A student's Guide to Preparing and Presenting

The Individual Oral Commentary (IOC): A Student’s Guide to Preparing and Presenting

Some questions to help you prepare an introduction to an oral commentary…

·             Where is this extract from?(“This extract has been taken from…”). Be precise.

·             Briefly, what’s happening in this section?  (“This is the moment when…”).

·             What has happened in the plot line that has directly led to this moment, including the events immediately prior to it, and what occurs as a direct consequence?(“Prior to this, we have seen…”; “Subsequently in the play,…”).

·             Therefore, what’s the importance or significance of this passage in terms of …

·             plot and development?(Exposition? Establishment of a particular mood? Complication? Turning point? Climax? Anti-climax? Resolution? How does setting contribute to this? Are there any parallels with other moments in the plot that help us to understand this moment?)

·             character/relationship and development?(What do we see of the character /relationship earlier? What happens to them later?  How does this moment contribute to this development? Any parallels or stark contrasts to other characters or relationships that help us to understand this moment?)

·             theme and issues development?(What bigger ideas about society/human nature are being explored through the events and character-behaviour in this section?  Where else have these ideas been presented and how will they be resolved?)

·             style and mood?(Any general /overview observations about the mood, poetic form [verse/prose], dramatic form [soliloquy/ duologue/ ensemble/shared lines/the spectacle on stage/ stagecraft]?)

·             What will you be discussing?  What are your three or four main concepts? (“Firstly, I will be exploring how….Then I will go on to look at…). 

·             Remember,there are different ways to approach the passage, whether by the development of a long speech / conversation in terms of content and mood, or character by character and ideas about each, or by developing impressions of a relationship. However, you will probably always take a sequential approach (i.e. roughly look at the way the extract unfolds) but will signpost according to your focus (“The first impression the audience is given of Nora / the relationship of Nora and Torvald …”)

·             Finally,in the body of the commentary itself, don’t forget to mention the playwright throughout and how the audience may be affected by the literary and dramatic techniques they use. 

A brief reminder of what to do during the planning time of the oral:

• Read the passage carefully and put it in context.
• Read it again and briefly annotate in terms of interesting features of style.
• Look at the extract as a whole and identify patterns of ideas, i.e. potential concepts.
• Decide whether the extract lends itself to 1) a sequential approach - i.e. can you break the text into ‘sections’, making one or two claims about each, so that your analysis follows its development? - or 2) an overview approach (finding 3 or 4 recurring ideas in the text and taking your evidence from all over).  For the latter, colour coding might be useful to ensure you don’t miss anything.
• Look over your initial annotation of the text…identify and analyse the writing techniques that can be used to back up each of your concepts:

diction, analogies, sound effects, rhythm and rhyme, punctuation, sentence/line       lengths and constructions, stanza divisions, verse form, narrative technique, perspective and tone, dramatic devices/visual staging effects, mood, impact on reader/audience…

• Now list your thesis strands (i.e. four or so main concepts/claims) near your context notes.  These will help you to introduce the commentary.
• Outline your introduction– identification of writer and poem/dramatic episode, overview of literal content (5Ws – what, where, when, who, why), contextualization in terms of typicality / plot, thesis and thesis strands.