Hey GTP,
So I just got my new timetable for a new Secondary school year and I have been put in class with an abysmal English teacher. I am not great English, getting mid 80's and some high 80's. However, this teacher seems to be absolute hell and I seriously need help on how I can get high marks with her. I'm so screwed...
Here are some of her reviews:
http://ca.ratemyteachers.com/ms-pekkonen/97360-t
Okay, I don't know a thing about the Canadian syllabus - but I am an English teacher, so maybe I can help.
The first thing you need to know about English is that it's divided into two halves: technical and interpretive. The technical side deals with the basic elements of the English language - proper grammar, identifying verbs and adjectives, spelling, and so forth. The answers here are like answers in mathematics: they're either right or they're wrong. Provided you follow the rules that dictate the language, you shouldn't have a problem. If Ms. Pekkonen cannot teach you these basic rules of the language, she probably shouldn't be teaching.
The second half of the subject, the interpretive side, is much trickier. This is where the stereotype about "having to write what your teacher will most likely agree with" comes from. This stereotype is also a myth. There is a very simple rule for English that virtually guarantees success so long as you apply it:
English is about a) the meaning you get from a text and b), how you get it. So, if you were studying
Romeo and Juliet and were asked to argue whether or not they are actually in love, you might argue that they are not in love because in the scenes immediately before he meets Juliet, Romeo is absolutely infatuated with another girl, Rosalie, but as soon as Romeo lays eyes on Juliet, Rosalie is never mentioned again, which implies that Romeo is in lust, not love. Now, if your English teacher disagrees with this interpretation (believing that Romeo and Juliet
are in love), it doesn't matter. Provided that you can show the meaning that you get from the text, and show how you get it, you should get a decent mark.
The trick to showing how you get that meaning is in something called QTE, or "Quote-Technique-Effect". It's pretty straight-forward: you supply a quote from the character, you name the technique used, and you explain the effect of that technique. Here's another example from
Romeo and Juliet - the opening chorus"
Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents' strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,
And the continuance of their parents' rage,
Which, but their children's end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.
Notice the section that I have put in bold: "a pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life". This is the sixth line of the play, and Shakespeare has already given away the ending - Romeo and Juliet commit suicide. So first of all, there's the quote and the technique. What is the effect? To answer that, we have to look a little deeper.
Unlike a lot of Shakespeare's tragedies, the tragedy of
Romeo and Juliet is in the way fate itself seemingly conspires against them to rob them of their happiness; in
Othello, the Moor of Venice, Othello is manipulated into killing Desdemona by Iago, while in
MacBeth, MacBeth's downfall is a direct result of his own arrogance. But in
Romeo and Juliet, Romeo commits suicide because he believes Juliet is dead, and a letter explaining the plan to stage her death does not reach him in time. Juliet herself is revived just after Romeo takes the poison - if Romeo had arrived two minutes later, they both would have lived.
So, back to the effect: by revealing that both Romeo and Juliet will die by the end of the play, the audience's focus shifts. Instead of wondering whether or not Romeo and Juliet can be happy together, they are forced to examine how fate and circumstance play out to deprive two people of happiness when they deserve to be happy more than anyone else in the story. It's particularly effective because
Romeo and Juliet was Shakespeare's second tragedy, written several years after his first,
Titus Andronicus (which was an unpleseant mix of bloody revenge, incest and involuntary cannibalism, and very poorly-received), and so nobody in the audience really knew what to expect from it. By revealing the ending so early on, Shakespeare changes the story from being driven by events to being driven by its characters.
This is really the kind of thing you have to show in a response to a question. If you do just this and you feel you have been improperly marked for it, I suppose you could always approach another member of the faculty and ask for a re-mark.
Also, don't mistake tough marking for incompetence. I myself am of the belief that students need to earn every mark I give them (I give fair warning to them). I know some teachers who believe students should get a passing mark simply for showing up, but I do not hold to that.
