English Scholarship Specifications

Here is the link to the 2009 specifications for Scholarship English.

Scholarship – Section B

In the Scholarship exam in Section B (Response to Literature) you are required to write a coherent and engaging essay in response to one of 13 topics. You need to use the topic as the focus for an in-depth discussion of a relevant text or texts. Your discussion should reflect independent thinking substantiated by frequent, appropriate and integrated references and / or quotations.  However, you must choose suitable texts.

Low level or other unsuitable texts which do not build credible arguments at this level should be avoided simply because students do not write well about them or reference them with perception; these include:

– Harry Potter books and films

– Lord of the Flies book and films

– The Bible (not a novel)

– The Aeneid/Odyssey (these are Classics texts, and mostly treated as such)

– The Lion King

– Twilight by Stephanie Meyer

– Jodi Picoult books offered as serious literature

– The Bucket List (film)

– “Chick-lit” as serious literature

– The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks (also a film)

– Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman

– Shawshank Redemption.

Scholarship resources

Here’s another link to the Scholarship resources on the NZQA site.

2009 Scholarship Assessment Specifications

Specific Information about the Scholarship English Exam

Candidates will answer three questions, writing at least 800 words for each.

Format of the assessment

There will be three sections:

Section A –  Close Reading of Unfamiliar Texts will require a technical comparison of two written texts, one prose and one poetry, with an emphasis on aspects of content and crafting. There will be a single question for this section.

Section B – Response to Literature and Language will require a response to literature and/or language studied. Candidates will be required to select one question from a number of options.

Section C – Exploring Issues in Literature and Language will require an exploration of issues in literature and/or language studied. Candidates will be required to select one question from a number of options.

Note: Candidates who select short texts (eg poetry, short story, magazine articles, short electronic or audio texts) should refer to two for each selected genre. Candidates should demonstrate wide knowledge and wide reading, and an appreciation of aspects of intertextuality.

Marking– Each essay will be marked out of 8 to give a total of 24 marks.

Book of the week – Beloved

I have been asked to recommend some books and I will start off with Beloved by Toni Morrison. The book was written in 1987 and it is a spellbinding and dazzlingly innovative portrait of a woman haunted by the past. Beloved is a book that will open your eyes up to slavery and its legacy. Margaret Atwood described it as “a triumph”.

Toni Morrison won both the Nobel and Pulitzer prizes for Beloved and she has written something so beautiful, so terrifying and so true. With this novel you have to give yourself over to it and don’t expect to understand everything right away. Erica Bauermeister says “Beloved is written in bits and images, smashed like a mirror on the floor and left for the reader to put together. In a novel that is hypnotic, beautiful, and elusive, Toni Morrison portrays the lives of Sethe, an escaped slave and mother, and those around her.”

This review will give you more information.

Schol stats

For those of you who were wondering how your results stacked up…here are the 2007 National Scholarship statistics.Year 13 English had the largest number of candidates in a Level 3 subject (13442) and 2.93% were awarded Scholarship English. In 2007 they were 46 Outstanding Scholarships awarded in English across the country.

Scholarship Results

Well done to those of you who have been awarded a Scholarship in English. You all really deserve your success and I am pleased that your hard work has paid off.

You’ve done us proud!

english@kkc

I write two blogs for English students at Katikati College and some of you will have used english@kkc last year. Keep checking in to that site as there will be posts that you may find helpful to your studies.

The scholarship@kkc blog is set up to help Year 13 students with their studies for NCEA and the Scholarship exam and it is worth checking back through the archives.

Top 10 Schools of Philosophy

As so many of you are interested in learning more about philosophy I thought you may like to check out List Universe’s Top 10 Schools of Philosophy. I have put their top two schools below.

1. Existentialism

Be that self which one truly is.

– Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)

Existentialism is the broad philosophical movement postulating that individual human beings create the meaning and essence of their lives as persons. Walter Kaufmann described Existentialism as, “The refusal to belong to any school of thought, the repudiation of the adequacy of any body of beliefs whatever, and especially of systems, and a marked dissatisfaction with traditional philosophy as superficial, academic, and remote from life”. Human beings are to make their own choices in life and find their own meaning, with or without God. Existential philosophers range from the religious (Kierkegaard) to the anti-religious (Nietzsche).

2. Nihilism

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.

– Philip Larkin (1922-1985)

Nihilism is a philosophical (or anti-philosophical as some call it) view that life is without objective meaning, purpose, value or truth. They reject belief in a higher creator and claim that objective secular ethics are impossible. Nihilism is often associated with pessimism, depression and immorality. To them, life is literally “pointless.”

Many artistic movements have been associated with nihilism, such as Dadaism, Futurism and Surrealism.

If you can read this you are a genius

Just checked out this blog’s reading level and it is as I suspected – you have to be a genius to understand it. Now as you all know a genius is a person of great intelligence, who shows an exceptional natural capacity of intellect, especially as shown in creative and original work. Geniuses always show strong individuality and imagination, and are not only intelligent, but unique and innovative. So obviously that fits readers of this blog!

Speaking of geniuses, congratulations to those students who sat Scholarship English today, I know that all of you would have given it your best shot. I thought it was a fair and interesting paper and I hope you enjoyed being a part of the Scholarship group. Good luck for the rest of your exams.