Guidelines In ||||| SHAKESPEARE |||
By: Dr. Omar Ba-Salama
Guidelines:
1- Make sure you have a very good idea about the story.
2- Read the original focusing on the key passages and speeches which represent turning points in the plot, give an insight into a character's traits, or reveal a new side of a character.
3- Use all the help you can get in order to understand the text, but avoid reading Arabic translations as they will only distance you from the original text and its unique style.
4- Read as much as you can about the text in order to broaden your understanding of its elements.
5- Remember that your task before the exam is to read the text and accumulate as much "raw material" about it as possible. That is, you have to be prepared with deep knowledge of the text and, preferably, extra material that can help you write about it. However, it is crucial to remember that you are not supposed to copy whatever you read about the text as answers to the questions, but rather to use it effectively to produce solid answers.
6- Read the exam questions carefully and try to identify the keywords and what you are required to do with them.
7- When you start writing your answers, make sure you stick to the keywords as the main ideas and focus of each of your answers.
8- Start your answers with a thesis (main idea which addresses the question), then back it up with good justification and relevant details from the text. Make sure the relationship between the details you choose to use as evidence and your answer to the questions is clear and strong.
9- Avoid plot summaries (telling the story of the play just to fill the page).
10- Remember that the quotations you have at the beginning of the exam are there to test your knowledge of the characters, rather than you memory. Each quotation has a clue which should lead you to the character who says it. Finding the clue depends on how much you know about each character.
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