Section One: Overview of internal assessment Critical sources research (4 Credits, UE reading)

At this level of your studies, we are going to use critical sources to enhance our understanding of the text that we've studied.  Basically, what this means is that we will use secondary sources written about our stories (the primary texts) by people in universities in order to better understand our primary texts.

This is a tough exercise but one that will teach you how to compare, contrast and synthesise (bring together) high level information from a range of sources to inform, deepen and stretch your thinking. 

It basically follows the structure of an hypothesis (or educated guess summing up what you already know) about the text (e.g. Tusitala Marsh is confused by both liking and hating the velvet paintings / Othello is the cause of his own downfall /  Patricia Grace's Baby No Eyes is both feminist and post colonial literature ) and you come up with three inquiry questions to test that hypothesis and come to an overall conclusion about if it is correct or not. For each inquiry question, you simply use this process:

• • Here's my question about Tusitala Marsh's poem (and this may be "Why does Tusitala Marsh use so much sexual imagery when she talks about the explorers?")

  • Here's what the first critic says "......" I agree / disagree with them because ...(use evidence from your text, think about the values of the time they're writing in)...

  • In comparison, here's what the second critic says "....."  I agree / disagree with them because ...(use evidence from your text, think about the values of the time they're writing in)...(You may use third and fourth critics as well)

  • Here's what it says in the poem "...."

  • So, based on all of this information, here's what I now understand "...."

Section Two: Here's an overview of what to do

1. Read and understand your text ...well.

2. Complete your research proposal

a. Brainstorm what you know about the text and what you'd like to know. Come up with ONE big question that you have about the text. 

b. Answer your question based on what you know now. This is your hypothesis.

c. Come up with three open ended questions (questions that can't be answered with a simple yes or no) that test your hypothesis

3. Your first 'source' will be your  primary text - the novel, poem, story that you read in class. Put in the source information and then go through your text with a fine toothed comb writing out specific details and quotes that answer the relevant question

*if you come up with ideas / new understandings as you make notes, then write those down in either a different colour or put a circle around it to show that it is your idea.

4. Start on your first critical source and follow the same note making experience - be careful as you read to be strategic; don't read everything, instead look for subheadings, pictures, chapter titles that guide you to the best parts of a critical text to help you stretch your thinking. Don't forget to do your source evaluation!

5. Repeat step 4 with at least one more source - but let's be honest, it's better to go for three or four sources so that if one source is useless, you've got a back up. You need to compare and contrast at least two sources under each question as well as link it back to your target text.

6. Plan your essay using this planner (which will be assigned to you through Google Classroom). It's going to seem overwhelming at first, but it's seriously just putting lego pieces together and planning will make this a super simple process.

1. start in the middle - find your best two to three pieces of information for each question

2. Then put in what your target text says

3. then simply make sure that your information is in a logical order

4. Join up your ideas but saying things like "In contrast, [critic a] suggests that..." or "this supports what [critic b] is saying because..." or "I agree with [critic b] more than [critic c] because it states in the text that..."

5. conclude each of your sections with a mini conclusion along the lines of What is clear from the evidence... or The critics lead to a greater understanding that... or In conclusion

6. Then do an intro - intro your text, your main thinkings about it, what your hypothesis is and which critics you used to test your hypothesis

7. Finally an outro / conclusion - summarise your main arguments, did you prove your hypothesis right?

7. Write up your essay, edit and perfect it, reference it (follow our Super Librarian Kim's tips through this link) and hand it in :)

Section Three: Setting up your research

The questions are everything. Good questions will help your research to fly, and ones that aren't thought through will make it difficult. This puts on a lot of pressure but don't worry, because it is common and expected that questions change and develop as you go through the research process and think differently about the texts you are studying.

Section Four: Research Methods

Although on your text's homepage, in section five, there will be some critical texts to get you started, these may not focus on your questions and you will need to go and find more information. Use these tips to help you find that info.

Stuck and need to find more information? Have a look at these notes /slides and how to complete research to find critical texts. Google Scholar is a great start, and you should also be able to access wider databases such as the Nelson Cengage and Ebsco Host through your local libraries.

Section Five: Demonstration videos

Use the videos below to help you review what you need to do. Don't forget to pause and rewind when you need to understand more deeply. There are no limits on how many times you can watch these videos either.