AQA B - NTB2 - Color Purple / Scarlet Letter

[Susan Wilde]

I guess that many of us will be preparing these as "new texts" for next term.

So far we haven't done much prep at my college - but would hope that we can trade ideas in this forum.

If you are totally new to the specification the first thing you need to know is that the exam is "the same every year" with a generic question - which you can locate on the AQA website -

The students are given a "pair" of printed extracts from the texts, and then they have to answer this question

1 Find the extracts from the pair of texts you have studied. Read them through carefully.

Discuss these two extracts, commenting on:

_ the ideas in each extract and the ways in which they are presented

_ how the writers’ language choices in each extract help to reveal attitudes and values

_ what the language of the two extracts shows us about the changes in language and style over time

_ how far you think each extract reveals ideas, attitudes and values found in each text as a whole.

This helps you to see what focus you need to keep an eye on during the year, if nothing else!

[Susan Wilde]

The only thing we have decided so far is that we will not start in-depth study of these texts until after Xmas, and our plan is that we will focus on anthology and coursework in the first term, while they read the texts under their own steam.

We used this Scheme of Work for the past couple of years, with Alice and BFG - but we are now thinking of ways to "support" their reading in the first term, as these texts are obviously a lot less "easy" to read than the old pair.

So far we are considering allocating say: 1/2 an hour a week where we set up a "reading target" for the week, and review what they read the week before - briefly - but to make it clear that we are supervising their work, and that we can trouble shoot any issues which arise.

I guess we will write a few task sheets etc to encourage them to do this, and guide them into keeping a reading log / journal - which we have had good results with on other texts in the past, in terms of cultivating personal responses.

[Susan Wilde]

I know it is a bit sad to keep adding to your own thread - but I prefer short messages!

this link has been suggested by someone called allen, on the BlueYonder Language List -

you might like to browse and post your opinions back in here?

http://us.penguingroup.com/static/cs/us/10...hersguides.html

[allan]

I can't believe the recent exam on 'changing language of literature' for The BFG and Alice. I team-taught it and only took Dahl's BFG.

They included an extract from the BFG right at the start of the book where the BFG doesn't even speak.

I haven't seen the exam yet but a score of students have enlightened me (with disgruntled expressions..)

So, all that teaching on malapropism, neologism, idiolect, etc, etc, gone down the tubes!

Any thoughts?

Allan.

[Susan Wilde]

glad you found it allen!

as for the extracts chosen on this year's A in W and BFG ~ the change aspect isn't just about the BFG's idolect, in the sense that he is not typical of modern styles anyway!

so, in a way, if they couldn't say mcuh about that the BFG's style - it might have done some kids a favour - forcing them to look at other issues?

this will be concern teaching Color Purple, esp as we are not Americans ourselves, and it is harder to judge what the general patterns of lang use in another community are.

Celie has a stong idiolect, which may be related to lots of other Black Vernacular, but may be "her voice" - and there is not much evidence of black voices in the Scarlet Letter - so it is hard ~ we wont be comparing like with like!

AND in general - evidence of black voices from the past would be very hard to find anywhere, anyone who DID get themselves into writing would tend to the standard -

I am thinking I might be using more of my resources from A2 on the emergance of standard and that whole debate. Plus some of the poems we've used to teach Accent and Dialect, by the likes of Merle Collin, John Agard, who bring this issue forward quite clearly. Those poems clarify the context of cultural pride and the value of using your vernacular (ethnic or class or regionally based) which must be part of Walker's purpose -

so that is one of the main "change over time" points - that ppl have started to think it is VALID and NEEDED to use vernacular in print

and the vernacular may, or may not, have been around in these forms in the past, but evidence of it is slim ....

Edited June 11, 2004 by susanwilde

[allan]

Thanks for your reply, Susan.

It really made me realise there's a lot more in-depth study that I need to do for next year!

(I'll be in my second year of teaching next year, so should have the whole thing down to a tee...) (!)

Allan.

[Julie Blake]

I answered Sian's original question about this on the English Language list offlist, which was really funny (and a bit sad) cos she only teaches down the corridor from me!! Haven't taught Lang & Lit for a while now (thank heavens, as I hate it...) but suggested the following light reading to her to help with the language change part.

Crystal's encyclopaedia of the English Language pp83-97, and Robert McCrum's Story of English chapters 6 and 7. There's other stuff but that's a start on issues of development of American English, and Black English Vernacular.

E-Julie

[Susan Wilde]

I answered Sian's original question about this on the English Language list offlist, which was really funny (and a bit sad) cos she only teaches down the corridor from me!!

E-Julie

LOL - that deserves to be posted on the technology thread!

[Susan Wilde]

this is an excellent site for the scarlet letter - it doesnt look like much, but follow the link at the bottom which says "start reading" - you find yourself with the whole text,

but more important, from the student perspective, two indexes, found by following very inconspicuous links at the top of the page "words" and "people"

1.a useful "who's who" of ppl in Hawthorn's work,

2. a dictionary offering definitions of words used, defined in terms of the context H uses them ...

v useful

there also seems to be a wealth of art work, but the links are down, dunno if that is permenant or not ...

second time around - edited to add the address:

http://www.eldritchpress.org/nh/sl.html

and to say:

that I subsequently DID use the pictures from here - I ran off A4 colour prints, laminated them and used them for group work where the students had to identify which bit of the book they thought the picture was illustrating - you can't use them all - but some of them are quite obvious and it leads to different ways of recalling and revising basic knowledge of the text

Edited September 1, 2005 by Susan Wilde

[Graham Davies]

Robert McCrum's Story of English chapters 6 and 7. There's other stuff but that's a start on issues of development of American English, and Black English Vernacular.

I would add Melvyn Bragg's book, The Adventure of English, a spin-off from his TV series of the same name. The TV series featured speakers of Gullah, an Afro-American Vernacular English (AAVE) language - there's a small section on it in the book. Jive is an example of an AAVE language, which is associated strongly with jazz and blues musicians, e.g. Cab Calloway.

See:

http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Linguistics/gullah.html

http://www.arches.uga.edu/~bryan/AAVE/

http://www.cabcalloway.cc/jive_dictionary.htm

[Guest Andrew Moore]

You can get the text of The Scarlet Letter at http://www.gutenberg.net/etext92/scrlt12.txt

That will allow you to drop in into a word processor, and use various tools for analysis.

I'd forgotten how distinctive the dialogue is. The New England Puritans are steeped in the Geneva Bible - their speech has developed as a kind of Biblical-literary vernacular. (Some of the features of this have been petrified in the speech of the Pennsylvania Amish and other Anabaptist or Mennonite communities in the USA.)

Hawthorne (like Arthur Miller in The Crucible) is recreating this archaic New England speech. But we can find a contemporary English equivalent in The Pilgrim's Progress. Indeed, looking at close similarities in modes of address and general lexis, I would suggest that Hawthorne may have used Bunyan's text (which has more extensive dialogue) as a style model.

It would perhaps be a mistake to polarize Hawthorne's dialogue as artificial and Alice Walker's as authentic - both are literary representations, though Hawthorne has the further difficulty of trying to represent the speech of a past time, to which his only access is in written records and literary works.

Here's an extract from The Scarlet Letter:

"Prithee, friend, leave me alone with my patient," said the practitioner.  "Trust me, good jailer, you shall briefly have peace in your house; and, I promise you, Mistress Prynne shall hereafter be more amenable to just authority than you may have found her heretofore. "

"Nay, if your worship can accomplish that," answered Master Brackett, "I shall own you for a man of skill, indeed!  Verily, the woman hath been like a possessed one; and there lacks little that I should take in hand, to drive Satan out of her with stripes. "

The forms of address have the courtesy of the times: "good jailer", "your worship", "friend" - all are descriptions or titles, rather than given names. Where personal names appear it is the surname prefaced by the title "mistress" or "master". Note "one" where today we would use "person" - "a possessed one" here has an equivalent in The Pilgrim's Progress where we meet "an ill-favoured one". "Verily" is the adverb that appears in any number of Jesus's sayings in the gospels, in older versions. "Stripes" for the marks of beating recalls Isaiah 53 ("with his stripes are we healed").

"Prithee" (I pray thee) is a little more hackneyed (one of those words like "forsooth" that one uses for stock effects of archaism). But it abounds in Shakespeare, and is plausible in context here.

The formula "a man of X" is also common in the Bible, though it persists into modern usage: "a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief" (compare "man of his word", "man of good will" and so on).

The characters often use the familiar "thee"/"thou" mode of address (embedded in "prithee") but here both speakers use the polite "you" form of the pronoun. The mode of address is always (as in Shakespeare) an indication of the relations of speaker and listener.

Edited June 26, 2004 by andrewmoore1955

[Sian Price]

this is an excellent site for the scarlet letter - it doesnt look like much, but follow the link at the bottom which says "start reading" - you find yourself with the whole text,

Hi Susan,

I'm confused what is the wonderful site that you are talking about for the Scarlet Letter in your log of 26th June?

Sian

[allan]

Hello all,

a good site I've just found relating to lots of notes for Scarlett Letter.

http://www.freebooknotes.com

It gives you a list of other sites with summaries and analysis.

On a different note, I'll be team teaching AQA B Lit/Lang and we've decided to not do The Scarlet Letter/Color Purple. Reasons? Too difficult / long..

Mabe this is a cop out - but I'm halfway through the Scarlet Letter and I'm finding it very melodramatic and the lexis very difficult for a year 12 class - well, for the year 12 class that we're expecting anway..

Allan.

[Susan Wilde]

@ sian, LOL

I seem to have omited the key fact!

http://www.eldritchpress.org/nh/sl.html

@ allen, so which option have you gone for?

[allan]

Hi Susan,

Against some of my instincts we're going for the Harry Potter couplet!

The other teacher is more experienced than me and agrees. Our intake won't be the brightest of the bunch and, a couple of chapters away from finishing 'The Scarlet Letter' (slow but sure!) I really am not enthralled by it at all. That annoying little sprite, Pearl ! (Worse than Alice in her Wonderland..)

Yours,

Allan.