Hey everyone!
Welcome back to another week of Lisa’s Study Guides.
It’s Monday after school which means I’ve got new English advice for you.
Before I go into that, I just wanted to say a massive thank you to everyone who came to
our workshops over the Term 3 holidays.
It was so lovely meeting all of you.
And if you wanted to check out a little cumple - compalash?
COMPILATION (I do speak English).
If you want to check out a compilation of what actually happened during those workshops,
then check out my second channel where I’ve uploaded some behind the scenes and also some
of the activities that we did during the day.
Because the workshops were such a success and because a lot of you were asking, whether
or not I’m holding any more workshops later on the year, the answer is no, I’m not holding
anymore workshops, but as a result, I’ve decided to host a Q&A session that will be
running on the sixteenth of October in Melbourne CBD.
Because there is limited seating available between intimate group session where you’re
more than welcome to bring any questions you have regarding VCE English or anything VCE
related.
Particularly if you’re in year 11 and year 12, so definitely go ahead and check that
out.
And I’m also doing a bonus Meet & Greet afterwards, where we can go out to a cafe
and have a bit of food and some coffee.
For all of you students who weren’t able to make to any of the workshops or who can’t
attend the Q&A session, we’ve got a flash sale happening for all of our study guides,
only $20 each at the moment, this sale ends in exactly one day so don’t miss out!
Alright, so a lot of you loved the video that I created for reading & comparing or compare
and contrast essays.
So now I’m going to go into talking about essay structures which a lot of you requested
for.
Reading and comparing is also known as compare and contrast, so if I interchange between
the two, then please don’t worry.
So we are covering essay structures as you know, and if you like this whiteboard style,
then give it a thumbs up.
So generally there are three main types of essay structures in regards to compare and
contrast essay.
What exactly are they?
Let’s find out!
Now I’m going to be using the books ‘Great Gatsby’ and ‘Macbeth’ as a comparison.
If you’re not studying these books then it’s completely okay, you should still be
able to understand exactly the procedures I’m going to outlay ahead.
So, essay structure one.
Let’s do this.
This structure is quite popular and you may know it, and it’s known as Block Structure.
So what exactly is a block structure?
The reason why this is called a block structure is because it’s literally placing your text
and discussing them in blocks.
So I’m just going to write down paragraph 1 2 3 4 5 and 6 on the left hand side so that
it’s clearer for you, how this would look like in an essay.
So if our first text was to be on The Great Gatsby, then we would have spent majority
of the first half speaking about Gatsby and the second half talking about Macbeth.
Pretty straightforward huh?
What are the things would you talk about?
Well in terms of compare and contrast essays, you’re looking at similarities and differences
between the two texts.
So you may touch base on how both of them are tragic heroes in their own way - and that
can be paragraph 2 and paragraph 4 for talking about their similarities.
Then with paragraph 3 & 5, what you could do is point out some differences.
Gatsby ultimately undergoes a downfall because of his naivety.
And I know I’ve written paranoia there, I’m so sorry, I got confused between the
two texts.
So try not to do what I did, where you accidentally switch up the two.
Paranoia should be under Macbeth, and naivety is under Gatsby.
So this is what a block structure would look like.
Now, let’s have a look at our second essay structure which will be an alternating essay
structure.
I’ve left introduction and conclusion behind because they still exist in all of the three
different types of essay structures.
However, what we’re doing now is we’re alternating between the text, rather than
placing them in chunks or blocks.
So paragraph 2 is text one, paragraph 3 is text 2, paragraph 4 is text 1, and paragraph
5 is text 2.
Now, text one is Great Gatsby and Text 2 is Macbeth.
So what you’ll do is, instead of spending the first half of your essay on one text,
and the second part of your essay on another text, you’ll be spending the first part
of your essay looking at similarities and the second part looking at differences.
So when you look at similarities, you can point out how they’re both tragic heroes,
but with their differences, you can talk about how their downfalls were attributed to different
reasons.
And this my friends is an alternating structure.
By the way, if you like what I’m doing here with this whiteboard and having this voice
over, then please give me a thumbs up so that I know I should be doing more videos like
this.
Let’s move into essay structure number 3!
The last and final one - The Integrated Structure, or you can know it as side by side analysis.
So as usual, I’ve left introduction and conclusion there because that’s still relatively
the same.
But for paragraphs 2, 3, and 4, what you’ll find is that you’ll be writing about both
text one and text two at the same time.
So you can see here, how it starts to get a little bit more advanced because you have
to deal with both text at the same time.
So like before how I mentioned, that you would focus your first part of the essay on a block,
so either a certain text or alternating, so on a similarity or a difference.
Now what we’re doing is because we’re talking about them both at the same time,
we can base these paragraphs on certain themes that overlap.
And then point out, the similarities and differences between the themes that we are analyzing.
So G stands for Great Gatsby and M for Macbeth, S for similarity and D for differences.
As you can see, it is definitely a more complex way of going about things, however, this essay
structure often offers a lot more in-depth analysis of the two texts.
So that is an introduction to different types of essay structures.
Would you like me to explain more in detail?
If you do, comment below and let me know what you’re concerned about and what you’re
unsure of.
And I’ll try to answer that in my next video.
Also don’t forget the flash sale that I’m doing for our VCE Study Guides booklets.
They’re only lasting one day, so get on to it now.
So I hope you guys enjoyed that video because it was a little bit different.
It was a lot more of me drawing, but if you guys liked that, then please give this video
a thumbs up!
If you guys want to see more reading and comparing, or compare and contrast essay based videos,
then let me know.
Subscribe if you haven’t already because we have just hit 7k subscribers!
And I would absolutely love to have you join our family here on Lisa’s Study Guides,
so that I can help you on your journey to achieving whatever your English goals are.
Until next week guys.
See you then!
Bye!