Appreciation of writer's choices (Written Assignment)?

[HKamal]

Hey all!

So I have to hand in a draft of my written assignment for English A SL in the coming week.

Our teacher can only give us feedback this once and there after we are on our own. 

I understand that it counts for 25% of the grade which is a lot so I don't want to compromise on this. I was looking at the assessment criteria and it is as follows:

A: Reflective statement (3 marks)
B: Knowledge and understanding (6 marks)
C: Appreciation of writer's choices (6 marks)
D : Organization and development (5 marks)
E: Language (5 marks)

I don't really get C: Appreciation of writer's choices. How do I show this in my essay. In the body I have basically three main paragraphs that prove the thesis statement. It is about a play so most of the content is just evidence through dialogue and behavior of the main character. How do I incorporate say the significance of this and this metaphor if it does not lead to achieving the goal of proving my thesis? And what if the  play doesn't have that much in terms of writer's choices? What exactly is writer's choices?

Also can  someone outline what to write in the conclusion? I read somewhere here that you sum up your main points explain the significance of the final product and also come up with something new. 

Also if anyone has any tips generally with the WA or just essays in English it would be a great help to list them here, I haven't had much practise in school for essays and I don't feel very confident considering it is to be externally assessed.

Thanks!

Haseeb

Edited June 9, 2017 by HKamal

[Nomenclature]

Understanding the IB rubric is certainly one of the hardest parts of Literature A. Category C is also the category in which students lose the most points.

To answer what Category C is, it's important to first understand Category B (I'll also add that the written assignment was my least favorite part of all the assessments, but this general advice should serve you well for any assignment—be it Paper 1, your commentary, etc.). I really liked how my teacher described Category B; he said it was essentially "winking at the examiner". What he meant by that is you want to show you got "it"; you understood "it"—whatever that "it" might be. A lot of times, IB likes choosing texts for the Paper 1 where there is use of allusion, metaphor, double entendre, etc.; you want to show the examiner that you understood this. A lot of students worry about summarizing; but briefly acknowledging subtext is not summarizing. For example, one year there was a poem that ended with a euphemism to describe butterflies dying. You absolutely should include a brief sentence in your analysis literally stating that the butterflies die; it lets the examiner know that you are knowledgable about the text and understood the text. You want the examiner to read it and then look at you like the image below.

That being said, you also get points in Category B for correctly identifying literary devices. Calling a simile a simile will likely only get you a few points, and successfully identifying more complex devices such as tone shifts, foils, juxtapositions, structure (especially important in poetry), etc., will give you a significant amount of points. 

Now that you know the two aspects of Category B, I'll talk about Category C. Category C, for lack of a better term, is how "correct" you are in your analysis. Calling a simile a simile is great, but it's something most kids can do; in Category C it's much harder to get points. Examiners take a lot into consideration for evaluating this, but there's a few principles. First, if you identify a theme/tone/whatever, there should not be major contradictory evidence that you have to leave out or unconvincingly address. My hypothetical example: if you say the theme of a book is that all people are inherently and absolutely good, and then only analyse moments where characters act with compassion and don't mention all the parts where the villain murders innocent people because its inconvenient for your analysis, you will be docked points. I'm speaking hyperbolically, but this can happen to the best of us on a smaller scale. Second, you should come up with compelling reasons for every literary device you use for why it is significant and what does it add to the work.  For example, does it develop a tone? Then continue and identify a tone shift. Okay, what does the tone shift do? Oh, it illuminates a theme? What is that theme? Evaluators are going to consider how coherent your argument is, was it logical, and does the text support it. It's always a fine line because obviously examiners are going to award novel perspectives, but you also do want clear support in the text. In my personal opinion, I think it's better to have a slightly obvious thesis but then use harder to identify literary devices than trying to support an unique thesis with limited evidence. On one practice we did from some years back, a lot of kids had been docked points because they commented that the author developed a feminist commentary. The marking analysis said that there was not sufficient evidence in the text to support the idea of the feminist commentary, so that argument didn't score as well as others.

For the conclusion, summary should really only be one sentence. Two is pushing it. In the conclusion, you don't want to introduce new evidence; that is quotations or material that will be analyzed. You do however want to continue the logical progression of your already existing analysis, commenting on its significance and perhaps even drawing the most exciting/general conclusion; in my experience you can really impress examiners by not completely revealing the exact contents of the theme/commentary in the thesis; if you wait to reveal it in the conclusion after building up the entire paper starting with small literary devices and then to large literary devices involving the narrative (tone shifts are your friend), you can get points in organization.

P.S.  Examiners like when you treat a play as a play, poetry as poetry, etc. Thus, I think talking about how the author includes subtext in the script so that actors emphasize certain characteristics is valid and even recommended. If you can, talk about notes in italics because usually this is vital to the play's themes. Otherwise, the author would leave it to individual productions. You can even talk about a directorial choice would influence a theme of the play. Things like this that are unique to theatre aren't necessarily verboten.

Feel free to ask any additional questions (I'll try to write more concise responses) and good luck!