engl1007 essay questions

8/3/2019 ENGL1007 Essay Questions

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/engl1007-essay-questions 1/4

University of Sydney

ENGL1007 Language, texts and time – Semester II, 2011

Essay topics

The essay, the length of which is to total 2000 words (including footnotes, but excludingreferences), is due on Monday, October 24. It is to be placed in the essay-collection boxes in the central noticeboard area of the Woolley Building by 5pm. Please sign and

attach to the essay the appropriate cover-sheet, available from the shelves in the centralnoticeboard area of the Woolley building. You must keep a copy of the essay for your

own records, which you may be asked to produce.

Please make sure you have written the question number and your tutor’s name on

the appropriate part of the cover-sheet. If you don’t know their name, please note

down the time and place of the tutorial.

Answers must be typed or in legible handwriting. Please use double or 1.5-spacing, andleave enough room for the marker’s comments. Please number the pages of your

essay.

Answers must be entirely your own work . Please read the English department’sacademic honesty guidelines at the following address, and make sure you are clear about

what they mean:

http://sydney.edu.au/arts/english/undergrad/academic_honesty.shtml

Penalties of 2% per day, excluding weekends, apply for late work. The Department of

English gives extensions on written work only in cases of illness or misadventure. Illnessmust always be documented. “Misadventure” refers to circumstances that could not have

been foreseen. It does not include the pressure of other University work. Extensions may be given only by the department. Neither the lecturer nor your tutor can grant

extensions. Students applying for extensions should use the on-line form available

at

http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/current_students/online_application.shtml

Some notes on essay-writing can be found at the end of this document. You should alsoread the ‘Essay presentation’ instructions, available on the English department’s

webpage:

http://sydney.edu.au/arts/english/undergrad/essay_presentation.shtml.

This essay is worth 30% of the marks for the course.



2

1. Discuss the main problems involved in giving adequate definitions of word

meanings.

2. Discuss the principal types of noun in English, illustrating your discussion with

examples.

3. Discuss whether, and if so how, a text’s grammatical structure can be the vehicle

of particular ideological orientations. Is grammatical structure more or lessneutral than vocabulary in its reflection of the author’s viewpoint?

4. ‘Grammar as institutionalized in European education … represents … a triumph… for an authoritarian view of language’ (Roy Harris). Is this true of descriptive,

as opposed to prescriptive, grammar? Why (not)?

5. Consider the excerpt from Agee’s Let us now praise famous men, Reader p. 384ff.What makes Agee’s style so distinctive? Consider vocabulary, clause structure,

and any other linguistic details you think are relevant. Your answer must includedetailed exemplification.

6. Look up the following words in the Oxford English Dictionary and/or the Middle

English Dictionary (both available via http://www.library.usyd.edu.au/databases/

literature.html: the MED is part of the Middle English Compendium listed there),

and trace their meanings through time with special reference to the MiddleEnglish period:

1. silly

2. presently 3. nice

4.

boy

7. Would it be correct to claim that the grammar of English has simplified over thecourse of its history?

8. Describe some of the effects of two of the following three circumstances on

attitudes to and use of the English language: i) the introduction of the printingpress to England; ii) the global spread of English in the modern era; iii) the role of

Latin in European education.

9. Consider the following quotation:

Of the various forms of decadence manifest in the poetical art of the

present age, none strikes more harshly on our sensibilities than the

alarming decline in that harmonious regularity of metre which adorned thepoetry of our immediate ancestors. That metre itself forms an essential

part of all true poetry is a principle which not even the assertions of an

Aristotle or the pronouncements of a Plato can disestablish. As old a critic

as Dionysius of Halicarnassus and as modern an philosopher as Hegel



3

have each affirmed that versification in poetry is not alone a necessary

attribute, but the very foundation as well; Hegel, indeed, placing metreabove metaphorical imagination as the essence of all poetic creation. (H.

P. Lovecraft)

What, if any, expressive possibilities have been lost as a result of the widespreadabandonment of traditional metres in contemporary poetry? Is Lovecraft right in

claiming that metre is essential to poetry? Illustrate your answer.

10. Discuss the impact of French upon the English language over the five hundredyears after 1066.

Some notes on writing essays

Essay writing needn’t be hard. It requires careful planning and detailed attention to

expression. There’s no one way to write a good essay, but they all require time, preparation, and, most importantly, thought. Here are some notes that may help.

Interpreting the questionMake sure you don’t misinterpret the question. You need to decide what the essay is

asking you to do. This should be clear from the question itself. In some cases you maywant to state your interpretation of the question in the first paragraph.

Structure of the argument

The structure of your essay, the clarity of its arrangement on every level (sentence, paragraph, section), and the logicality of its progression are major aspects of its success.

Apart from showing that you’ve understood the basic issues and that you have anappreciation of the course’s general thrust, you need to present your ideas in an orderly

and clear way. Writing simply is a good way to bring order and clarity to your argument.Try to put yourself into the reader’s shoes. Make sure that you would understand what

you have written if you were reading it for the first time. Ask yourself whether you haveexpressed the intended meaning as clearly as you could. Have you chosen the simplest

possible words and phrasing?Don’t hesitate to divide your essay into different subsections with separate headings:

this is often a good way to structure the content. Make it clear to the reader what you’retrying to accomplish in each paragraph: don’t just make a point, but introduce it, make it,and then summarize it. This sounds as though it will make the essay clunky and

inelegant, but that’s not the case: adopting this sort of style makes the essay flow.

Make sure the reader knows why you’re making every point. Don’t make them have toguess about what a particular paragraph is doing – tell them.

Style and expression

You are expected to observe the ordinary conventions of scholarly writing, as detailed inthe department’s ‘Essay presentation’ guide (see above). We often find that people’s



4

written expression is better in exam answers than it is in essays submitted during thesemester. This is because the time pressure of an exam leads to a simpler and more direct

writing style. The process of revision and planning that goes into an essay can oftenovercomplicate your prose. So you should make sure that you have phrased your

sentences in the clearest and simplest way to express the meaning you’re intending. The

ideas shouldn’t be simple, but the writing style should be.The university has developed a special website to help you improve your essaywriting: <http://writesite.elearn.usyd.edu.au>. If you have problems with your writing,

it’d be an excellent idea to look at this site.

Referencing When you quote, you must reference the quotation in a footnote. Obviously the extent to

which references are needed requires judgement. You don’t need to refer to Collins andHollo every time you mention the term ‘grammar’. But if you’re attributing a point of

view to an author, rather than simply mentioning a term, you do need to refer to the partof their work which you have in mind. So if you happen to claim, for instance, that

‘Saussure thought diachronic study was irrelevant to a fundamental understanding of langue’, you need to refer to the part of Saussure’s writings from which you have drawn

this conclusion. References also need to be as specific as possible: include page numberswhere it’s relevant to do so.

How the essay is assessed

Some important criteria on which the essay will be assessed are these:• The essay should show evidence of careful, independent and original thought

about the subject. It’s not enough to just reproduce others’ ideas; you need to justify and argue for them yourself.

• The essay should be informed by a genuine engagement with the secondary

literature. You are meant to have been doing reading from the secondary readinglisted in the course reader; in the essay you should make it obvious that this has been the case. This means you need to seek out secondary material that’s relevant

to the question you’re answering and engage with it in the body of the essay. It’snot enough simply to have a bibliography bristling with references: you need to

have used the secondary material in the essay itself.• The essay should be clearly written.

• It should be logical and well structured.You should also consult the department’s ‘Guide to the interpretation of grades’,

available on the departmental webpage (Undergraduate > Academic policies >Interpretation of grades).

*

engl1007 essay questions

Documents