Preparing for a Critical In-Class Essay: Tips and Strategies

[mjolnir80]

i hate writing in class essays and have never been really good at them but i always some how pull off a good grade.
but i have a really critical in-class essay tomorrow that i need a really good grade on.

does anyone have any tips to prepare for one of these ?

oh and its in english class, we're writing about some book and we don't know the topics yet

 

[waht]

If you are writing a critical essay on a book, than you need to have read it, and actually understand what's it about. Then form an opinion about it, and ask yourself questions mentally. Like do you sympathize with the main character? Is there any lessons or morals this book is trying to get across? If so then see if you can back up that claim with quotes from the book.

What's the book anyways?

 

[mjolnir80]

its the great gatsby

 

[Mk]

Never read it.

 

[makethings]

I only had one in-class essay in my uni days for my english elective (short stories course).. fortunately, the prof. gave several topics before hand and some strong hints on the specifics and I was able to write up an essay before hand and memorize it. all I had to do was regurgitate it on exam time and alter it slightly to make it match the question asked.

 

[kkrizka]

I took AP English Lit in high school, so I had to write a lot of inclass essays on an unknown topic for practice. Few things that I did to prepare:
- read the entire book yourself and don't rely too much on sparknotes
- make sure you know what the theme of the book is or if there is any special message that the author is trying to bring across
- make sure to note the author's style. Does he repeat any words a lot, how are the chapters organized, are there any common allusions or illusions...
- most importantly: go over any notes (or try to remember) of discussions that you had in class. The topic will most likely be based on them.

 

[mjolnir80]

cool thanks for the replies