The Advanced course Mod A: Narratives that Shape our World aims to teach students to think about the purpose of storytelling in a broad way. Students consider the stories we tell ourselves about who we are. Units can be focus on stories of nationhood, culture, ideologies, our aspirations, and how stories can be used to include or exclude people, as individuals or as communities. Stories can be written, valued and rewritten. Canons can be challenged or championed; countercanons can critique canons. Is it possible for groups to 'own' stories?
Let's look at what the syllabus says!
Module A: Narratives that Shape our World
In this module, students explore a range of narratives from the past and the contemporary era that illuminate and convey ideas, attitudes and values. They consider the powerful role of stories and storytelling as a feature of narrative in past and present societies, as a way of: connecting people within and across cultures, communities and historical eras; inspiring change or consolidating stability; revealing, affirming or questioning cultural practices; sharing collective or individual experiences; or celebrating aesthetic achievement. Students deepen their understanding of how narrative shapes meaning in a range of modes, media and forms, and how it influences the way that individuals and communities understand and represent themselves.
Students analyse and evaluate one or more print, digital and/or multimodal texts to explore how narratives are shaped by the context and values of composers (authors, poets, playwrights, directors, designers and so on) and responders alike. They may investigate how narratives can be appropriated, reimagined or reconceptualised for new audiences. By using narrative in their own compositions students increase their confidence and enjoyment to express personal and public worlds in creative ways.
Students investigate how an author’s use of textual structures, language and stylistic features are crafted for particular purposes, audiences and effects. They examine conventions of narrative, for example setting, voice, point of view, imagery and characterisation and analyse how these are used to shape meaning. Students also explore how rhetorical devices enhance the power of narrative in other textual forms, including persuasive texts. They further develop and apply the conventions of syntax, spelling, punctuation and grammar for specific purposes and effect.
Students work individually and collaboratively to evaluate and refine their own use of narrative devices to creatively express complex ideas about their world in a variety of modes for a range of purposes and critically evaluate the use of narrative devices by other composers.
Next post....what this looks like.
Thursday, August 30, 2018
Sunday, August 26, 2018
General Sample Essay Questions 1
By senior years students should be able to write essays in response to these questions to demonstrate their understanding of the core principles in the study of literature. You should be able to write an essay in response to each of these questions by the end of Year 11 Preliminary course.
1. Literary analysis is the examination of how the component parts of a text contribute to the meaning of the whole. Demonstrate how this applies to a text you have studied.
2. The study of literature is the examination of how writers manipulate language to create an experience for readers. Discuss.
3. In order to enjoy literature a reader needs to be open to ascribing meaning to texts. Discuss.
4. The senior English course teaches how literary forms and features serve functions that contribute to the meaning of texts. Discuss.
5. Writers create texts for specific purposes and employ literary techniques to support those purposes. Discuss.
6. A close study of the various elements of a text and an understanding of the relationship between them serves to clarify a text's meaning. Discuss.
7. In a close reading of text a reader notices patterns and then endows those patterns with meaning. Discuss with reference to a text you have studied.
8. Textual integrity is the unity of a text, and how its coherent use of form and language produces an integrated whole in terms of meaning and value. How is textual integrity demonstrated in the text you have studied.
9. How do the distinctive qualities of a text help shape its meaning?
10. Explain how your prescribed text invites us into a different world and broadens our understanding of human experience?
11. Through the telling and receiving of stories we become more aware of ourselves and our shared human experiences. Explain with references to your studied text.
12. "We tell ourselves stories in order to live." - Joan Didion The White Album. How does this statement apply to the texts you have studied?
13. Effective fiction uses narrative voice to engage the reader's emotions and intellect. To what extent is this true in a text you have studied?
14. Writers use literal and figurative language to express ideas and position readers. How is this employed in a text you have studied?
15. Composers construct texts using representations to portray situations and experiences to position readers. How is this successfully employed in the text you have studied?
16. T.S. Eliot wrote that the tools of the critic are comparison and analysis. How does a close study of the various elements of form, features and function work together to create meaning, and how does this compare between two texts you have studied?
17. "Literature is the history of the human psyche." - Ugo Angelo Canello. How does the text you have studied use characterisation, setting and situations to express ideas about human behaviour?
18. “Culture, when it comes to food, is, of course, a fancy word for your mom.” ― Michael Pollan. How are ideas about family, identity and culture represented in the text you have studied?
1. Literary analysis is the examination of how the component parts of a text contribute to the meaning of the whole. Demonstrate how this applies to a text you have studied.
2. The study of literature is the examination of how writers manipulate language to create an experience for readers. Discuss.
3. In order to enjoy literature a reader needs to be open to ascribing meaning to texts. Discuss.
4. The senior English course teaches how literary forms and features serve functions that contribute to the meaning of texts. Discuss.
5. Writers create texts for specific purposes and employ literary techniques to support those purposes. Discuss.
6. A close study of the various elements of a text and an understanding of the relationship between them serves to clarify a text's meaning. Discuss.
7. In a close reading of text a reader notices patterns and then endows those patterns with meaning. Discuss with reference to a text you have studied.
8. Textual integrity is the unity of a text, and how its coherent use of form and language produces an integrated whole in terms of meaning and value. How is textual integrity demonstrated in the text you have studied.
9. How do the distinctive qualities of a text help shape its meaning?
10. Explain how your prescribed text invites us into a different world and broadens our understanding of human experience?
11. Through the telling and receiving of stories we become more aware of ourselves and our shared human experiences. Explain with references to your studied text.
12. "We tell ourselves stories in order to live." - Joan Didion The White Album. How does this statement apply to the texts you have studied?
13. Effective fiction uses narrative voice to engage the reader's emotions and intellect. To what extent is this true in a text you have studied?
14. Writers use literal and figurative language to express ideas and position readers. How is this employed in a text you have studied?
15. Composers construct texts using representations to portray situations and experiences to position readers. How is this successfully employed in the text you have studied?
16. T.S. Eliot wrote that the tools of the critic are comparison and analysis. How does a close study of the various elements of form, features and function work together to create meaning, and how does this compare between two texts you have studied?
17. "Literature is the history of the human psyche." - Ugo Angelo Canello. How does the text you have studied use characterisation, setting and situations to express ideas about human behaviour?
18. “Culture, when it comes to food, is, of course, a fancy word for your mom.” ― Michael Pollan. How are ideas about family, identity and culture represented in the text you have studied?
Yr 11: Reading to Write: Recommended Reading
In order to write well about reading, you need to be familiar with how professionals do it. You need to read examples from writing teachers, literary critics and writers. It is much broader, more interesting and more nuanced than making TEE tables of low-hanging literary techniques (noteworthy that 'technique' is a word that is NOT in the NESA Glossary!) And it is much more interesting than what you might have heard on the Book Club tv show, in which the members never had access to enough words to be really say anything significant.
Read these, or extracts from these. Or one of these. (To be honest, I like some of these better than others, and note that quite a few of them start with a declaration of doing close reading, that is, New Criticism, rather than applying any critical theory lens, such as Feminism, Marxism, etc).
Adler, Mortimer J, & Van Doren, Charles - How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading
Bloom, Harold - How to Read and Why
Clark, Roy Peter -The Art of X-Ray Reading: How the Secrets of 25 Great Works of Literature Will Improve your Writing
Clark, Roy Peter - Help! for Writers: 210 Solutions to the Problems Every Writer Writer Faces
Clark, Roy Peter - How to Write Short: Word Craft for Fast Times
Clark, Roy Peter - The Glamour of Grammar: A Guide to the Magic and Mystery of Practical English
Clark, Roy Peter - Writing Tools: 55 Essential Strategies for Every Writer
Cuddon, J.A. - Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory
Davidov, Shelley & Williams, Paul - Playing with Words: An Introduction to Creative Writing Craft
Eagleton, Terry - How to Read Literature
Eagleton, Terry - How to Read a Poem
Foster, Thomas C. - How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines
Foster, Thomas C. - How to Read Poetry LIke a Professor: A Quippy and Sonorous Guide to Verse
Fish, Stanley - How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One
Grenville, Kate - The Writing Book: A Workbook for Fiction Writers
Hirsch, Edward - How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry
Holden, Anthony and Ben - Poems that Make Grown Men Cry
Holden, Anthony and Ben - Poems that Make Grown Women Cry: 100 Women on the Words that Move Them
King, Stephen - On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Kundera, Milan - The Art of the Novel
Lamott, Anne - Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
Lanham, Richard - Analyzing Prose
Marsden, John - Everything I Know About Writing
Mullan, John - How Novels Work
Oliver, Mary - A Poetry Handbook: A Prose Guide to Understanding and Writing Poetry
Paglia, Camille - Break, Blow, Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty- Three of the World's Best Poems
Prose, Francine - Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them
Schmidt. Michael (ed) The Great Modern Poets: The Best Poetry of our Times
Sutherland, John - 50 Literary Ideas you Really Need to Know
Sutherland, John - How to Read a Novel: A User's Guide
Tredinnick, Mark - The Little Red Writing Book
Tufte, Virginia - Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style
Virago - Writers as Reader: A Celebration of Virago Modern Classics
Willis, Ika - Reception
Wood, James - How Fiction Works
Resources on Rhetoric
Forsyth, Mark - The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase
Lanham, Richard - A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms
Rhetorical Devices: A Handbook and Activities For Student Writers
http://bmshri.org/sites/default/files/sri_sahithya/A_Handbook_of_Rhetoric.pdf
http://www.hellesdon.org/documents/Advanced%20Rhetoric.pdf
There is a relatively new genre called Bibliomemoir, where a writer writes about reading books. Some of these include:
Ellis, Samantha - How to be a Heroine, or, What I've Learned From Reading Too Much
Ridge, Judith (ed) - The Book That Made Me
Next post....Sample essay questions
Read these, or extracts from these. Or one of these. (To be honest, I like some of these better than others, and note that quite a few of them start with a declaration of doing close reading, that is, New Criticism, rather than applying any critical theory lens, such as Feminism, Marxism, etc).
Adler, Mortimer J, & Van Doren, Charles - How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading
Bloom, Harold - How to Read and Why
Clark, Roy Peter -The Art of X-Ray Reading: How the Secrets of 25 Great Works of Literature Will Improve your Writing
Clark, Roy Peter - Help! for Writers: 210 Solutions to the Problems Every Writer Writer Faces
Clark, Roy Peter - How to Write Short: Word Craft for Fast Times
Clark, Roy Peter - The Glamour of Grammar: A Guide to the Magic and Mystery of Practical English
Clark, Roy Peter - Writing Tools: 55 Essential Strategies for Every Writer
Cuddon, J.A. - Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory
Davidov, Shelley & Williams, Paul - Playing with Words: An Introduction to Creative Writing Craft
Eagleton, Terry - How to Read Literature
Eagleton, Terry - How to Read a Poem
Foster, Thomas C. - How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines
Foster, Thomas C. - How to Read Poetry LIke a Professor: A Quippy and Sonorous Guide to Verse
Fish, Stanley - How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One
Grenville, Kate - The Writing Book: A Workbook for Fiction Writers
Hirsch, Edward - How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry
Holden, Anthony and Ben - Poems that Make Grown Men Cry
Holden, Anthony and Ben - Poems that Make Grown Women Cry: 100 Women on the Words that Move Them
King, Stephen - On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Kundera, Milan - The Art of the Novel
Lamott, Anne - Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
Lanham, Richard - Analyzing Prose
Marsden, John - Everything I Know About Writing
Mullan, John - How Novels Work
Oliver, Mary - A Poetry Handbook: A Prose Guide to Understanding and Writing Poetry
Paglia, Camille - Break, Blow, Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty- Three of the World's Best Poems
Prose, Francine - Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them
Schmidt. Michael (ed) The Great Modern Poets: The Best Poetry of our Times
Sutherland, John - 50 Literary Ideas you Really Need to Know
Sutherland, John - How to Read a Novel: A User's Guide
Tredinnick, Mark - The Little Red Writing Book
Tufte, Virginia - Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style
Virago - Writers as Reader: A Celebration of Virago Modern Classics
Willis, Ika - Reception
Wood, James - How Fiction Works
Resources on Rhetoric
Forsyth, Mark - The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase
Lanham, Richard - A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms
Rhetorical Devices: A Handbook and Activities For Student Writers
http://bmshri.org/sites/default/files/sri_sahithya/A_Handbook_of_Rhetoric.pdf
http://www.hellesdon.org/documents/Advanced%20Rhetoric.pdf
There is a relatively new genre called Bibliomemoir, where a writer writes about reading books. Some of these include:
Ellis, Samantha - How to be a Heroine, or, What I've Learned From Reading Too Much
Ridge, Judith (ed) - The Book That Made Me
Next post....Sample essay questions
Yr 11: Reading to Write: Resources
There are teachers who have made a big investment of time to gather resources and create programs for this unit. Teachers can approach this unit in a variety of ways - through theme, or text types, or the reader/writer relationship.
Of the sample units available on the NESA site the focus questions include:
- How do we see ourselves as readers and writers?
- What is the relationship between reading and writing?
- How does knowledge of this relationship affect our experiences of reading and writing?
- What are the various ways that reading and writing can be enjoyed?
- How can reading make me a better writer? How can writing make me a better reader?
- How does reading and writing across a variety of connected texts deepen my understanding of concepts and illuminate meaning? (This is the kind of question you would ask in a syntopical bookgroup!)
- What makes powerful writing and engaging reading?
Here are the NESA pages.
Standard: http://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/11-12/stage-6-learning-areas/stage-6-english/english-standard-2017
Advanced: http://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/11-12/stage-6-learning-areas/stage-6-english/english-advanced-2017
You can access these resources just as easily as teachers can. You should also look at the glossary, that is, the vocabulary you should be familiar with in Senior English. Any of these words could be in your HSC English exam! (There is no listing of the words Analyse or Technique in the glossary!)
http://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/11-12/stage-6-learning-areas/stage-6-english/english-advanced-2017/glossary
There are other resources, made by the English Teachers' Association (ETA) that you can't access, but you can look at the results of a project the ETA has been working on - the Textual Concepts. You can find the standard for Stage 5 (what you should be familiar by the end of Year 10). It would be good to understand these concepts.
http://englishtextualconcepts.nsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/S5%20Syllabus%20Content.pdf
Next post... recommended reading!
Of the sample units available on the NESA site the focus questions include:
- How do we see ourselves as readers and writers?
- What is the relationship between reading and writing?
- How does knowledge of this relationship affect our experiences of reading and writing?
- What are the various ways that reading and writing can be enjoyed?
- How can reading make me a better writer? How can writing make me a better reader?
- How does reading and writing across a variety of connected texts deepen my understanding of concepts and illuminate meaning? (This is the kind of question you would ask in a syntopical bookgroup!)
- What makes powerful writing and engaging reading?
Here are the NESA pages.
Standard: http://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/11-12/stage-6-learning-areas/stage-6-english/english-standard-2017
Advanced: http://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/11-12/stage-6-learning-areas/stage-6-english/english-advanced-2017
You can access these resources just as easily as teachers can. You should also look at the glossary, that is, the vocabulary you should be familiar with in Senior English. Any of these words could be in your HSC English exam! (There is no listing of the words Analyse or Technique in the glossary!)
http://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/11-12/stage-6-learning-areas/stage-6-english/english-advanced-2017/glossary
There are other resources, made by the English Teachers' Association (ETA) that you can't access, but you can look at the results of a project the ETA has been working on - the Textual Concepts. You can find the standard for Stage 5 (what you should be familiar by the end of Year 10). It would be good to understand these concepts.
http://englishtextualconcepts.nsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/S5%20Syllabus%20Content.pdf
Next post... recommended reading!
Yr 11: Reading to Write: Transition to Senior English
The Common Module Reading to Write: Transition to Senior English is in both Standard and Advanced courses. It aims to teach students core principles of studying literature through close reading of texts, and reflecting on the process of reading, writing and making meaning. It it useful for developing the skills required for all the other modules. You will be required to draft your writing, integrate feedback, redraft, edit and proofread your work.
Let's look at what the syllabus says!
Year 11 Common Module – Reading to Write
Next post... what this looks like.
Let's look at what the syllabus says!
Year 11 Common Module – Reading to Write
Transition to Senior English
In this module, students undertake the intensive and close reading of quality texts from a variety of modes and media. In doing so, they further develop the skills and knowledge necessary to appreciate, understand, analyse and evaluate how and why texts convey complex ideas, relationships, endeavours and scenarios. Central to this module is developing student capacity to respond perceptively to texts through their own considered and thoughtful writing and judicious reflection on their skills and knowledge as writers. Students read texts that are engaging thematically, aesthetically, stylistically and/or conceptually to inspire or provoke them to critique skilfully, or to respond imaginatively. Through the study of texts, students develop insights into the world around them, deepen their understanding of themselves and the lives of others, and enhance their enjoyment of reading.
The careful selection of critical and creative texts that address the needs and interests of students provides opportunities for them to increase the command of their own written expression, and empower them with the confidence, skills and agility to employ language precisely, appropriately and creatively for a variety of purposes.
Wide reading and reflection provides students with the opportunity to make deeper connections and identify distinctions between texts to enhance their understanding of how knowledge of language patterns, structures and features can be applied to unfamiliar texts. Through imaginative re-creation students deepen their engagement with texts and investigate the role of written language in different modes, and how elements, for example tone, voice and image, contribute to the way that meaning is made. By exploring texts that are connected by form, point of view, genre or theme, students examine how purpose, audience and context shape meaning and influence responses.
Through responding and composing for a range of purposes and audiences students further develop skills in comprehension, analysis, interpretation and evaluation. They investigate how various language forms and features, for example structure, tone, imagery and syntax are used for particular effect. They analyse and assess texts using appropriate terminology, register and modality. By reading and writing complex texts they broaden the repertoire of their vocabulary and extend control of spelling, punctuation and grammar to gain further understanding of how their own distinctive voice may be expressed for specific purposes.
Next post... what this looks like.
The new English HSC Course
I will continue with elements of literature a bit later (including words, sentences, paragraphs, figurative devices, punctuation, allusions, themes, titles, literary criticism, how to study and how to write) but, time being of the essence, I will now skip to the Year 11 HSC course, considering the Preliminary exam is coming up soon!
The Preliminary course looks like this:
Yr 11 Standard:
Reading to Write
Contemporary Possibilities
Close Study of Text
Yr 11 Advanced:
Reading to Write
Narratives that Shape our World
Critical Study of Text
You must start with Reading to Write, but can do the other modules in any order.
They lead to these components of the new Year 12 course.
Yr 12 Standard
Common Module: Texts and Human Experience
Mod A: Language, Identity and Culture
Mod B: Close Study of Literature
Mod C: The Craft of Writing
Yr 12 Advanced:
Common Module: Texts and Human Experience
Mod A: Textual Conversations
Mod B: Critical Study of Texts
Mod C: The Craft of Writing
The Craft of Writing can be taught as a separate module or embedded into the other three.
The new syllabus is designed to improve writing skills, and to eliminate the practice of students coming into exams with prepared essays they have memorised.
NESA have published sample HSC exam papers you can find here:
Standard Paper 1:
https://syllabus.nesa.nsw.edu.au/assets/english_standard/files/sample-questions-new-hsc-english-std-paper-1-exam-2019.pdf
Standard Paper 2:
https://syllabus.nesa.nsw.edu.au/assets/english_standard/files/sample-questions-new-hsc-english-std-paper-2-exam-2019.pdf
Advanced Paper 1: https://syllabus.nesa.nsw.edu.au/assets/english_advanced/files/sample-questions-new-hsc-english-adv-paper-1-exam-2019.pdf
Advanced Paper 2:
https://syllabus.nesa.nsw.edu.au/assets/english_advanced/files/sample-questions-new-hsc-english-adv-paper-2-exam-2019.pdf
There are no sample Preliminary exam papers, although there are sample assessment tasks. There are no set texts for preliminary, however many schools have been using texts which were on the HSC course but are no longer prescribed texts. When using these texts they must be taught through the rubric of the new HSC course modules.
Next... Reading to Write
The Preliminary course looks like this:
Yr 11 Standard:
Reading to Write
Contemporary Possibilities
Close Study of Text
Yr 11 Advanced:
Reading to Write
Narratives that Shape our World
Critical Study of Text
You must start with Reading to Write, but can do the other modules in any order.
They lead to these components of the new Year 12 course.
Yr 12 Standard
Common Module: Texts and Human Experience
Mod A: Language, Identity and Culture
Mod B: Close Study of Literature
Mod C: The Craft of Writing
Yr 12 Advanced:
Common Module: Texts and Human Experience
Mod A: Textual Conversations
Mod B: Critical Study of Texts
Mod C: The Craft of Writing
The Craft of Writing can be taught as a separate module or embedded into the other three.
The new syllabus is designed to improve writing skills, and to eliminate the practice of students coming into exams with prepared essays they have memorised.
NESA have published sample HSC exam papers you can find here:
Standard Paper 1:
https://syllabus.nesa.nsw.edu.au/assets/english_standard/files/sample-questions-new-hsc-english-std-paper-1-exam-2019.pdf
Standard Paper 2:
https://syllabus.nesa.nsw.edu.au/assets/english_standard/files/sample-questions-new-hsc-english-std-paper-2-exam-2019.pdf
Advanced Paper 1: https://syllabus.nesa.nsw.edu.au/assets/english_advanced/files/sample-questions-new-hsc-english-adv-paper-1-exam-2019.pdf
Advanced Paper 2:
https://syllabus.nesa.nsw.edu.au/assets/english_advanced/files/sample-questions-new-hsc-english-adv-paper-2-exam-2019.pdf
There are no sample Preliminary exam papers, although there are sample assessment tasks. There are no set texts for preliminary, however many schools have been using texts which were on the HSC course but are no longer prescribed texts. When using these texts they must be taught through the rubric of the new HSC course modules.
Next... Reading to Write
Wednesday, August 8, 2018
Core principles: Sounds
Now we're going to talk about the smallest components of written texts, which are words. And what are words made of? Sounds.
Sounds create and effect meaning. Think about how words must have evolved. Words sound like what they describe. We use the word 'lullaby' to describe a song sung to help a baby sleep. It is soft and lilting and flowing. We use the word 'stop' to arrest a person's action. The sounds are sharp and clean, and the final sound stops. Think of the sounds of swear words. They express anger and frustration and insults and are full of harsh sounds. The way words feel in your mouth provides a clue to how a person or a character is feeling. This is particularly true when you read works by Shakespeare. I'm sure you know the literary term onomatopoeia from primary school. It means the name for the sound describes the sound itself. The examples you would be familiar with are words like gurgling, pop, whoosh. I want you to start thinking of all words as possibly employing onomatopoeia.
Here is a key to help you. There are principles of sounds, and words you can use to describe sounds. Those words extend beyond onomatopoeia, assonance, sibilance, alliteration, dissonance, cacophony, tone and euphony. The effects of sounds depend upon context, and other sounds in juxtaposition. Generally, long vowel sounds tend to sound more peaceful or solemn than short ones. Short vowel sounds tend to give an impression of quick movement, agitation or triviality.
Sounds create and effect meaning. Think about how words must have evolved. Words sound like what they describe. We use the word 'lullaby' to describe a song sung to help a baby sleep. It is soft and lilting and flowing. We use the word 'stop' to arrest a person's action. The sounds are sharp and clean, and the final sound stops. Think of the sounds of swear words. They express anger and frustration and insults and are full of harsh sounds. The way words feel in your mouth provides a clue to how a person or a character is feeling. This is particularly true when you read works by Shakespeare. I'm sure you know the literary term onomatopoeia from primary school. It means the name for the sound describes the sound itself. The examples you would be familiar with are words like gurgling, pop, whoosh. I want you to start thinking of all words as possibly employing onomatopoeia.
Here is a key to help you. There are principles of sounds, and words you can use to describe sounds. Those words extend beyond onomatopoeia, assonance, sibilance, alliteration, dissonance, cacophony, tone and euphony. The effects of sounds depend upon context, and other sounds in juxtaposition. Generally, long vowel sounds tend to sound more peaceful or solemn than short ones. Short vowel sounds tend to give an impression of quick movement, agitation or triviality.
Consonants
b, p, g, d, t, k - Plosives. Explosive sounds, suggest quickness, movement, triviality, scorn. Also called mutes - they hard stop the voice.
m, n, ng - Nasals. Provide various effects of humming, singing, music, contemplative, pleasurable, occasionally sinister
l - Liquid. Suggests liquids in motion, streams, water, rest, peace, luxury, voluptuousness, slipping, sliding
i - Smallness
a, o - Largeness
b, p, g, d, t, k - Plosives. Explosive sounds, suggest quickness, movement, triviality, scorn. Also called mutes - they hard stop the voice.
m, n, ng - Nasals. Provide various effects of humming, singing, music, contemplative, pleasurable, occasionally sinister
l - Liquid. Suggests liquids in motion, streams, water, rest, peace, luxury, voluptuousness, slipping, sliding
j, ch - Affricate (new IPA standards). Begins as a stop and releases as a fricative.
k, g, j, st, ts, tz, ch, dz, dg - Affricate (old IPA standards) . Suggests harshness, violence, cruelty, movement, discomfort, noise, conflict, derision (ch - also endearment)
s, sh - Continuent. Sizzles in the mouth, hissing, also soft and smooth, soothing sounds
z - Continuent. Tends to appear in contexts of harshness
f, w, (v) - Fricative - Suggests wind, wings, a light and easy motion
t, d - Interdental - tongue against the back of the teeth. Like k, and g, but less emphatic. Used to describe short actions
r - Liquid. Depends on other sounds near it but usually suggests movement and noise. (Some call m and n liquids too.)
th - Aspirate. Hard and soft, tends to be quiet and soothing
h - Unvoiced - just air
Vowels
k, g, j, st, ts, tz, ch, dz, dg - Affricate (old IPA standards) . Suggests harshness, violence, cruelty, movement, discomfort, noise, conflict, derision (ch - also endearment)
s, sh - Continuent. Sizzles in the mouth, hissing, also soft and smooth, soothing sounds
z - Continuent. Tends to appear in contexts of harshness
f, w, (v) - Fricative - Suggests wind, wings, a light and easy motion
t, d - Interdental - tongue against the back of the teeth. Like k, and g, but less emphatic. Used to describe short actions
r - Liquid. Depends on other sounds near it but usually suggests movement and noise. (Some call m and n liquids too.)
th - Aspirate. Hard and soft, tends to be quiet and soothing
h - Unvoiced - just air
Vowels
i - Smallness
a, o - Largeness
e - Contemplative
u - Ugly
This is extending on the work of Boulton, The Anatomy of Poetry, p.58, and Mary Oliver’s A Poetry Handbook.
This key is incomplete - I would like to have it checked by a linguist - but it is enough to give you some words to use to explain sound effects in texts. To learn more see the International Phenetic Alphabet used by linguists, speech pathologists, singers, lexicographers, language teachers, and teachers of reading. It all becomes quite complicated.
Other effects of sounds are rhyme and rhythm. These are about the creation of patterns - the repetition of sounds and stresses. Even a near rhyme, a slant rhyme, can be used to add to meaning, either as wordplay or to suggest something else.
You can consider sound effects to be a category you can write about. Here is an extract from Gary Lutz'e essay, The Sentence is a Lonely Place. (I recommend you read the whole piece - available online)
This was my first real lesson about language - this inkling that a word is a solid, something firm and palpable. It was news to me that a word is matter, that it exists in tactual materiality, that it has a cubic bulk. Only on the page is it flat and undensified. In the mouth and in the mind it is three-dimensional, and there are parts that shoot out from it or sink into its syntactic surround.
See also Alexander Pope's poem Sound and Sense.
Sound and Sense
u - Ugly
This is extending on the work of Boulton, The Anatomy of Poetry, p.58, and Mary Oliver’s A Poetry Handbook.
This key is incomplete - I would like to have it checked by a linguist - but it is enough to give you some words to use to explain sound effects in texts. To learn more see the International Phenetic Alphabet used by linguists, speech pathologists, singers, lexicographers, language teachers, and teachers of reading. It all becomes quite complicated.
Other effects of sounds are rhyme and rhythm. These are about the creation of patterns - the repetition of sounds and stresses. Even a near rhyme, a slant rhyme, can be used to add to meaning, either as wordplay or to suggest something else.
You can consider sound effects to be a category you can write about. Here is an extract from Gary Lutz'e essay, The Sentence is a Lonely Place. (I recommend you read the whole piece - available online)
This was my first real lesson about language - this inkling that a word is a solid, something firm and palpable. It was news to me that a word is matter, that it exists in tactual materiality, that it has a cubic bulk. Only on the page is it flat and undensified. In the mouth and in the mind it is three-dimensional, and there are parts that shoot out from it or sink into its syntactic surround.
See also Alexander Pope's poem Sound and Sense.
Sound and Sense
by Alexander Pope
- True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.
'Tis not enough no harshness gives offense,
The sound must seem an echo to the sense:
Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,
The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar;
When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,
The line too labors, and the words move slow;
Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain,
Flies o'er the unbending corn, and skims along the main.
Hear how Timotheus' varied lays surprise,
And bid alternate passions fall and rise!
See also this letter about the appreciation of words, read by Benedict Cumberbatch, in Letters of Note. (2 mins)
See also: Autological words.
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/52927/17-words-describe-themselves
http://www.segerman.org/autological.html
The idea is that the form supports the function. The closer to creating or recreating the experience for the reader the better!
Friday, August 3, 2018
Core principles: From orality to literacy
Let's start with the beginning of recorded time.
Imagine you live in an ancient oral culture. Try not to think about oral cultures as lacking literacy but as fully functioning rich cultures - they don't know they lack literacy.
Pick a place - it could be in a desert or in the snow, on an island or in the mountains, or where you live now.
You live in a tribe.
How does your tribe communicate important information? How is the knowledge of the tribe, knowledge about how to live, how to hunt for food, how and when to trade with other tribes, how to resolve problems, how to perform rituals to honour life events, how is the information communicated? How is it passed down from one generation to the next?
This knowledge may be embedded in memory devices which might be physical, like rock paintings, statues, totems, decorative art on masks or bowls, it could be told through dance and song, or might be related orally through stories.
What are some sayings or slogans or quotes that you remember? These are memorable by design, not by accident. What literary techniques have been used to make them memorable?
How would you make something you say memorable? In an oral culture this could mean the difference between life and death.
Perhaps through rhythm, repetition, rhyme, the structure of the sentence.
Any truth or law would be stated in a short sentence of simple words.
These are called an adage, proverb, saying, maxim, aphorism.
A proverb is a short pithy saying which embodies a general truth.
Some that come to mind:
- Red sky at night, sailor's delight. Red sky in morning, sailor's warning.
- Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.
- When the going gets tough, the tough gets going.
- Look before you leap.
- A stitch in time saves nine.
- A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
- Fail to plan, plan to fail.
- Forewarned is forearmed.
- What's good for the goose is good for the gander
- A light purse makes for a heavy heart.
- It takes two to tango.
- Thou shalt not kill.
- Coke is it!
You will notice the literary techniques used here: short sentences of monosyllabic words, alliteration, repetition, parallel constructions, use of opposites, rhythm and rhyme.
These oral memory devices became our literary devices.
When your English teacher says that a literary device is used to make something memorable, that is true. However, you can’t write essays about how each technique is just a memory device; it needs to be more sophisticated than that. Techniques are used for a variety of reasons: to guide the reader in a logical argument, to make readers feel as if they are present in the situation, to recreate an event, to emphasise, to be playful and create pleasure. You need to know the words for various techniques, understand their effects, and appreciate how the decision made by the writer creates a text in which each component part, each decision, contributes to the meaning of the whole text. All the decisions contribute to a text having textual integrity, a cohesion. This is what literary analysis is: explaining how and why a writer makes specific choices for a purpose. It also helps to know how these techniques have been used in early writing and where the words for the techniques came from (Hint: usually Greek).
Top Tip: Patterns are important. Look out for how many literary techniques are based on repetition - of sounds, rhythms, words, sentence structure and concepts. Look out for patterns in structure too.
But don’t worry. The good news is that you are already steeped in language and stories. Everything you already know about stories from films, comics, poems, novels, picture books, graphic novels, television, songs, videogames and advertisements will be helpful.
Watch this video about learning how to learn and note all the literary devices that are used to improve memory. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uT_GcOGEFsk
If you want to read further about this I can recommend two books.
Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies: orality, memory and the transmission of culture - Lynne Kelly
Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word - Walter J. Ong
The other takeaway message about ancient memory devices is that you can make your own.
For you: make your own memory devices
Video - Unjaded Jade: The Revision Technique No One Tells You: How to EASILY Remember Anything!
See Google Images - Graphic Organisers
Memory Palace
Mnemonics
For Creative Plenaries see Phil Beadle's book Dancing About Architecture
Imagine you live in an ancient oral culture. Try not to think about oral cultures as lacking literacy but as fully functioning rich cultures - they don't know they lack literacy.
Pick a place - it could be in a desert or in the snow, on an island or in the mountains, or where you live now.
You live in a tribe.
How does your tribe communicate important information? How is the knowledge of the tribe, knowledge about how to live, how to hunt for food, how and when to trade with other tribes, how to resolve problems, how to perform rituals to honour life events, how is the information communicated? How is it passed down from one generation to the next?
This knowledge may be embedded in memory devices which might be physical, like rock paintings, statues, totems, decorative art on masks or bowls, it could be told through dance and song, or might be related orally through stories.
What are some sayings or slogans or quotes that you remember? These are memorable by design, not by accident. What literary techniques have been used to make them memorable?
How would you make something you say memorable? In an oral culture this could mean the difference between life and death.
Perhaps through rhythm, repetition, rhyme, the structure of the sentence.
Any truth or law would be stated in a short sentence of simple words.
These are called an adage, proverb, saying, maxim, aphorism.
A proverb is a short pithy saying which embodies a general truth.
Some that come to mind:
- Red sky at night, sailor's delight. Red sky in morning, sailor's warning.
- Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.
- When the going gets tough, the tough gets going.
- Look before you leap.
- A stitch in time saves nine.
- A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
- Fail to plan, plan to fail.
- Forewarned is forearmed.
- What's good for the goose is good for the gander
- A light purse makes for a heavy heart.
- It takes two to tango.
- Thou shalt not kill.
- Coke is it!
You will notice the literary techniques used here: short sentences of monosyllabic words, alliteration, repetition, parallel constructions, use of opposites, rhythm and rhyme.
These oral memory devices became our literary devices.
When your English teacher says that a literary device is used to make something memorable, that is true. However, you can’t write essays about how each technique is just a memory device; it needs to be more sophisticated than that. Techniques are used for a variety of reasons: to guide the reader in a logical argument, to make readers feel as if they are present in the situation, to recreate an event, to emphasise, to be playful and create pleasure. You need to know the words for various techniques, understand their effects, and appreciate how the decision made by the writer creates a text in which each component part, each decision, contributes to the meaning of the whole text. All the decisions contribute to a text having textual integrity, a cohesion. This is what literary analysis is: explaining how and why a writer makes specific choices for a purpose. It also helps to know how these techniques have been used in early writing and where the words for the techniques came from (Hint: usually Greek).
Top Tip: Patterns are important. Look out for how many literary techniques are based on repetition - of sounds, rhythms, words, sentence structure and concepts. Look out for patterns in structure too.
But don’t worry. The good news is that you are already steeped in language and stories. Everything you already know about stories from films, comics, poems, novels, picture books, graphic novels, television, songs, videogames and advertisements will be helpful.
Watch this video about learning how to learn and note all the literary devices that are used to improve memory. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uT_GcOGEFsk
If you want to read further about this I can recommend two books.
Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies: orality, memory and the transmission of culture - Lynne Kelly
Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word - Walter J. Ong
The other takeaway message about ancient memory devices is that you can make your own.
For you: make your own memory devices
Video - Unjaded Jade: The Revision Technique No One Tells You: How to EASILY Remember Anything!
See Google Images - Graphic Organisers
Memory Palace
Mnemonics
For Creative Plenaries see Phil Beadle's book Dancing About Architecture
Wednesday, August 1, 2018
Support for New HSC Syllabus
I am using this blog to provide resources to support my daughter and her school peers in the new HSC syllabus. I had previously used it for a Syntopical Bookgroup I ran, and you can find some older posts about reading and writing (from 2010!).
I will include the syllabus and sample outlines for the Preliminary course:
- Reading to Write
- Narratives that Shape our World
- Contemporary Possibilities
- Close Study of Texts
- Critical Study of Texts.
I will then provide resources for the Year 12 course.
I will include my own resources to support engagement with texts and understanding the core principles of studying literature.
The core principles of studying literature, which I will cover in more depth, include the following:
- Sounds are important.
- Moving from oral memory devices to literacy gave us our literary devices. The aim is to be memorable.
- Literary devices are often based upon patterns - repetitions, parallel constructions.
- The use of comparisons - figurative devices, allusions etc (so we can imagine according to the familiar).
- We aim to make meaning from everything (we are storytelling animals) imagining that nature or the gods have an attitude to us (they don't).
- All good writing aims to be onomatopoeia or autological (to create what it is describing - to be the effect).
- It is important to increase your metalanguage and be able to categorise your metalanguage.
In subject English you can bring everything you know and are interested in: history, geography, politics, philosophy, psychology, sport, art, music, languages, science. In this subject teachers want you to personally engage, which means you can make your own arguments, so long as your presentation is logical and supported by evidence in the text.
If you study at a more advanced level you also need to know about literary movements, and how texts have been received over time (Reception Studies) and how they have been valued, or not valued and why.
I can provide some activities and recommended readings. I am writing a book as a resource for high school English (it is an ambitious project), and these blog posts are a simple version of some material I have been preparing for the book. (The book covers ancient literature, etymology and provides modern examples of literary devises using relevant messages for today.)
More to come!
I will include the syllabus and sample outlines for the Preliminary course:
- Reading to Write
- Narratives that Shape our World
- Contemporary Possibilities
- Close Study of Texts
- Critical Study of Texts.
I will then provide resources for the Year 12 course.
I will include my own resources to support engagement with texts and understanding the core principles of studying literature.
The core principles of studying literature, which I will cover in more depth, include the following:
- Sounds are important.
- Moving from oral memory devices to literacy gave us our literary devices. The aim is to be memorable.
- Literary devices are often based upon patterns - repetitions, parallel constructions.
- The use of comparisons - figurative devices, allusions etc (so we can imagine according to the familiar).
- We aim to make meaning from everything (we are storytelling animals) imagining that nature or the gods have an attitude to us (they don't).
- All good writing aims to be onomatopoeia or autological (to create what it is describing - to be the effect).
- It is important to increase your metalanguage and be able to categorise your metalanguage.
In subject English you can bring everything you know and are interested in: history, geography, politics, philosophy, psychology, sport, art, music, languages, science. In this subject teachers want you to personally engage, which means you can make your own arguments, so long as your presentation is logical and supported by evidence in the text.
If you study at a more advanced level you also need to know about literary movements, and how texts have been received over time (Reception Studies) and how they have been valued, or not valued and why.
I can provide some activities and recommended readings. I am writing a book as a resource for high school English (it is an ambitious project), and these blog posts are a simple version of some material I have been preparing for the book. (The book covers ancient literature, etymology and provides modern examples of literary devises using relevant messages for today.)
More to come!
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