HSC English Paper 1 Section 1 Perception is…

Sometimes a picture says a lot. News stories often don’t go to air unless the images are ready to go with the spoken story.

In an age of Instagram cropping and photoshop editing, it is important to consider how meaning is composed in a visual text. 

Discoveries about the people in an image can be created, manipulated, enhanced by the composer

The viewers context can also shape the response about a discovery inherent in the constructed image.

What have you discovered about each image then together as a set? 

Are you aware of any personal bias in your response to each photograph and how it has been cropped?

  

   

Dare to discover the year so far…

         the trials friends forever…

Organise for the Trials of Life

  

Plan for Success today!

What would Owen do?

Can we track the personal impact of 
a world war through the words of a soldier?

  

Listen to Owen’s poems here https://m.youtube.com/watch?list=PLDB72F362B19CBC06&v=FfNo6WVt-uc

What did you discover about your world today?

   

Sugar content?Nooooooo!

     

Sample essay on various owen poems

https://www.cambridge.edu.au/education/files/8113/8724/2215/War_Poems_and_Others.pdf

From Cambridge pdf above

Prescribed text: War Poems and Others, Wilfred Owen

Refers directly to the
words in the question

Names the poems and
the poet

Gives an overview of
the poems and
techniques that will be
discussed

Topic sentence is
focused on techniques
used in the poem

Integrates the
quotations and
techniques into the
discussion and explains
the meaning of lines

Conclusion ties in with
human experience in the
question

Refers to audience
reaction (we) which is
linked to the technique
of ironic subversion

Wilfred Owen wrote about the suffering and pity of war from his first-
hand experience at the Somme. He was appalled by the overwhelming and
senseless waste of life, the “human squander” and detailed its devastating
effects on young men. In both ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ and ‘Mental Cases’
he writes with intense focus on war as an extraordinary human experience.
The poems also document other experiences, the living hell of shell-shock
in ‘Mental Cases’ and a cruel and grotesque death from mustard gas in
‘Dulce et Decorum Est’. As an early twentieth century poet, Owen is
careful in his attention to structure, rhyme and meter to convey meaning,
and in his use of figurative language, especially in images conveying the
sights and sounds of the battlefield and of trauma.

War changes young men and this is seen in the negative imagery and
diction used by Owen. In ‘Mental Cases’ they are mentally ruined, their
minds destroyed by the sight, sound and memories of so much death.
Death is personified as the ravisher of their minds, an image suggesting
that the carnage of the battlefield has irrevocably robbed them of their
innocence and of their selves. They now “leer”, with “jaws that slob”,
unable to control their facial expressions or their minds. They are unable to
comprehend the reality of the world around them, instead living inside a
mental hell that replays the war daily, when “Dawn breaks open like a
wound that bleeds afresh”.

Owen uses ironic subversion in the opening stanza of ‘Dulce et Decorum
Est’. We assume the people who are described as “bent double, like old
beggars”, “knock-kneed, coughing”, “lame”, “blind” and “deaf” are old
and decrepit. It is a shock when they suddenly spring into action at the start
of the gas attack and we realise that they are really young men, made
prematurely old through fatigue and injury. In this poem, the soldiers are
also changed in other ways. Their concern for each other, “GAS! Quick
boys!”, becomes callousness when the dying man is “flung” into the
wagon; they know he will not survive, they have seen too much death
already and they have no time for the niceties of civilian death. The dying
man is changed as well. The agony changes him into a “devil”, “corrupt”,
“bitter”, “vile” and “incurable”, the horror of war stripping him of his
dignity, innocence and humanity…

Owen

https://owenstudy.wordpress.com/

MODULE B:

 

 INTRODUCTION: Close Study of a Text

• Emphasis on language as the means of expressing ideas

Essential procedures:

1. Identify the text’s purpose and ideas
2. Identify the formal/technical characteristics of the text
3. Describe how the themes and ideas interact with the stylistic techniques

STEP ONE: 

Identifying the text’s themes and ideas:

In poetry, the title is vital as an introduction to the theme and tone of the poem.  Owen’s ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ is ironic in the use of ‘anthem’ and very critical tone in the use of the word ‘doomed’, which sounds as disturbing as its meaning.

• A close study of a text should look at words in detail, beginning with the title to describe how the use of language determines the readers response.  In ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’, the title has prepared us for the text that follows and begun to determine our response to that text.

STEP TWO: 

Look at the texts structure.  Here form and content interact.

In poetry, various kinds of structures are used to develop ideas:

• Eg:  Stanzas: one stanza can present one aspect or idea, then the following may focus on its opposite.
• It is vital to consider and describe the way in which the author uses structure to explain how this affects the communication of ideas and themes in the text

STEP THREE: 

Describing the language techniques of a text – the devices used by the author:

• Figurative language techniques
• You must identify the technique and explain why it is being used
• How is it effective in communicating the ideas of the writer?

STEP FOUR: 

Analyse the interaction of ideas with literary forms and language:

• Why has the author chosen particular words and forms to express themes of the text?
• In Owen’s poetry, different kinds of language and structural forms are used to convey his ideas about the suffering of soldiers in WWI.  The vivid realism and harsh diction, for example, help us understand the reasons for his bitter criticism and engage us with the issues.
• The style expresses the meaning, as language interacts with ideas to make them more forceful.

Great Blog with potential Hip Hop kendrick-lamars-new-album links to Discovery AoS narrative ideas…

Discover a Uni Lecturer’s Approach… Check this out 

“When Kendrick Lamar released his sophomore album, To Pimp A Butterfly (2015), I was in the middle of teaching a unit on Toni Morrison’s novel, The Bluest Eye (1970). My freshmen students were grappling with some big ideas and some really complex language. Framing the unit as an “Anti-Oppression” study, we took special efforts to […]

Why I Dropped Everything And Started Teaching Kendrick Lamar’s New Album
education, hip hop, pedagogy, high school, critical media literacy”
https://bemoons.wordpress.com/2015/03/27/why-i-dropped-everything-and-started-teaching-kendrick-lamars-new-album/

A great image to analyse too…

  

 

Photograph yourself insisde a video game PS4

The Last of Us Remastered is a post-apocalyptic video game released earlier this year on PlayStation 4 with an in-game Photo Mode, which freezes the game and lets players shoot, edit and share photographs of their achievements. TIME assigned conflict photographer Ashley Gilbertson to use the Photo Mode to document the game’s protagonists as they […]

A War Photographer Embeds Himself Inside a Video Game
Playstation, portfolio, photography, Ashley Gilbertson, video game
http://time.com/3393418/a-war-photographer-embeds-himself-inside-a-video-game/

Reflections

Really proud of my class today as I could see their efforts to write effectively. They had memorised evidence and had a good go at answering the question. It is a rewarding feeling to know they will all be able to complete any course in the future and be just fine.

So many ways to approach teaching and education. Be authentically you! Make the world better one voicee at a time. I was so pleased my class has learned as much as I have over the year and a half together and we love to tackle the big issues such as growing up, Indigenous youth challenges and experiences.