Eng A: Paper 2 how to plan an answer (video)

FOA Translation (student sample)

This further oral activity represents a successful, high-scoring oral. The topic is appropriate and focused, with clear knowledge and understanding of the topic demonstrated. Language is apt and precise.

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What is a Reflective Statement?

The reflective statement (RS) is a short piece of writing of between 300-400 words, submitted with the Written Assignment.

Despite its straightforward prompt for contextual details, candidates continue to lose valuable points by misunderstanding the nature and requirements of the RS. The article offers clarification.

The RS is based on the following question:

"How was your understanding of cultural and contextual considerations of the work developed through the interactive oral?"

Two key terms: “context” and “developed.”

Let's take "context" first. There are two kinds of context that you will have learnt about in your English course and which matter to your reflective statement: context of production and context of reception.

• The context of production refers to the situation or circumstances in which a text is produced with significant factors influencing the writing or speaking of a text.  

• The context of reception is the situation or circumstances in which a text is received with significant factors influencing the reading or listening of a text.

In more practical terms, context of production includes the biographical details of the writer, the surrounding socio-cultural context which (demonstrably) had an impact on writing.
 
(EXAMPLE: Heart of Darkness: Conrad actually travelled the Congo and witnessed European depredations on the land and natives; his work reflects some of the prevailing Victorian values and circumstances - Imperialism, racism, industrial-technological advances) .

Context of reception, on the other hand, will include details on the work's readers or audiences, in particular their reactions to the work.  You may equally refer to the values, beliefs and ideas of the time that help explain why an audience or reader would find some aspects of the work appealing, offensive, challenging, uplifting or grotesque.

(EXAMPLE: A Doll's House: middle-class theatre-goers were incensed at Ibsen's play, in particular the ending)

A full accounting of context in your RS will include these two aspects of context.

Now for the other key term introduced earlier: "Developed"

In using this word, examiners are seeking evidence for how your understanding of the work benefited from (and was improved by) knowledge of context, gained from the Interactive orals.

Which aspects of the work became more apparent or made more sense after the presentations? 

EX: Having learnt about the twin notions of South American machismo and honour in Garcia Marquez' Chronicle of a Death Foretold, you may understand better how these played a central role in the novel, ultimately leading to the death of one character. Learning about these twin notions may have helped you understand why some characters felt they were compelled to kill. Or why the townspeople did little to stop the murder.

What the examiners say:

• “Reflective” should be understood not as a personal or rhetorical response to the literary work or the interactive oral (or journals for self-taught candidates) but as a way of demonstrating that the candidate’s sense of the culture and context of the work under consideration has evolved through the interactive oral.

• Purely reporting or rehearsing factual information gleaned from the interactive oral (or journals for self-taught candidates) does not meet the standard of “understanding...developed” (criterion A).

• The candidate needs to reveal in the reflective statement that he or she has processed that knowledge in a way that leads to greater understanding of the work. Examiners need to be aware that candidates may reveal this understanding through implication rather than through explicit demonstration. The candidate should be rewarded even if this understanding is basic.

A Sample Reflective Statement

This RS below looks strong, but still did not receive full points. Can you see why?

Question: How was your understanding of cultural and contextual considerations of the work developed through the interactive oral?

Work used: Fathers and Sons, by Ivan Turgenev


During the discussion, several articles were presented to the class. The subjects brought to light were the Russian economy during the 1850s, serfdom, and the question of whether Turgenev was obsolete or not. The articles on the Russian economy explained the state of transition the Russian economy was in during the mid-1850s. Prior to this period, there were members of the society called serfs. These were essentially slaves who worked on the fields of rich peasants, or the upper class. However,at this time Russia began to move away from serfdom.


After this discussion, it would appear Turgenev places great importance on the time, place, and culture of his novel, as serfdom and the existence of social classes are a predominant feature in Fathers and Sons. I found this discussion interesting, as it clarified some aspects of the novel. For example, in Fathers and Sons, Nikolai is a relatively well off land owner, and he ‘owns’ many serfs. However, as the system begins to evolve, the serfs and their owners have some trouble adjusting to the new system of land ownership. The serfs are misbehaved and irresponsible, and these aspects of the culture and context form the setting of the novel.


The article on the ‘Turgenev Question’ was interesting as well, because it highlighted some of Turgenev’s techniques, and what he’s famous for. According to the article, the art of Turgenev is in understatement: he manages to capture large philosophical, social, and historical movements as manifested in everyday life.


This can indeed be seen in Fathers and Sons. Turgenev paints a picture of commonplace Russian life with characters like Nikolai Arkady, Pavel, Bazarov and Fenichka, using barely any overly dramatic devices. Yet, through the characters’ thoughts and interactions with each other Turgenev explores ideas such as familial relationships. Furthermore, he portrays other aspects of Russian life, including the wide gap between social classes and the idea of young people rejecting all authorities.   (321 words)

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In the Spotlight: Running in The Family

This imaginative reconstruction of the author’s family history offers rich opportunities for exploration of cultural contexts, identity, gender, race and community.

Our Spotlight series offers a range of possible ideas for your next major assignment -- IOP/FOA, WT, EE etc... If you need more help developing or refining your ideas, contact us.

ExemplarsIOC sample commentary

"A lushly-written work, offering an intriguing mix of fact and fiction and a panoply of different voices and perspectives."

IOP /FOA

• Presentation: A close discussion/analysis of Ondaatje's style, using by way of illustration one or more extracts from the book.

• Presentation: Exploration of a theme - EX: The Vulnerability of History to Time and Perspective - Throughout Running in the Family, this theme is evident, especially in chapters, "Tropical Gossip" and "Lunch Conversation".

• Discussion: A number of motifs run through the memoir - for example, insects, maps,  and cinnamon. You could discuss any of these as a class, using a number of illustrative extracts and
  getting classmates to decide on purpose and effect of each motif.

• Exploration of a symbol: The Tea Estate. In the chapter, “Tea Country”, the magnitude of the tea fields surrounding the old Ondaatje family is used to emphasize the sense of isolation D seems to feel when living there. The vast expanse of these fields, although tranquil, creates a sense of imprisonment with its uniformity and silence.

• Exploration of a motif: Identity. In earlier chapters, the idea of identity revolves around the identity of Ceylon, but later Ondaatje’s own identity is more in focus. In one chapter he seems to question his connection with his family and his own role in the scheme of things. He draws upon the feeling of wanting to meet his father and to discuss the past with him to reveal that he is trying to develop a greater understanding of his father and is perhaps in need of a guide.

• Presentation / Radio book-club interview: Ondaatje once famously said: ”A literary work is a communal act. [...] I must confess that the book is not a history but a portrait or ‘gesture’. [...] In Sri Lanka a well-told lie is worth a thousand facts.” Discuss. This can be best done as a presentation or an animated book interview or roundtable in the same style as BBC4 In Our Time or CBC

• Presentation / interview: Discuss the use and significance of magic realism in this work.

• Other motifs worth investigating: maps, nature and money

WT1

• An obvious — indeed excellent — idea for a WT1 is pastiche. Write in the style of of Ondaatje (point of view, tone, syntax, diction, register, narrative interplay) drawing on your own multicultural self. If you are from a primarily monocultural/lingual background you can also rewrite a passage from a totally different work, substituting Ondaatje’s written style for the original.

• A radio interview (CBC Writers & Company, BBC World Book Club, CBC Ideas or ABC The HUB on Books, The Guardian podcast) where Ondaatje discusses with the host the relation between memory and identity, or his book's contribution to post-colonial literature, or his purpose for writing the book.

• One or more diary entries by a character / person in the memoir, reflecting on the significance of an event.

• Choose any dramatic episode or incident in the work and rework it into a tabloid article

• Book review. Models for book reviews are TLS, Atlantic, London Review of Books, NPR, Guardian Books.

WT2

Q. 5: "How does the text conform to, or deviate from, the conventions of a particular genre, and for what purpose?" 
Is it autobiography? novel? memoir? fictionalised history? This work is classified as memoir, and yet in many respects it plays with the conventions of this text-type.

As a post modern work Ondaatje’s Running in the Family includes the use of pastiche (multiple genres and styles), intertextuality (acknowledgement and use of other literary works); metafiction (writing about writing, and the self-conscious presence of the writer); nonlinear narrative; ironic and humorous tone (even treating difficult subjects from a position of dislocation and humor); and magical realism (fantastical elements incorporated into realism, and treated as part of reality).

Q. 3 "How and why is a social group represented in a particular way?”

Focus on how the native inhabitants of Ceylon are portrayed. Alternatively, you could focus on how the European colonizers are described in this multilayered memoir.

Q.6 “How has the text borrowed from other texts, and with what effects?” Here again, the question applies itself very nicely to this work. Some borrowings include D.H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf and Shakespeare. Ask one of our tutors to help you get started on this question.

EE

"To what extent can Running in the Family be called a postmodern work?"  The post-modern idea of the fractured narrative and the impossibility of obtaining an objective truth is evident in both the “Bone” and “Dialogue” sections where we are given stories from different perspectives.

"For what purpose and to what effect does Ondaatje use magical realism in Running in the Family?"... 
OR
"In what ways and to what purposes is magical realism used in Running in the Family and in X (work in translation, for example: Marquez' One Hundred Years of Solitude)?"   (Lang A: cat.2 EE) 

• Investigate 
• Inspiration for a similar EE topic: Memory, Identity and Empire.

Resources

For more on style in this work.

For more on issues of empire (Memory, Identity, Empire)

Academic journal essays

• Zivkovié:  "Memory and Place..." 

EE Criterion A: Focus and Method (6pts)

“Criterion A focuses on the topic, the research question and the methodology. It assesses the explanation of the focus of the research (this includes the topic and the research question), how the research will be undertaken, and how the focus is maintained throughout the essay” (IBO, 2016:101).

• Ensure your research question (RQ) is specific, sharply focused and stated clearly in the introduction of the essay. It should be formulated as a question, not a statement or proposition for discussion. Its purpose should be made clear to the reader and be related to the knowledge and understanding in context.

• Avoid an overly broad topic that cannot be dealt with adequately within the scope of the word limit. Similarly, a too-obvious a topic is unlikely to score highly in terms of criterion C.

• State briefly in your introduction why you have chosen that particular research question and what it has to offer. Your intro should also indicate clearly how your RQ relates to existing knowledge on that topic.

• Be sure in your planning and discussion focus to include analysis of your work(s) in the light of your research question. You may also include a critical perspective on secondary source material so that the views of critics are used to support your own arguments. The sources used must provide sufficient material to develop and support an argument and a conclusion relevant to the research question

• For categories 1 and 2 essays, appropriate sources include the literary text or texts that form the focus of the investigation and, where appropriate, secondary sources such as published criticism on those texts.  In both these categories, be aware that you may be limiting yourself by choosing texts that are not capable of sustaining a detailed in-depth literary analysis, e.g. some types of children’s literature or teenage fiction.  

• Category 2 essays should include a brief rationale for the pairing of the texts chosen, indicating what might be gained from the comparative study being undertaken. Avoid taking an approach where such texts are dealt with in two separate discussions.  

• Category 3 language essays based on a primary text or texts from the range indicated in the subject guide should also use secondary sources to provide a framework for a critical analysis of how language, culture and context shape meaning. 

• If the topic or research question is deemed inappropriate for the subject in which the essay is registered, no more than four marks can be awarded for this criterion. This applies to language A essays that are based on inappropriate texts. 

How to prepare for the IOC

How to do an IOC for a novel (video)

Tips for prepping the IOC

Here is a concise and enjoyable study review guide for the IOC from StudyCollab