After marking your draft essays I've realized that there are many similar points I was making on each essay. I suggest you read this POST in conjunction with your essay draft and edit it as soon as possible.
- To enable you to write an essay in the right amount of detail, you should answer the essay question with reference to either, two poems per poet or two poems from one poet and one short story or two episodes from two short stories from one author. Your essay must include the work of one poet.
- Remember to write a lot about a little. For every quotation you use try and write at least three relevant comments on the quotation. Your comments must draw from the literary and or linguistic frameworks. This includes commenting on grammar - verbs, nouns & adjectives - lexis, register – formal & formal, syntax – simple, compound and complex sentences, declarative, interrogative, exclamatory and instructional sentences – as well as imagery – metaphor, simile, personification, symbolism and sound techniques such as, rhyme, rhythm, alliteration, assonance & onomatopoeia. You can also refer to rhetorical devices such as, contrasting pairs, lists of three, direct address to the reader and repetition. You can also refer to the connotations or associations linked to key words. Remember to always comment on the effects of these techniques on the reader – us. Effects are usually emotional – anger or sympathy for example. Or techniques are used to create a strong impression; they make things stand out for us.
- When you are writing about poems refer to to the poetic voice or narrative voice of the poems. Don't write about Heaney or Plath. Avoid biographical details of the lives of the poets. But you can write about the poems as having an autobiographical feel to them.
- Remember this is a comparative essay. I think ideally you write about one text in a paragraph. Then using a link sentence write a comparative paragraph to your comparison text. For example you may refer to Heaney’s poetic voice of excitement and enjoyment in nature in one paragraph. And in a second paragraph write about the child character in the Dubliners short stories full of excitement and anticipation. Use a link sentence to connect the two paragraphs showing how one writer is either similar or different to the other. For some of you, you will need to rearrange some of your paragraphs.
- All essays should include a full, detailed and concise introduction. An introduction includes the title of the texts and writers you are going to use, write a brief summary of the plot of short stories and poems relevant to the essay title. Identify or list the comparative sub topics that you are going to discuss in our essay. Be specific, for example, 'Plath's settings are urban and domestic where as Heaney sets his poems in rural Ireland.' You could also outline the main techniques the writers use to communicate their themes.
- Some of you try and communicate complex ideas in complicated sentences. But these can be confusing. Try and break ideas down into simpler sentences.
- Remember the paragraph structure of making a straightforward point, expand on the point in more specific detail to the writer you are about to examine, introduce a relevant quotation – by referring to the context of the quotation, - a quotation should be a word or a phrase, it should prove the point you want to make and have at least three different comments you can write about it, comment on the quotation – drawing on literary and language frameworks and the effect on us as readers - see bullet point 2.
- Make sure there is a structure to your essay, introduction, main body and conclusion. Write the most important and significant points and comparisons first.
- Make sure you adopt a formal academic register. Avoid using literary or poetic language yourself. Don't use clichés, or hackneyed expressions, colloquial language, buzz words etc. And avoid referring to yourself or using the personal pronoun 'I'. Instead refer to 'readers' or 'audience' or 'one'.
- Remember to comment on the genre you are writing about – poetry and or prose. Let the examiners know you know about the short story and poetry genres.
- I have made a lot of fuss about starting paragraphs with topic sentences. I'm now recommending that you edit these topic sentences so that you either make a comparative statement linking this paragraph to the paragraph above. Or make it clear you are introducing a new sub-topic.
- If you are quoting more than a line of poetry you must present the quotattion using the same line structure as the poem itself. For example,
Chuffing me off like a Jew.""An engine, an engine
Hope you find this helpful
David
