Critical Response: Thesis? (1 Viewer)

[timmyj23]

hey guys, this is my first post and i have a few questions.

i want to do a critical response and have a few ideas of what i would like to investigate, however i have no idea what sort of things to argue. i realise i can't just study george orwell for example. so can anyone give me any advice as to formulating some sort of thesis or argument?

secondly, the diary. i do music 1 and so know the basic process hwoever i'm a little cautious still. i'm not exactly sure how to start. as i've said before i have a few ideas of areas i can investigate, namely geroge orwell, allegory through history, quentin tarantino, the romantic age of poetry, the jazz age of novels. so do i simply write these down? what else must a diary have, do you simply write down the process of constructing the major work? e.g. Feb 10th Today continued drafting my intro etc.

thanks guys, i'm sorry if this post seems a little frantic, but i am actually quite worried that i won't be able to formulate a thesis and have already made a huge mistake dropping bio.

thanks, tim

 

[konstantine']

hey guys, this is my first post and i have a few questions.

i want to do a critical response and have a few ideas of what i would like to investigate, however i have no idea what sort of things to argue. i realise i can't just study george orwell for example. so can anyone give me any advice as to formulating some sort of thesis or argument?

secondly, the diary. i do music 1 and so know the basic process hwoever i'm a little cautious still. i'm not exactly sure how to start. as i've said before i have a few ideas of areas i can investigate, namely geroge orwell, allegory through history, quentin tarantino, the romantic age of poetry, the jazz age of novels. so do i simply write these down? what else must a diary have, do you simply write down the process of constructing the major work? e.g. Feb 10th Today continued drafting my intro etc.

thanks guys, i'm sorry if this post seems a little frantic, but i am actually quite worried that i won't be able to formulate a thesis and have already made a huge mistake dropping bio.

thanks, tim

The worst thing to do right now is stress! I don't think you should be beating yourself up about not having a thesis. I attended a ETA 4U English seminar last year while doing my own critical response and the lecturer kept saying how a lot of the time the thesis will develop WITH the major work. Ideally, you would like to have a thesis at the beginning but if you think about it that's going to be a bit difficult. What you can do is read some past critical responses which received the top band. Your shcool should have access to the 4U english Showcases published with the BOS each year. Have a read of those and see how people have approached it. From what you have mentioned your ideas seem to be broad which isn't bad or anything at this point in time. You just need to refine them and that will happen as time goes by.

What you should be doing in the meantime is putting all your ideas and thoughts down in your journal. Yes, you should date it like a normal "diary" entry. There's no rules in regards to how you have to write in them. You're just required to document all your ideas, changes in major work etc etc. You can even start off by drawing a mindmap of all the possible things you would like to investigate. Just a thought, you can always look at a particuarl aspect of george owell's work, maybe base it around ideas of context or themes? I don't know it's up to you. Just do some reading and hopefully something will eventuate.

If anything I've said hasn't helped in reassuring you, I just want to say I didn't have a thesis until half way through the year. But I had my concept and by the time I formulated my thesis, I realised it was an accumulation of what I had been working on. I just needed to 'word' (for want of a better word) it properly. ANyway I wrote a lot of crap lol. Goodluck!

 

[timmyj23]

thankyou for you're reply, and yes that post reads more frantic than i really am. my mentor said to choose something this weekend so here is what i am considering at the moment (they are all really vague):

allegory - maybe studying it's evolution throughout differing contexts, or maybe just one and writing about why it is a representation of its context hmmm i'm not sure

romantic poetry - again, how the poetry itself is a refelection of its context (this is so unoriginal and limited i know)

portrayal of (organised?) crime - i was thinking of maybe comparing two authors, or two texts by different authors and looking at the how the differently portray and or justify crime and criminals and why, purpose, context etc i was thinking maybe tarantino (resevoir dogs, pulp fiction, jackie brown, kill bill?) and scorcese (goodfellas, meanstreets)

another idea was the justification of revenge - using kill bill as a focus

that is my thinking at the moment. i'm concerned though, because i don't think i can relate any of these ideas very closely to advanced or extension english. with allegory i guess it would incorporate the skills of critical study but thats about it. if i didnt romantic poetry or a romantic poet i guess it would link to doing coleridge for AOS but again i think that is about it. and for portrayals of crime i guess it would kind of link to crime fiction, but not really.

any advice?
i appreciate it
tim

 

[renton]

tarantino is cool, here's my input. Violence, swearing, surface, image and "cool" in tarantino's films. the aesthetics of hi postmodernism (prolly help if u did this for ext 1). simulation etc etc. fuck its an interesting topic.

 

[konstantine']

I didn't know my link until the end to tell you the truth. I don't think you should base your choice of concept/idea on whether or not you will be able to link it to other English courses because chances are, when you've fully developed your ideas then it becomes so much easier to see connections. And hey if you really can't think of any further down the track, maybe play around with postmodernism. I did an AOS of it in Eng Ext Prelim and I experimented with the structure of my critical response (i.e. pomo approach) and used that as my link.

"i was thinking of maybe comparing two authors, or two texts by different authors and looking at the how the differently portray and or justify crime and criminals ..."

I did something like that too! But I did my comparison on the Byronic hero.

 

[timmyj23]

hey guys thanks for your replies, i'll keep you posted onmy progress

 

[CPY WRT]

arrrrrghhhh
only today did i throw out my old ideas and think. why i love tarantino i should do something with his films. out with that idea now
goodluck though.

 

[justquietlyjess]

hey guys, this is my first post and i have a few questions.

i want to do a critical response and have a few ideas of what i would like to investigate, however i have no idea what sort of things to argue. i realise i can't just study george orwell for example. so can anyone give me any advice as to formulating some sort of thesis or argument?

secondly, the diary. i do music 1 and so know the basic process hwoever i'm a little cautious still. i'm not exactly sure how to start. as i've said before i have a few ideas of areas i can investigate, namely geroge orwell, allegory through history, quentin tarantino, the romantic age of poetry, the jazz age of novels. so do i simply write these down? what else must a diary have, do you simply write down the process of constructing the major work? e.g. Feb 10th Today continued drafting my intro etc.

thanks guys, i'm sorry if this post seems a little frantic, but i am actually quite worried that i won't be able to formulate a thesis and have already made a huge mistake dropping bio.

thanks, tim

lol i remember this exact stressing when i started my major work last year. I eventually found something id like to do and an angle id like to argue.. and then 4 months later i found out someone else had done a scarily similar work so it had to be changed.. at a time where most people had done a first draft already. So seriously dont panic, you will always get through it. Your ideas sound good. In regards to the diary entries, i find that people either find it easy or extremely hard. My advice is that if you are finding them hard your thinking too much about them. Rememer that the diary doesnt really get marked at all, its just to make sure you didnt plagerise. I just wrote heaps of random things in mine, especially any anxiety or worries i had about the work.

goodluck!