2009, Paper 1. Text 2, Question B.
At least a page and a half. Due in class Wednesday. Speeches! A regular question in the Composition section, and also in Question B, it's vital that you have the various rhetorical devices well-practised. This can be a very approachable question. In addition, there is often an extract from a speech included in the Comprehension section, and you are expected to be able to comment on the quality of the speech-writing evident. This document includes a number of different speeches in their entirety. There are also 'word clouds' of some of the speeches, which should allow you to quickly compare what each speaker has chosen to focus on. This document is the class handout version. Most of the longer speeches have not been included, and there are additional word clouds. If you were in class on Friday 9th, you'll have received a copy. One of the most important things to remember when writing a speech is that it is intended to be spoken aloud. While this may be purely hypothetical for speeches written for class or in an exam, the examiner will expect the writing style to reflect spoken language. To help you master this, it is useful to listen to good orators (speech-givers) speaking. Below are some Youtube clips of particularly good examples from the TV series West Wing. From today's Irish Times. There are some really interesting ideas in this about the effect technology is having on how we think. The way the writer uses personal anecdotes, interspersed with more general commentary is a style well worth studying.
Reclaiming my brain from the internet age Wed, Oct 31, 2012 My insatiable consumption of online information has taken a toll on my mind and habits, and now it’s time to do something about it, writes UNA MULLALLY IN NICHOLAS CARR’S 2010 book The Shallows, the author writes: “Over the last few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory.” When I read those words, I felt an odd mix of solidarity and foreboding. It was real. In these early stages of analysing the impact the internet is having on our brains, Carr’s book is a landmark. Since reading it, I’ve examined my own over-reliance on technology, which went from habitual to detrimental. I know I’m not alone, but sometimes ignorance is bliss, because when I realised the impact the internet has on my brain, I couldn’t shake the thought that I’ll never get my old mind back. This month, “internet-use disorder” was added to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or the DSM, a book that’s the international psychiatric manual. And if we examine our own behaviour, I believe a huge number of people are somewhere on the spectrum of this modern condition. It started when web 2.0 came along, as the internet changed from a static information feed to a shape-shifting, user-generated open community. And then social networking came along, the dark matter in this new universe that changed everything all over again. The real surge in my compulsive and frazzled use of technology came last year when the Sunday Tribune closed and I went freelance. Working from home, with no office chats or colleagues to bounce ideas off, the majority of my interactions moved online. Twitter was my watercooler. And the nature of freelancing as a job is entirely different to being a staff writer. Because ideas are your currency, you must consume a monumental amount of information every week, knowing everything from the ins and outs of the Children’s Referendum to the quality of the new album from The xx. You need to be able to spot trends as they are germinating, recognise the next big thing when it’s just a small thing, and know the irony behind whatever meme peaks on a given Wednesday. Very quickly, information consumption overtakes real interaction. Whole days might go by when your conversations are conducted solely over email, phone, text, and Twitter. And then, gradually, you can’t turn it off. As children, we were told not to sit in front of the TV all day, to put the Nintendo down, and go outside and get some fresh air. Yet as adults, we are amplifying those bad habits, staring at screens in work, staring at phones on the bus, staring at iPads at home. I began to see a correlation between myself and others who are online too much; an over-consumption of coffee; a wide knowledge “about” things but not actually “of” them – Cliff notes as opposed to wisdom; an “early adopter” shame attached to not knowing about something the minute it happened; and, most of all, the collapse of concentration levels caused by distraction. All of these things caused a mental buzzing that was hard to turn down. I found myself crashing more, mini episodes where my brain would shut down like a dodgy laptop, and experiencing an odd manic fatigue at the end of the day caused by the amount of information stimulation. And what was the end of the day? What are work hours when really, there is no clocking out? Modern technology has become the great interrupter; a constant symphony of interruptions soundtrack the day. WHEN I THINK about how my brain works now, I imagine old footage of phone operators plugging lines in and out of sockets. I feel like my sockets are open tabs, apps, mail and Twitter clients, documents, podcasts, videos and rudimentary phone games, rarely sticking at anything for more than a few minutes, sometimes not even more than a few seconds. But here’s the most worrying thing: because I’m flitting from one thing to another every other second, things fall through the cracks. Frequently, if I think of an idea for an article or even a simple task such as “write that email” or “get that notebook from downstairs”. The thought will completely exit my mind seconds after forming it. This webmentia – a technology-induced fault in how I actually think – has forced me to change how I hold on to information. I have to write tasks down in lists at the start of every day. Ideas for articles are written down in other lists in specific notebooks, or entered in my phone notes before I forget them. Every appointment, be it for leisure or work, must be entered in the calendar in my phone the minute it’s made or I simply won’t remember it. Short-term memory, the filing cabinet in our brains where we hold things for about a minute, is small. We can only store about seven independent pieces of information there at any one time, such as a phone number someone reads out to you. But because our short-term memories are so small, and the amounts of information we’re consuming are so large, the filing cabinet bursts open, and documents fall to the floor – the thoughts fall out of your head. Since the printing press (and perhaps before), humans have been lamenting the impact technology has on our capacity to concentrate. Every generation rediscovers this as new technologies emerge. But it’s the leap in behavioural change thanks to the internet that is unique to this generation. Anyone who spends a lot of time online knows that the genie is out of the bottle. Privacy is defunct. Mobile internet has become a safety blanket that’s reached for during any gap of activity, or sometimes even during an activity. By constantly connecting to a remote world, we’re ignoring the real one around us. Sometimes I wonder if our necks will evolve facing downwards. WATCHING A surfer in West Cork recently, I imagined that all he was thinking about was paddling, of the next wave, of spitting out water, of kneeling and then standing and repeating the process over and over again. The only thing he was hearing was the sea sloshing about and the seagulls overhead. There was no app monitoring his speed, he didn’t pause to check his mail, or Instagram a photo. He had checked out. Because a fear of missing out seems to tinge everything, I realised I never checked out, so in order to untangle myself from the web, I made a few changes. I try not to stare at my computer all day. Of course, sitting at a laptop is necessary, but the minute I find myself wandering from the task at hand into a YouTube hole, or scrolling zombie-like down some stupid Tumblr, I snap myself out of it and get up and walk around, and do something like make a cup of tea. I read the papers every morning in hard copy – thus saving my eyesight and the industry. Woo hoo! I write longhand on occasion instead of typing. The first time I did that in a long time, my hand actually hurt after a few hundred words because the muscle memory must have been so confused. Every day, I do what I have nerdily called “brain hour”, which is stimulating my brain outside of the online-information churnover. This means going to a gallery, a play, listening to a decent record or an intelligent podcast, drawing something, having coffee outside somewhere and listening to conversations, reading a book. And I’ve started running. Just a half an hour every other day where my mind concentrates on my breathing and my pace and my sore knees. And fine, I may glance at the clock counting down on the running app I’ve downloaded, but, you know, gimme a break. © 2012 The Irish Times Link to original article http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/features/2012/1031/1224325931759.html Most people are almost up to date with work. If you think you've fallen behind or forgotten to submit pieces, there is a list of overdue work below. Any pieces you still have to submit, must be submitted on the first day back after midterm.
Two articles from the list of seven below (you must do the 'looking back on your years in education' one, and then choose any other one). The list: 1. Write a feature article for a newspaper or magazine on the role played by memory and the past in our lives. (2012) 2. Write a light-hearted and entertaining article, intended for publication in a magazine aimed at young people, in response to the phrase, “… all the time in the world”. (2012) 3. Write an article for a popular magazine in which you outline your views about the impact of technology on the lives of young people. (2011) 4. Write an article for a popular magazine (serious and/or light-hearted) on being a good neighbour. (2010) 5. Write an article for a school magazine (serious and/or light-hearted) about your experience of education over the last number of years. (2009) 6. Write an article for a popular magazine (serious and/or light-hearted) in which you give advice to adults on how to help teenagers cope with the ‘storm and stress’ of adolescence. (2008) 7. Write an article for a school magazine in which you explore aspects of life that make you happy. (2008) 2 Comparative Questions: 1 on Cultural Context “A reader can feel uncomfortable with the values and attitudes presented intexts.” (a) Show how this statement might apply to one text on your comparative course. (b) Compare the extent to which the values and attitudes that you encountered in two other texts made you feel uncomfortable. 1 on Theme HL: 2011 "The study of a theme or issue can offer a reader valuable lessons and insights." (a) Identify and discuss at least one valuable lesson or insight that you gained through the study of a theme or issue in one text on your comparative course. (30) (b) Compare at least one valuable lesson or insight that you gained, from studying the same theme or issue (as discussed in (a) above), in two other texts on your comparative course. The valuable lesson or insight may be the same, or different, to the one discussed in (a) above. (40) Plan for next week. Please take particular note of submission dates for work.
All outstanding work still needs to be submitted!! Monday: More work on final Comparative mode (Lit Genre / Aspects of story) Tuesday: Education article due Tues - Thurs: Comparative (Tuesday's class will focus on (b) part of Theme question due Friday) Friday: Paper 1 work. Please bring exam papers. Comparative question on Theme due on Friday. From the Irish Times - Hilary Fannin
Fri, Oct 19, 2012 FIFTYSOMETHING: BLESS ME, Father, for I have sinned. Last night I ate fish and chips at midnight; worse, Father, I took pleasure in it. Three Hail Marys and a battered Our Father isn’t going to atone for that calorific transgression; nope, this calls for a decade of tofu burgers. I was driving home. It had been a long day. I couldn’t remember the last time I ate. I thought my arms were going to fall off. I was way beyond irritation; rage and tears beckoned. I wanted to eat the steering wheel. So much of the chat this week has been about body image. We’ve been riffling through surveys like lovers through yellowing letters, trying to figure out where we went wrong. We want to know why young girls won’t get into swimming pools with their mates; we want to know why they hide in their bedrooms doing sit-ups. We’re frowning at our midriffs in front of mirrors and asking why our daughters are giving their dinner to the dog. And here am I, 50 bloody years of age, and I can’t eat a bag of fish and chips without feeling like I’ve drowned a puppy. Recently I was parked in an industrial estate near Dublin airport, watching swarms of teenagers being disgorged from a nightclub that was lit up like Las Vegas; a great big neon-clad dancing queen, rocking along next to shuttered carpet warehouses and darkened toy emporiums. The temperature in the car park was Siberian. I had a travel mug full of coffee in my frozen mitts. I’d meant to bring a rug. My reason for being there was legitimate; I wasn’t flirting with pneumonia for the heck of it. I had expected to be cold and bored; I hadn’t expected a ringside seat at a theatre of pain. The doors of the club opened and young girls hit the night air like mayflies in a hurricane. Shrieking with cold, they pulled their tiny Lycra dresses down over bare, purpling legs and goose-pimpled thighs. Stumbling forward into the wash of headlights, in heels you could abseil down, their poker-straight hair framed blue-lipped mouths and chattering teeth. Benign parents hopped out, opened back doors and front doors, and trembling bundles of scrawny girlhood piled into their dark cars like kindling, screaming for the heating to be turned up. Meanwhile, as America’s Next Top Model is packing the Marlboro Lights and vitamin sticks into her cabin bag and preparing to take on Britain’s Next Top Model in a titanic clash of the rib bones, an Irish manufacturer has been lauded, rightly, for making dolls that look like little girls rather than porn queens. These innovative dolls are designed to resemble the children who play with them: they have knees and tummies rather than waist-length, peroxide- blonde hair. This obsession with image is hardly confined to our offspring. It wasn’t off the ground they licked it, as your granny would have said. I dunno – maybe you have remained unscathed, maybe you hop out of bed every morning and greet the day with a glass of buttermilk before you go blackberry picking. Maybe you have never counted a calorie, maybe you have never wondered if bat wings can make you fly. Me, I have grown up in the full glare of a culture devoted to dieting and dodgy self-image. My brain is fried with the myriad diets and exercise regimes and innovative self-tortures that have littered the conversations I’ve had with my peers over the years. Let’s see: the caveman diet (nuts and seeds and foraging for dead partridges); the white wine and chicken diet (which has no effect whatsoever but was a perennial favourite of my mother’s); all the Ketogenic diets (weight loss in exchange for constipation, halitosis and irritability); raw veganism; sporadic fasting; liposuction. Sod diets. Sod being bony, weepy, elated, depressed, delirious or deranged. Sod self-denial. Sod this insidious little worm born of fear and vanity that tells us frailty is beautiful. I’m going back to the chipper. © 2012 The Irish Times 5.
Write an article for a school magazine (serious and/or light-hearted) about your experience of education over the last number of years. (2009) The article vs the personal essay · An article is trying to make a connection with readers · It should focus on ‘we’ ‘you’ and ‘us’ · The personal essay simply recounts your own views on a topic · It is entirely from the ‘I’ perspective · A useful way to ‘mark’ your piece as an article is to use quotations / anecdotes from “real-life” people eg o Mary, 24, from Dublin, has suffered in just this way. “It was a nightmare,” she said. “I just couldn’t tolerate those awful neighbours any longer. They even began to dig a swimming pool in the front lawn!” · A personal essay would never include such a technique. - School magazine - Your experiences of education - Past number of years Plan / order / ideas - Opening paragraph – explain purpose of article “As a high and mighty sixth year, I am obviously incredibly busy at the moment. Between study and CAO choices, I haven’t a spare minute. But frankly, all of that is a bit stressful, so I thought I’d take a bit of time to look back on my years in St. John’s and see how far I’ve come in six long years.” … “From lowly beginnings as a tiny first year, to a proud sixth year with a prefect’s jumper, I can hardly believe how far I’ve come. The journey wasn’t without incident, however! Needless to say, lots of names have been changed!” - Body paragraphs – o Take 2 paragraphs (or so) on 1st Year – fears, expectations, daft things that you did, things you can’t believe now that you did, uniform, bag (weight) etc. o A few paragraphs on the Junior Cert – the hype, the stress, the results night… was it all worth it… the proposed abolition of the exam… o Section on where you are now – top of the pile, setting an example (hopefully a good one!), how relationships with teachers have changed, how expectations have changed, what you hope to be able to do next - Concluding paragraph o Some comment to tie it all together… talk about how your experiences have made you who you are, have prepared you (or not!) for what lies ahead etc Cultural Context / Social Setting question is due Thursday.
Next question is on Theme HL: 2011 "The study of a theme or issue can offer a reader valuable lessons and insights." (a) Identify and discuss at least one valuable lesson or insight that you gained through the study of a theme or issue in one text on your comparative course. (30) (b) Compare at least one valuable lesson or insight that you gained, from studying the same theme or issue (as discussed in (a) above), in two other texts on your comparative course. The valuable lesson or insight may be the same, or different, to the one discussed in (a) above. (40) OL: 2012 (a) Identify a theme found in two of the three texts you have studied on your comparative course. In relation to one text you have studied, explain how you found studying this text helpful in understanding your chosen theme. (30) (b) Identify a second text in which you have studied the same theme. Compare relevant aspects of this text, with the one you referred to in (a) above, in order to establish which text was the most helpful in developing your understanding of the theme. Remember to refer to both texts in your answer. (40) Due next Friday, please. Bring (a) in on Tuesday. (b) will be planned in class on Tuesday. |