Paper 2 Strategy

Here is how I would approach Paper 2: Tactic Time (mins) Count Down Clock Reading Time Read the questions for Modules A, B, and C. Make sure you check that you read the correct questionfor your elective/text. 5 2h Writing Time Annotate the question for Module A and plan your response, including a strong thesis [...]

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Module C: Conflicting Perspectives Images and Metaphors

One way to approach the concept of Conflicting Perspectives for Module C is through imagery and extended metaphor. Conflicting Perspectives are about how people standing in differently places, see things (events, personalities, situations) in different ways. You know what else people see differently depending on their perspective? Art. This is “Ascending and Descending” by MC [...]

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Related Material for Module C: True History of the Kelly Gang

There are, as I have said in previous posts, a couple of different ways to approach the selection of related material for Module C. This is true also for Peter Carey’s The True History of the Kelly Gang (which, by the way, I think is quite a difficult text) in the History and Memory elective. [...]

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Related Material for Module C: Julius Caesar

The focus of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar is on the following personalities, events and situations: Personalities: Caesar; Brutus; Cassius; Antony; Calpurnia; Portia and Octavian. Situations: the expanding Roman Empire; the failure of the triumvirate; the civil war resulting from Caesar’s death and the ultimate end of the Roman Republic. Events: Antony offering Caesar the crown; the [...]

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Related texts for Birthday Letters: A Different Approach, The Fitzgerald Edition

The focus of Birthday Letters (or at least the poems selected for study) is on the following personalities, events and situations: Personalities: Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath and, to a lesser extent, Otto Plath Situations: The marriage between Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath and its subsequent breakdown. Events: Seeing a photograph, eating a peach, destroying an [...]

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Related Texts for Smithsonian Site: A Different Approach

Module C is about the REPRESENTATION of events, personalities and situations. The Smithsonian website, September 11: Bearing Witness to History, represents an event: the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. A different approach to selecting related material for this text is to choose an historical event–or situation, or [...]

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Suggested Related Material for Smithsonian September 11: Bearing Witness to History

As much as I enjoyed teaching both Birthday Letters and The Justice Game for Conflicting Perspectives, I have to confess that I found the Smithsonian site more interesting than either. A website is a rich and varied text to explore, the Smithsonian site doubly so as it resists providing the same reading path more than [...]

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Suggested Related Material for The Justice Game

For Birthday Letters, the approach I have suggested is to find texts with perspectives on the same personalities and situations as the core text (Hughes, Plath, their marriage, her suicide). The Justice Game is a different type of text. Although Robertson is undeniably a strong personality and there are certainly texts with conflicting perspectives on [...]

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Suggested Related Material for Birthday Letters

Film: Sylvia. 2003. Directed by Christine Jeffs and starring Gwyneth Paltrow. Although the film is extremely sympathetic towards Plath, her daughter, Frieda Hughes, refused to have anything to do with it (hence the lack of poetry in the film, as Frieda Hughes is also the literary executor of both her parent’s estates. Novel: The Ballad [...]

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Module C: Hughes and Plath

One of the most interesting elements of Hughe’s brilliant poetry collection, Birthday Letters, is the way in which he appropriates Sylvia Plath’s poetic language in order to portray the conflicting perspectives within and about their relationship. The most obvious example is Hughes’ poem ‘Sam,’ which retells the story of Plath’s disastrous ride, portrayed by Plath [...]

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