This document was once part of my history notes. However, I have found that making accurate history notes is boring and does little to help me remember content anyway. So these are improved notes, which is to say that a lot of what is here should never be written on a final by any student [...Read more...]
I’m sure you’ve been working hard. Perhaps you have an Extended Essay underway, or for some foolish reason (e.g. “Hey, why not?”) have decided to try to write a 50,000 word novel in one month, or have simply been overpowered with everyday maths homework or English notes. Whatever the reason, I bet you would love [...Read more...]
Billy is currently authoring a series on “The Study of English Literature”. Part 1 of the series, called “Finding a meaning”, can be found here. Part 2 of the series, titled “Positives and Negatives”, can be accessed on this page. If you were marking passage commentaries, which of the following would you think was the [...Read more...]
In attempting to read the main literature on the subject, I found that the author digressed unnecessarily into descriptions of small-town life in Alabama. Therefore, to save everyone else the trouble, I have decided to summarize the main techniques in an easy-to-read step-by-step approach. Method One: the Traditional Hillbilly Method Fetch and load a shotgun [...Read more...]
Note: the comments here are written with passage commentaries (or oral commentaries, which are the same thing) in mind, but they could be applied to some degree to most other forms of writing done in English class. Click here for Part One of The Study of English Literature series. You can access the next section [...Read more...]
The following questions may result in amusing answers. I am continuing to work on putting into words the many valuable bits of wisdom I have gained in English class, but as my next installment of this great work that is not yet quite ready and it has been too long already since I posted something, [...Read more...]
Common Meanings What possible meanings might one find in a work? One method is just to take the specific events of a story and restate them in very broad terms. For example, if the story is about someone who is beaten up by bullies, then the meaning is never just that we should do something [...Read more...]