English Ext1 Exam (1 Viewer)

[SgtSlick]

Anyone else frightened? I do Retreat from the global and Im not particularly looking forward to my exam, but anyways. If anyone else out there is doing RFTG, and wants to chat about it, post here, and we can help each other.
Cheers,
-SGTSLICK

By the way: Death to pig industries!!
:torch: :apig:
love from "Chopper" :axedeath:

 

[SgtSlick]

As in, would anyone like to specifically talk about:
-The Castle
-The Bone People
-The Shipping News

????

-SgtSlick

 

[Zenithliza]

I do Retreat from the Global and I am shitting bricks about this exam! I do:

-Seamus Heaney's poems
-The Lost Salt Gift of Blood
-The Castle

Are you including literary theory?

 

[Lazarus]

There's a syllabus point somewhere that talks about the emphasis on philosophical, religious, economical and something else paradigms in the RFTG texts. You might want to look that up and find examples/techniques from the texts to support them. It really helped me last year in the exam.

 

[purplegerbera]

Retreat from the exam!

Yep, I do RFTG. ugh. My teacher said that maybe it was going to get too confusing if we started doing literary schools of thought. Instead, like Laz said, concentrate on the economic, philosophical, scientific and religious (paradigm) changes/shifts that have occured around the time the texts have been written, ie the last 50 yrs or so. For Heaney, the religious/political issues in Ireland, media, dying out of the Gaelic language, agriculture's change in regard to science. For Hulme, the migrations to NZ, resurge of Maori culture (ie philosophical and religious), changing areas of work and education, spread of international influences (look at Kerewin.). I do McLeod as well (Lost Salt) and he's good to identify big ag vs science and philosophical/language/cultual blending and retreating. Looking at the spread of info and the global economy is key, I think.

Don't be too worried! It's a big-ugly-syllabus that didn't quite give us any boundries, so stick with the key words in the syllabus and the rubric, and if you can before the exam try and read your texts again (not the Bone People!!!!). Just remeber it comes under the texts and ways of thinking banner, and you'll be fine.

Good luck!
PS get yourself a copy of the syllabus at boArd of studies too.

 

[SgtSlick]

RFG

Yeah for the Bone People we discussed things like:

-Loss of Maori identity and how this has affected the Maori people, ie. splintering of family relationships, alcohol abuse

-Simon can be seen to represent a global culture, as he is the product of a destructive global world

-Kerewin is European/Maori and is there to reinforce the fact that New Zealand is a hybrid of cultures and that this cross-pollination of ideas and cultures began with the post-colonial period and was precipitated by globalisation

-The emphasis that Hulme places upon nature and the natural surroundings is endemic of the postcolonial socuiety which has become New Zealand, where in order to retreat from damaging global forces such as economic rationalism and cultural imperialism, the people have returned to a more romanticised past, returned to the simplicity offered by the local Maori culture

Thats it in a nut-shell, its been really hard for me, I AM my ext english class, no-one else chose the subject, its been just me and the teacher all year.... So this place is good to bounce some ideas around. Cheers all, and keep the discussion going!

-SGTSLICK

 

[smegger_em]

Do you guys hate ext one? i do crime fiction and while i havent loved it, its been more to do with the dickheads in my class then anythign else, and i think the subjevts fairly easy. RFTG sounds more interesting, but a fair bit more demanding ...
also, there are some very violent emoticons on this post, you arent dealing wiht the HSc stress to well are you Sgt Slick

 

[Chicken]

We're doing Retreat From The Global and I love it!! Our texts are
The Bone People
Heaney's poems
The Lost Salt Gift of Blood

We have an Eng Ext 1 class of 5 (amazing, considering there are only 40-45 in the grade!!!). The students are great - we ALL bounce ideas off one another - but our teacher is the SCHOOL PRINCIPAL!!! ergh! She's studying for her PhD, so she was confusing us all with all these extra texts and concepts that we couldn't see any relation of to the topic!!

There were so many times in our classes where she'd ask a question (eg, so what is the significance of this fern frond and pot stand to the elective "Texts and Ways of Thinking"?) and the only sound for several minutes was the buzzing of the fluorescent lights! One lesson there were only 3 of us there, and we had literally 10 WHOLE MINUTES of silence!!

It's quite amusing.....

anyone else with stories to share?

 

[smegger_em]

There are 10 of us. Our teachers ok, she just doesnt have many eyelashes. There are mean people in the class. I have cried in the class. I have left it crying. I have thought things about other class members and large sheets of glass that would get me sent to the school councillor for a long time if i said them out loud. Our idea of a class discusion is me and one of the boys screaming at each other about child sex abuse, the catholic church, phillip ruddock and wether or not the tuckshoplady is trying to poison us. I hope you all apriciate your nicer classes

 

[Doylie]

That sounds......... interesting smegger_em..
our class was pretty screwed up for a while, until the class basically refused to let this one asshole into the class unless he got in line.. so it was all good..
I still reckon PoMo is the hardest elective for 3U.. Except maybe acts of reading and writing which would be hard simply because the boredom would make you fall asleep - it sounds like the most mundane topic...