You may need
to look over these posts on commenting « textes de civilisation »,
which concentrate in particular in how such exercises are completely different
from literary commentaries
John
Mullen, Université de Rouen - Teaching blog: L3 DST popular culture
(johncmullen.blogspot.com)
and
Reminder :
The
questions you always need to ask yourself for each document, before you begin
to write your commentary, are the following.
WHO? (is
expressing themselves)
TO WHOM?
(are they trying to communicate)
WHEN? (What
is important about the fact that it was at this time and not another?)
WHAT? (is
the essential content of the document? Also, what do they NOT say which we
might expect them to say?)
WHY? (are
they saying all this: what is their objective?)
HOW? (do
they try to reach their objective? Irony? Mockery? Rhetorical devices?)
WHAT
HAPPENED AFTER? (If the document promises, or predicts or warns, did these
elements come true?)
HOW TYPICAL
IS THE DOCUMENT? (Is it an innovative declaration of a new movement, or one
more cliché from that time period, or what?)
WHAT
DIFFERENCE DID IT MAKE? (Where does the document fit in to longer historical
processes?)
In any
exercise you are unlikely to find something to say on every one of the above
questions for each document, but the list gives you an idea of where you should
be looking.
Reminder :
Analysis of vocabulary/ style/ lexical fields. These can occasionally be
useful to help explain the objective of a document and how that objective is
attained. However, listing words used without saying why this is useful is a
mistake. I should say that at least 80% of the time, when I see the expression « lexical
field » in a commentary on a civilisation document, it is not good.
Reminder:
Journalistic
English often makes a paragraph with just one sentence. In a university essay,
this is not sufficient - a paragraph should have at the very minimum three
sentences. On the other hand, I just corrected a script where the student had
used a paragraph which was 54 lines long (893 words). This is much too long for
a paragraph, and it could easily have been cut in three or four.
Reminder :
Take time to
think about the objective of the author of each document: this needs
to be at the centre of your analysis. Talk about the objective of each document
from the very first time you mention it.
Reminder :
Students
often quote the documents too much. This takes up a lot of valuable time. You may
quote from the documents a particularly important phrase, or a particularly
difficult phrase, to help you explain. It is not a good idea to quote
dozens of phrases.
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