Written Task 1 rationale

scoring of exemplar

Level 5 (9 marks)

There is a sustained focus on knowledge questions confirming and contradicting that “doubt is the key to knowledge”, as the prescribed title demands. A clear approach using different perspectives shown in real-life examples related to different areas of knowledge can be easily identified.

The first examples, regarding mathematics move from a personal example on how the student visualizes her own learning in class to a more sophisticated topic like the way conjectures are dealt with, emphasizing effective links to ways of knowing, especially reason.

Then there is an insightful investigation about religion, viewing it from different perspectives, focusing on Christianity, Islam and a way of proving that God exists, showing how doubting in that context might be a key to knowledge and how not.

Arguments are carefully and clearly developed. Every assertion is effectively evaluated giving a proper place to authority, experience, the search of truth, among other relevant TOK issues. The student definitely acknowledges the implications drawn in each of the examples.

It is worth pointing out that in spite of the effective and well-supported examples, the fact that they were not fully evaluated resulted in a mark of 9 being awarded instead of the highest possible mark of 10.

TOK Paper exemplar

Earnest Irony Language n D

Capote Language

Language and Modernism in Gatsby

Modernism

Modernism

Rhetoric of…

Rhetoric of…

LOGOS – reason

Rhetorical question

Comparison

Contrast

Juxtaposition

Antithesis– contrasting ideas sharpened by the use of opposite or noticeably different meanings.

Paradox

Irony

Specific detail

Jargon

Listing

Instruction

Exaggeration

Hyperbole

Understatement

Bathos

The big lie

Reference

·  Quote

·  Allusion (Biblical, Classical, Literary, Historical)

·  Intertextuality

Repetition

      Of words

      Of phrases or patterns

·      Anaphora – the repetition of a word or group of words at the beginning of a succession of clauses

·      Epistrophe – a figure of speech in which each sentence or clause ends with the same word

PATHOS – Emotion

Desire

Empathy

Insult

Patriotism

Loaded language

Naming

Belonging

Fear

Hate

Indignation (righteous anger)

Bathos

ETHOS – Ethics, Religion, that guy

Morality

Ideology

Faith

transference......

WT2 HL Topics

Dea

How and why is a social group represented in a particular way?

Nick as old money no money midwest class

how nick is old money with no money and how he talks about it throughout the whole book

Outline

• Fitzgeralds past and his relationship w wealth
• Nick’s characterisation
•  how nick’s money or lack thereof affects his relationships to people
• The whole i am within and without thing
• How fitzgerald uses language to represent nick
• How nick fits into the east vs west and rich people are different

Flavia



How could the text be read and interpreted differently by two different readers?

The different perspective: someone in favour of death penalty and someone against it, how the understanding of the text can differ.

charcterisation

Nature vs nurture and & empathy vs sympathy

Capote embedded (new Journalism



Anja

Which social groups are marginalized, excluded or silenced within the text?

Women, Daisy, and jordan

Paragraph 1: How general context affected the way F.Scott Fitzgerald shaped the female characters in the text. 

Paragraph 2: How the society affected women and helped shape their personalities analysed through the main characters: Daisy, Myrtle and Jordan. Women viewed as  porcelain dolls without any purpose or dream in life. How they were portrayed and the symbol of beauty in females. 

Paragraph 3: The traditional gender role. How men wanted to control women and their actions towards them seen in the text.

Elen

How and why is a social group represented in a particular way?

Tom and Daisy, so old money that eevn though they are outsiders they are immediately insiders

language

Fitz's background

charaterisation of tom and daisy

East vs West

Megi

How could the text be read and interpreted differently by two different readers?

importance

David

Brisila

How and why is a social group represented in a particular way?

Importance of Being

Upper class women

Setting

Language

Characterisation

Stiven

Question: How and why is a social group represented in a particular way?

Tittle: F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby.

East Egg

Paragraph 1

East vs West

Paragraph 2

Characterisation

Paragraph 3

setting

Paragraph 4

language

Amina

Elio

Written Task 2

Question chosen for analysis: How and why is a social group presented in a particular way?

Text: Truman Capote, In cold blood

Part of the course to which the task refers: Part 3

Focus of the task:

I have came up with the question--- How has the environment which Dick and Perry grew up in played a role in them becoming murderers?

I could link this with my 2 favourite topics from In cold blood being- Nature vs Nurture, America vs America. 

I have chosen to discuss language, theme, new journalism and Capote’s background as my main 4 ideas to complete my WT2.

• As I explained above, for the theme part I would bring out Nature vs Nurture and America vs America.
• For the language part I would explain how Dick and Perry differentiate in their way of talking and how Capote influences it, how he makes Perry look a bit smarter than Dick---
• With this leading to the New journalism part of the text being that Capote adds up that subjective part to the journalism and showing that he does prefer Perry more than Dick, because of different reasons which were seen unnormal at the time being that they were both homosexuals, and that Capote sees himself in Perry
• And as I said in the point above Capote’s background would be the start of new journalism and his feelings for Perry.
• Characterization/Indirect

Borena

1. The question I choose is:

 Which social groups are marginalized, excluded, or silenced within the text? 

2. The text that I will focus on:

“Great Gatsby”

3. The title of the analysis:

How the proletarian class (George Wilson and Myrtle Wilson) in “The Great Gatsby” are marginalized in the text.

4. This takes part from :

Part 4 

• The three key ideas that I will focus on are:

1. Key Idea 1:  Commenting on the working class during 1922 in New York and how they were treated during this era

2. Key Idea 2:  Commenting based on the Marxist theory,  on how the socioeconomic class is a strong factor when it comes to dividing people for their working classes in the society

Key Idea 3: Demonstrating examples (quotes) from the text on how the characters of George Wilson and Myrtle Wilson are marginalized, excluded, or silenced within the text

Kejsi

Question 3; How and why is a social group represented in a particular way?

Topic; Why Jay Gatsby of F.Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby”  could not be part of the old upper class society. 

1. How the portrayal of East vs West Egg is used to differentiate between the social classes.
1. The East egg is where all the people from the highest social classes enjoyed their lavish lifestyle, meanwhile the West egg is the less-fashionable part of the city. Fitzgerald uses imagery to show how different the two locations are from each other, but most importantly, how the location of a character reflected their  status and social class. Even though one would think he has all the money in the world, Gatsby still lives in the West Egg.
2. New Money vs Old Money.
1. New money stands for the people who have recently become rich and old money stands for the ones who are able to enjoy the luxury life as their families have had a string of inheritances passed on to them for generations.  In “The Great Gatsby”, Jay Gatsby represents New Money vs Jordan,Nick, Tom and Daisy represent old money. Gatsby is the only one that profits from a shady business and that sets him aside from the truly rich social class.
3. Jay Gatsby vs Tom Buchanan
1. In a rivalry between Jay Gatsby versus Tom Buchanan to win Daisy over,  Fitzgerald emphasizes how Gatsby’s status couldn’t come close compared to Toms’.  Gatsby came from nothing and made himself someone known and successful and he does the most to prove that in front of Daisy, however, that is still not nearly enough for her as after a string of eventful incidents, she continues to stick by Tom’s side.

WT2 Exemplar 2

Note how the same approach is applied in both the introduction and the analytical paragraphs as in the previous example.

WT2 Exemplar 1

Note how the introduction clearly states what will be discussed and how.

Note also how each paragraph analyses in detail the aspect under consideration.

Analysis

The highest level of writing/presentation is Analysis. Analysis moves the discussion into related, and wide ranging areas.

‘… When she protests against her treatment by the Reeds, Jane, of course, engages in a laudable act of rebellion and self assertion. But the emphasis of the passage is not really upon this but upon the heroine’s realisation of her own powers which are tested in this episode for the first time. ‘What strength had I to dart retaliation at my antagonist?’ she begins by asking herself. When she makes her verbal assault ‘I gathered my energies and launched them in this blunt sentence’, she is herself shocked at the force of her own words as Mrs. Reed is silenced and rebuffed ‘Mrs. Reed looked frightened .. she was lifting up her hands … and even twisting her face as if she would cry’. The outburst here prefigures the moment near the end of the novel when she again has the undoubted satisfaction of releasing the full force of her tongue and telling another person exactly what she thinks of them: this is the climactic moment when she rejects St .John Rivers, telling him ‘I scorn your ideas of love … I scorn the counterfeit sentiment you offer; yes St. John and I scorn you when you offer it.’ In this later exchange the mattes at issue are the same as in the scene with Mrs. Reed. On both occasions she refuses to take part in a masquerade of love ‘I am not deceitful’ she tells Mrs. Reed, ‘If I were I should say I loved you …’ On both occasions she resents the assumptions by the other party that she can repress her feelings in an inhuman way ‘you think I have no feelings and that I can do without one bit of love or kindness’ she says to Mrs. Reed. In that sense taking up St. John Rivers’ offer of marriage in adult life would involve re-imprisoning herself in the red room of Mrs. Reed’s childhood neglect.’

The addition to the discussion level is analytical writing. The main difference between the two levels is that in analysis the close study of one aspect of the text (discussion) is combined with the establishment of links between that aspect and other aspects of the text. Therefore, in the above example there is both detailed discussion of the early scene in the book with Mrs. Reed and a series of suggestions which link that scene with other events which occur later on; the rejection of St. John Rivers. Here the passage with Mrs. Reed is a springboard to a series of connections with other events in the novel. It is not written as a chronological essay working through events in the order that they occur in the novel – instead it establishes its own order based on thematic connections and working with ideas and not events.

Other important analytical characteristics of the above passage are:

·         It doesn’t just make assertions; points are qualified, amplified and restated. This is achieved through the connection words and phrases ‘ …of course … but … not really … in that sense … etc’

·         The passage has slowed down the pace of discussion by homing in on a specific episode. The episode is both looked at closely on its own and then linked to other areas of the text.

·         The passage does not quote huge chunks but, instead, picks out the important words or phrases and comments upon them. As such quotations are usually smaller than a single sentence. A good sign that you really understand a text and how the author has constructed it is that you can pick out the subtle, delicate and small language choices that the author has made to create an effect.

Remember that you do not have to use sophisticated vocabulary to write analytically. Indeed complex language can often get in the way of the point that you are trying to make; simple and direct language can express quite complicated ideas in a more straight forward way, which is, essentially, the key thing you are trying to do. What is important then, is not really the words that you use but what you say. If you write analytically in the style outlined above you will score well regardless of the language used to make your points.