I want to achieve excellence in the level 1 film and novel study essays in the upcoming exams. I have written a film essay and plan to get my teacher to help me mark it and improve it to the E8 level. I know that the exams both ask 6 questions and you can choose to answer one about the film you are studying. I also know though that there is always a question about a character. My teacher advised my class to come up with a theme that we would relate to the text. I developed the theme “Hope is essential in escaping the effects of colonisation.” I chose this theme so that I could use it for both my film and novel studies, which would decrease the workload. My plan is to remember the points I brought up in my E8 essay and use the same above theme to cut down on the on-the-fly thinking I have to do. However, I saw on the marking schedule that essays learnt by rote get an Achieved mark. My question is, does my strategy count as rote-learning an Essay and if so, will that result in me being marked down for it?
Kiā ora
An interesting question. It is a good idea to have the theme or main idea/ director’s purpose in an essay be it on character or setting or whatever. Think of someone having a reason to create a text and refer to that. It is a good idea to practise writing responses to questions also. The problem with memorised essays is that you are not going to get the exact question and so they don’t really manage to answer the question you choose. They seem to have been twisted to fit, if you see what I mean, and so do not do well. You are better to gather details about the character(s) and evidence, remember techniques that show the points and connect these to the theme you are developing and remember these, then use them all to answer the question in the exam.
Hope this helps
JD