how long are your pieces?

Horray! finally cut down my dissertation to 4500 words. im so glad that's out the way. now i can concentrate on my history dissertation which is a shambles at the moment!

I keep sitting down to start but as yet... no dissertation

I do plan to have one by the end of the easter hols... although, checking back through my diary, i see i was meant to have it finished by mid november

oh well

ok, I'm going to be perfectly honest with you. To get this dissertation finished and sent away on time you are going to have to work your ass off for the next couple of weeks. i finished mine about a month ago and i had been working on it since august. i read each book and made notes as i went along. Then, when i had finished reading the books, i came up with a task which fitted in with my books. Then, i done more notes relating to my theme. So lets hope that you at least have decent notes on your texts. If you've done that, the next stage is to plan your disseratation. I know it may seem as if planning is a waste of time but it really saved me time in the long run. If you're focusing on one particular theme then pick 4 or 5 key areas eg title, opening, symbolism, characterisation, powerful ending. Go back through your notes and pick out a couple of quotations for each key are from each text which will support your argument. Then, if you're notes are solid (i'd get your english teacher to have a read through them and give you some pointers) actually writing the dissertation should be the easy part. I basically transferred what i'd said in my notes into essay form. Make sure that you only use the notes which relate to your theme and not your original notes which may be irrelevant. A lot of my first draft was irrelevant and i ended up repeated myself so much that i was 3500 words over the word linit. I done three drafts but you probably won't have time for that so just do two. Again, get your teacher to read over your first draft (i know you prob wont want to do that bcoz you've prob alredy told them it's donr ect but i definately wouldnt hand in something to the sqa which hasnt been checked over for stupid mistakes.and no matter how many times you read over it, there will be something you dont notice!)When you're redrafting try to be concise and only include points which tie in with your task. If you find that what you're writing about doesnt fit in with your task then maybe at this stage, you should be changing your task instead of your actual dissertation. Do a final proof read then print it off, hand it in and dont think about it again. Seriously, its not as hard as you may think. i had to write two: one for english and one for history and believe me, when its out the road you will feel like a weight has been lifted off your shoulders. And just remember, this is worth a third of your grade and if you do well in this area of the course, its quite hard not to get a good mark overall and pretty impossible to fail. Having no social life for the next couple of weeks wont seem so bad when you think of it that way! lol Hope this has helped or at least given you some confidence. If there's anything more specific you want to know then email me and i'll try and help. i have ther best English teacher so he's always there to help me. Good luck! x