One of the key challenges of the Individual Oral assessment is for you to select an extract of one of you literary works and a non-literary text through which a global issue can be explored. Spending some time individually or with classmates trying to pair up works with bodies of work, or selecting extracts from each around different global issues will always be time well-spent.
Assessment for Learning
A great inquiry-based learning activity is to ask you, as students, to find two texts to compare around a hot internationalist topic or global issue. As teachers and examiners, it is something we often do when preparing papers for the mock examinations or other assessments. Here is an example of an extract from the literary work, Top Girls, by Caryl Churchill, and an extract from the columns of Molly Olmstead, a journalist for Slate, this one about protesting President Trump's inauguration in 2016.
Example of Text Pairings
TEXT A:
Joyce You can always find yourself work then. Marlene That’s right. Joyce And men? Marlene Oh there’s always men. Joyce No one special? Marlene There’s fellers who like to be seen with a high-flying lady. Shows they’ve got something really good in their pants. But they can’t take the day today. They’re waiting for me to turn into the little woman. Or maybe I’m just horrible of course. Joyce Who needs them? Marlene Who needs them? Well I do. But I need adventures more. So on on into the sunset. I think the eighties are going to be stupendous. Joyce Who for? Marlene For me. / I think I’m going up up up. Joyce Oh for you. Yes I’m sure they will. Marlene And for the country, come to that. Get the economy back on its feet and whoosh. She’s a tough lady, Maggie*. I’d give her a job. / She just needs to hang in there. This country
Joyce You voted for them** didn’t you? Marlene needs to stop whining. / Monetarism*** is not stupid. Joyce Drink your tea and shut up, pet. Marlene It takes time, determination. No more slop. / And Joyce well I think they’re filthy bastards. Marlene Who’s got to drive it on? First woman prime minister. Terrifico. Aces. Right on. / You must admit. Certainty gets my vote. Joyce What good’s first woman if it’s her? I suppose you’d have liked Hitler if he was a woman. Ms Hitler. Got a lot done, Hitlerina. / Great adventures. Marlene Bosses still walking on the workers’ faces? Still Dadda’s little parrot? Haven’t you learned to think for yourself? I believe in the individual. Look at me. Joyce I’m looking at you. Marlene Come on, Joyce, We’re not going to quarrel over politics. Joyce We are through. Marlene Forget I mentioned it. Not a word about the slimy unions will cross my lips. Pause. Excerpted from the play Top Girls (1982) by Caryl Churchill, London: Samuel French Inc.
*Margaret Thatcher, the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 1979-1990.
**them – The Conservative Party, Mrs. Thatcher’s political party of whom she was the leader. ***monetarism – this is an economic theory and a key tenet of neoliberalism, the socio-economic system prevalent in the Western world since the late 1970’s until today, and pioneered by Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the Unites States of America.
TEXT B:
A Cellphone Rights Guide for Trump Inauguration Protesters and Women’s Marchers By Molly Olmstead
If you’re participating in any protests this inauguration weekend, you’ll likely have your cellphone on hand. And if you do, then you need to be aware of your rights when it comes to your phone. Below are some tips that will help you keep your information safe.
Police can seize your phone if you’re arrested, if they search your vehicle, or if they believe it has evidence of a crime, such as photos of the protest, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. But, as Newman noted in 2014, the Supreme Court has ruled that police need a warrant to search a cellphone even if they have already seized it. This means you’ll probably be able to keep your photos, videos and messages to yourself, though it’s worth remembering that “in a heated moment law enforcement could still bend these rules,” Newman wrote.
EFF recommends a few things you can do: First, make sure it’s encrypted. Most iPhones are encrypted by default, but many of the Android devices are not. Usually, if your smartphones isn’t encrypted automatically, there is an option to turn that on, and you can look up where to find that on your phone. Second, you should add a keycode or password to your phone and set your phone to lock quickly when not being used. As our previous guide notes, a fingerprint lock may not be enough to secure your phone: In 2016, a California judge issued a warrant to force a woman to unlock a fingerprint-protected device. Third, you might want to back up your data beforehand in case your phone is seized and the police intentionally or accidentally tamper with it. “While we believe it would be improper for the police to delete your information, there’s a chance it could happen,” the EFF website notes. While at the protest, you can upload photos and videos to cloud services or social networks to preserve them. Finally, you should use encrypted messaging apps to keep your texts safe. WhatsApp is a commonly used encrypted messaging app, but one of the most recommended apps is Signal, which also works for voice calls. It would also be smart to turn off text notifications on your lock screen. Even though the ACLU and EFF recommend precautions, they note that you should be perfectly within your rights to take photos or videos in a public space. Law enforcement officers would need your permission to view anything on your smartphone, and you can decline and refuse to provide your passcode if asked. It’s not likely that anything bad will happen at the Women’s March this weekend. But it looks like the Trump era will be one filled with protests—and it’s best to start these good cellphone security practices now. We have (at least) four years to go.
Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University. Adapted from www.slate.com.
Read those texts and consider the global issue, what you can learn by considering them together, and what you might say about them. Make notes and then compare them to the marking notes below.
Marking Notes
Crucially, most students confuse content and form when seeking ways in which to discuss the texts. You should justify your analytical points by discussing the texts through the lens of the conventions of whatever text type is portrayed, however the comparisons and contrasts should be in terms of thematic content. By all means, you could have a brief section of the oral that explores each text individually in terms of its own meaning and how it is achieved through its conventions, but it is essential in the new Individual Oral assessment that any discussion must be framed around the global issue.
The Pair of Texts above:
At a simple level, this pair of texts have something to do with women. The drama script reveals two women arguing (and interrupting each other) about whether or not Margaret Thatcher’s position as Prime Minister is a good thing for the progressive plight of women. Meanwhile, the second text is preparing the public and making them aware of their rights before they march for women’s rights in the wake of the election of Donald Trump in January 2017.
Without ignoring the idea of female emancipation, a better answer may also consider the concept of privacy in the internet age, and the opportunities for abuse by state power. Students must pay attention to the context of each work - being a play, Churchill’s text is conscious of the conflict of public and private, with two sisters having an argument in private about political perspectives, all the while being viewed by an audience. However, by 2017 when society has wilfully sacrificed its own right to privacy and the state (as revealed by Snowden) has been carrying out massive unlawful surveillance in the US and the UK, the police will threaten the privacy of the individual by taking mobile phones.
The best answers would address the idea of an individual’s right to political protest. In Churchill’s play, this is present through the medium of drama publicly, but internally is about quarrelling siblings. By 2017, the people are using the internet freely to warn others about the potential infringements upon this right to protest, but also encouraging its importance for that very reason.
Now take one of your literary works and one of the non-literary bodies of work you have studied. Select an extract for each, and then prepare a set of marking notes that explains what the global issue might be and what we can learn about it by looking at it through the lenses of these two different works. If you can produce a similar set of marking notes as here, you will be on the right track.
MY PROGRESS
How much of Individual Oral - Text Choices have you understood?
Feedback
Which of the following best describes your feedback?
Twitter 
Facebook 
LinkedIn