Allez, Allez, Allez… (GCSE & IB revision tips)
Jun 11
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With the Tour De France reaching its dramatic finale in Nice this year - blame the Olympics, I do - it gives me the perfect opportunity to turn my attention to the Cote D’Azur.
Riding the Tour in black and white - no helmet, but plenty of gravel https://flic.kr/p/6AMxPE
Become the most interesting person in the room whilst watching the Tour by dropping your facts based on the following reading:
The Tour De France
Autobiographies - useful for GCSE language and IB Language and Literature - Geraint Thomas and Lance Armstrong have both written a few books about the Tour and their lives. For Lance Armstrong the before and after 1998 race would be a fascinating linguistic analysis.
Travel writing - useful for GCSE language and IB Language and Literature: One Day Ahead - Richard Grady. Not cycling the tour, but taking the gruelling corners and cobblestones in a campervan. Perhaps a better option for us mere mortals.
Florence to Nice
Nice and its beautiful surrounding areas have been inspirational for many authors, most notably Alexandre Dumas and Friedrich Nietzsche. Dumas, whilst more famous for his adventure blockbusters, ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’, ‘The Man in the Iron Mask’ and, of course, ‘The Three Musketeers’, first described Nice as ‘the city of sweet laziness and easy pleasures’ in his 1841 work, ‘A Year in Florence’ (and the Tour did open in Florence). Nietzsche spent time in the castle hill that still bears his name in tribute - he found something quite magical about the place - will the riders?
Artists such as Cezanne and Matisse were also inspired by this gorgeous part of the world. You can read more about Matisse in Hilary Spurling’s award winning and definitive biography ‘Matisse the Master’.
GCSE Revision Tips:
‘Read widely’ - the standard feedback from Parents’ Evenings - but it doesn’t always have to be full novels. Reading travel writing, articles, extracts from autobiographies will give you wider vocabulary and, in time, an almost instinctive understanding of the language and structure used for these different types of writing.
Keep an exercise book beside you as you read to jot down the words you aren’t entirely sure about - then look them up and write down all definitions. This will become your personal dictionary of sophisticated vocabulary which will pay dividends in all your writing - Language and Literature.
IB Language and Literature Revision Tips:
Grab your glossary of key terms for analysing non-fiction texts - then take a paragraph or two / page of your reading material and practice seeing how many techniques you can spot - challenge yourself to see how they are communicating ideas.
Analyse your text against practice guiding questions - such as, How do texts adhere to or deviate from conventions associated with genre or text type?
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