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Friday, November 06, 2015

Master's seminar: text commentaries



Master’s seminar: text commentaries

As I mentioned, every student will do a text commentary on a document or speech. This will be invaluable practice for the exam, which will include a short text to comment (as will the other exam on the other seminar). We will be going over again how to do a text commentary in British civilization, which is firstly not easy and secondly quite different from in literature.
Remember to revise this page

and this one
and this one

For the method of the text commentary.  The main pitfalls are always 1) paraphrasing the document instead of analysing it and 2) explaining  the history of the period without referring in any detail to what the person who produced the document is trying to do.
Your commentary should last fifteen minutes.
Here are the dates and documents for each student:

24 November
“The Wind of Change,”  Chloé G.
“Rivers of Blood,” Inès N.
Summary of Macpherson report, Marion C.

1 December
“Chicken Tikka Masala,” Geoffrey D.
“A Golden Thread,” Pierre P.
“State multiculturalism has failed,” Arielle F.

8 December
“Doreen Lawrence’s gain is Black Britain’s loss,” Laura D.
“Stand up to UKIP,” Mohamed Anis H.
Extract from TUC Black workers conference, David S.

15 December
Lucie V.
Lucile C
(You will each be provided with documents in a couple of week’s time)

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