Friday, November 16, 2012

From the IB Guide: considering essay questions

The IB guide provides us with several questions that can be used for class discussion or consideration of themes that may be addressed in the actual essay questions.

Try to relate these to the works studied in Part 3 of the course.

• How can we explain the continued interest in a particular work in different contexts and at different times?

• What do you think of the assertion that the meaning of a text is fixed and does not change over time?

• If beauty is a relative term, how do one or more of the works you have studied explore this idea?

• How valid is the assertion that literature is a voice for the oppressed?

• To what extent do male and female literary characters accurately reflect the role of men and women in society?

• To what purpose do authors sometimes choose not to follow a chronological sequence of events in their literary works?

• Do works of literary merit both reflect the spirit of the time and challenge it?

• Which social groups are omitted from a text, and what might this reflect about its production?
 
• How does a particular concept, such as childhood, change in the way it is represented in the texts you have studied?
 
• How is our critical perspective on literary texts affected by cultural practices?
 
• To what extent is the critical approach taken to the analysis of a text itself influenced by specific cultural practices?

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