Advice on found texts...Problem!! (1 Viewer)

[Megz1985]

*Sigh*
I'm really quite distressed at the moment.
I'm studying Individual and Society for English Extension 1, as you all know you're meant to have found texts in addition to your prescribed texts.......ours being P & P, Browning, and Ibsen.

I had chosen Little Women and Emma, using them in god-knows-how-many assessment tasks through the year. (And doing pretty well)

After the trial, our head teacher says to us its probably not a good idea to use "Emma", as its another Austen text, (although you could say P & P is Simon L's) and its also a text for Standard English (I do advanced......didnt know this) so the marker would think we (I wasnt the only one who picked this text) were being lazy and 'recycling' a text. (Edit: Someone just told me that you have to be doing advanced to do 3u anyway....so the marker should know i didnt do emma for standard....right???)

Well isnt that just great. Thanks for the notice. (Not a fan of our head teacher....you think they could have told us after our FIRST assessment task.........anyway)

I've picked Wuthering Heights.....started to read it....gotten resources from Spark Notes....etc....but frankly, I don't understand it very well, and don't know whether I know it well enough to use with all my other texts in the essay.

So basically I was just after some advice as to whether you think I should really try and stick Wuthering Heights.....or go back to the text I know inside out (Emma). Do you think the marker would really mark me down on account of what I mentioned above??? Is it a bad idea to use Emma???

Advice would be much appreciated.
Thanks
Megz

 

[Jinglebell]

'emma' is an advanced text, not standard, so it's a fairly bad idea to use it. learning a whole new novel in a short time would be pretty daunting though, and as much as i love 'wuthering heights' i would say that it's one of the harder novels to understand first time through. maybe you can find a shorter/less complicated novel?

 

[braindrainedAsh]

Aww stoopid teachers!!! They should have told you so much earlier.

Wuthering Heights (we did it in Yr 11 Extension) isn't an easy text to understand. Do you need a novel as a related text or could you pick something else simpler like a poem? You could try some poems by Elizabeth Barret Browning (The Cry of the Children is simple to understand) or Tennyson perhaps (You could use an extract from his epic poem The Princess, it's all about women's rights).... or what about a filmic adaptation of Wuthering Heights? It could be easier to understand and explicate. Another poet could be Henry Lawson (try "Second Class Wait Here" or "The Faces in the Street").....

As for any other novels... most 19th century novels are longwinded and complicated.... have you studied any 19th century novels in the prelim course or yr 10? Any other Jane Austens, or perhaps Charles Dickens ones?

Perhaps the examiners would look and see if you did Emma in Advanced, and if you didn't they might not mind.... perhaps this is a question you could ring the advice line and ask for guidance about??

 

[chip]

whatever you do dont use emma the markers dont check that you did it in advanced or not but they do assume you were lazy or couldnt find your own texts and so took one off the reading list

sorry i cant help you with another related text because i do rftg but dont stress

all you can do is your best and you've still got three weeks so you might find something easier to understand or something that you really like

your teacher is silly and should have told you earlier
i'd blow up

 

[Megz1985]

*cries*
My day just got about a thousand times worse.
Though I had a feeling I knew you guys would say that.

Its too late for me now to find another text....I'm just about to go ring up the video shop to see if I can get the movie so I can find out what the hell Wuthering Heights is on about.

Trust me, we tried to blow up. So many of us picked Emma and we were so angry. My friends mother rang up the school and they tried to turn it back around on my friend and tell her that they told her ages ago which was a bunch of B.S. My school has a giant selective pole up its butt and doesnt like to admit when its wrong, put it that way.

I was going to ring the advice line, but I guess theres no point now.

The only thing I could ask, is that if anyone has done Wuthering Heights as a found text, if they have any notes on themes, paradigms etc which relate it to Individual and Society, if they could send them my way it would be MUCH appreciated.

Thanks for the help guys.

Megz

 

[anti]

It might be a good idea to choose something completely unlike your other two texts, if that's possible. A text, particularly a postmodern one (I would say Orlando but that's also an ext 1 text) would provide enough contrast to the others to enable you to write about it effectively. Of course, I don't actually know the I&S syllabus so forgive me if I'm asking the impossible.

Since Little Women is a novel it might be more beneficial to your cause to use a different text type. Emma on film, even (there are several versions of several lengths) would be markedly different to the original text.

And if all else fails, just write about Emma. It's not as though you're going to be talking about it in relation to Clueless, which is what it's being studied with in Advanced. You'll have different, and hopefully more sophisticated, points than an Advanced student doing the text.

Hope this helps

 

[braindrainedAsh]

Hmm that's an idea, doing Emma the movie?

 

[Megz1985]

Well.....
I've always been told its a bad idea to use two films......as that can look lazy also and its two of the same medium.
Since we're already doing P & P as a film text its probably not the best idea.......

 

[bunnyears]

do a poem. easy as and full of paradigms