Language Analysis musing

[brokeman888]

So, I have heard on here (by Literallylauren) that it is essential to complete Lang first, so the ideas are fresh in your mind from reading. I would like to challenge the idea, suggesting instead that completing it third in the order Context -> TR -> Lang could be better.

I have the following reasons,
 1) your mind will work on developing ideas while completing other tasks, making your analysis have more depth and be better expressed.
2) you ensure you don't spend too long on language analysis, by leaving it the last 50 minutes or whatever.

Please evaluate my idea and give me thoughts on it if possible,

Thanks very much and good luck

[HasibA]

So, I have heard on here (by Literallylauren) that it is essential to complete Lang first, so the ideas are fresh in your mind from reading. I would like to challenge the idea, suggesting instead that completing it third in the order Context -> TR -> Lang could be better.

I have the following reasons,
 1) your mind will work on developing ideas while completing other tasks, making your analysis have more depth and be better expressed.
2) you ensure you don't spend too long on language analysis, by leaving it the last 50 minutes or whatever.

Please evaluate my idea and give me thoughts on it if possible,

Thanks very much and good luck

leaving lang analysis last makes it so youre pretty tired for it, and imo, it requires the most focus on reading the piece and being fresh, whereas context i find ideas are generated - for me at least- freely, and text response is something that needs the most time to mull over some nice ideas haha. so for me , probs lang analysis (65mins-70mins), Text Response (55-60mins) and then whatever time left for context

[Hydraulix]

1. Even though you think you will be developing ideas for the language analysis I'm pretty sure you will more likely be losing ideas because you are going to forget them after two hours

2. Stop after one hour for language analysis and then no problem.

[HopefulLawStudent]

Conversely, you would also be wasting 5-10 writing minutes re-familiarising yourself with the material, getting your bearings, then 5 more minutes annotating and BAM, before you know it, exam's up and you never finished LA.

[literally lauren]

So, I have heard on here (by Literallylauren) that it is essential to complete Lang first, so the ideas are fresh in your mind from reading. I would like to challenge the idea, suggesting instead that completing it third in the order Context -> TR -> Lang could be better.

I have the following reasons,
 1) your mind will work on developing ideas while completing other tasks, making your analysis have more depth and be better expressed.
2) you ensure you don't spend too long on language analysis, by leaving it the last 50 minutes or whatever.

Please evaluate my idea and give me thoughts on it if possible,

Thanks very much and good luck

No prizes for guessing where I stand on this, haha

My logic is:
- most of your reading time will be spent going through the Section C material, so if you start with another section, you'll end up wasting mental energy switching between them unnecessarily
- if you don't spend most of your reading time on Sec. C, you'll end up planning a bunch of stuff for T.R. and/or Context that you'll likely forget ten minutes later, and you'll waste part of your writing time going through the L.A. material one or two hours later
- L.A. is the most formulaic piece. You shouldn't need to let ideas churn over in your head in order to analyse language effectively. Even if L.A. is a weak spot, you should still be able to look at the material, pick out what's persuasive, and then write about 1) what language features are being used, 2) how they're persuading the audience, and 3) why this helps the author's argument.
- thinking about L.A. while writing T.R. and Context is just going to distract you from those essays; I've always seen L.A. as more of a 'get it out of the way early' sort of thing, as that then frees you up to spend more time on the other two sections which can be a bit longer.
- your L.A. and T.R. pieces need proper conclusions, whereas you can wrap a Context piece up whenever, so that's usually a better section to leave for last or second last if you have time to make up
- it's usually better to leave the T.R. and Context prompts in the back of your mind while you go through the motions of analysing Section C because those are the pieces where thinking time can make a more substantial difference. If your brain is working through a T.R. prompt, you might end up discovering a key implication or angle that you wouldn't have otherwise thought of 20 minutes ago. And not writing on that could affect your mark. Whereas, if you discover an additional L.A. technique or effect 20 minutes later, leaving that out isn't going to impact you since you're not assessed on what you don't cover in Sec. C
- I know some students who often want to get another piece (usually Context) out of the way sooner, but I think you're better off doing some quick planning for those other Sections if you need to, and then either racing through Sec C if it's your strong suit, or spending the first hour on it and wrapping it up ASAP if it's your weakness
- Best case scenario: L.A. is quite easy this year, and you can get through the material in about 50 minutes. You now have an extra 10 minutes to devote to T.R./Context as you see fit. That's an amazing feeling in time conditions! And since L.A. can be the shortest of your three pieces, it makes sense to dedicate more time to it. Contrast that with an alphabetical approach of Sec. A-->B-->C: let's say you spend an hour and five minutes on your T.R. essay. Now you feel like you're behind schedule, so you start panicking a bit. Then you try and write your Context piece, and that also takes you an hour and ten minutes. Now you're definitely behind, and invariably a bit stressed out. So you start your L.A. piece, and it ends up only taking you 50 minutes. Okay... that's good... but that anxiety probably affected your performance in Sections B and C. So the CAB or CBA options have always seemed a lot smarter to me.

In the end, you're the one taking the exam, so if you have another approach that suits you better, I'm definitely not going to tell you you're wrong. But be wary of the common pitfalls I and others have listed above, just to be on the safe side

[brokeman888]

Thanks very much for this thoughtful discussion. My logic was deeply and intractably flawed. Fundamentally, my musing is profoundly emblematic of a capitalist structure, of which its value, like kindling,  burned brightly but only for a short while, ultimately found to be both unsustainable, as well as impetuous in the nature of its construction.

But seriously, I want to die.