SynthesisEssay

ALPOZENMYP4

DEPARTMENTOFENGLISH&LITERATURE
CRITERIONB

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INTRODUCTION/ABSTARCT
ThissynthesisessaywillbeaimedtomakeaptconnectionstotheworkdoneintheIDUunit.
Thepurposeofthisistocompressallthelearningsdoneandatthesametimeevaluatethe
qualityoftheoverallwork.Inadditiontothat,thisessaywillalsofilteroutanyunnecessary
tasksthatweredone.Tosummarizeitallitisappropriatetosignifythatasynthesisisawritten
discussionofsourcescreatedduringaproject.Withinthiswrittendiscussionthequalityofthe
workproduced,therelationofonesourcetoanother,thesignificanceofonesourcefromothers
andfinallytheoverallimageofallsourcesareexamined.Ontheotherhand,itiscrucialto
separateasynthesisfromasocalledreflection.Themaindifferenceisthatareflectionisless
sophisticatedintermsofitscontentandvalueswhereasasynthesisinvolvesmorethinkingtobe
done.Furthermore,thetaskofareflectionisonlytoevaluatethequalityoftheproduct/source
createdandsuggestsnexttimeimprovements.Oppositely,asynthesishasitsfocusonevaluating
thelearningsdoneratherthantheproducedwork.
AspartofthisintroductionanotheraspecttoencounteristheIDUwhichthisessayispartof.
IDUbeingtheabbreviationfor(Interdisciplinaryunit)hasbeentheongoingtopicinEnglish,
Individuals&SocietiesandArtsclasses.Specifically,totheIDUthethemewasPeace&
Conflict.AsastudentIperceivetheIDUasaveryeffectiveteachingtoolsinceitletsstudents
masteraparticulartheme/topicfromdifferentperspectives.IntheIDUastheEnglishAclasswe
studiedanautobiographybyElieWieseloneofthefewHolocaustsurvivorsstillalivetoday.
Afterwards,studentsselectedtheirownconflictandcompletedthecorrespondenttasks.To
organizeallthemasswork,wecreatedaprocessjournaleitherononlineplatformsoras
hardcopyformats.Inrelationtoalltheworkthathasbeencompletedthissynthesisisnecessary
tocompressallourlearningsandmakeconnections.
Thisessaywillbestructuredtosynthesizefourkeyquestionsthatareasfollows;
1.What,basedonwhatyouhavelearntsofar,aresomeofthekeyelementsthathavebeenused
toexpresspeaceandconflictintheArts,I&SandEnglish?
2.Towhatextentcanaworkofarthelpinstigatechangeinsociety?
3.HowhasyourlearningintheIDUsofarhelpedguideyourgalleryguideforI&Sandyour
performancesfortheInternationalPeaceconference?
4.Mentionsomething(theme,topic,image)thatyouhavediscussedinoneofyourEnglish,Arts
andI&Sclassesbutwhichmademoresenseinanotherclass.
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ESSAY
Considering my overall studies and learnings throughout the IDU unit, it has come to my
attention that social media in the modern day is the father of tools to express peace & conflict.
Relating to my process in I&S where we mastered the Apartheid more than half the sources we
obtained were by the supply of social media. In particular, the key elements of social media that
we used for I&S were public & online platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and News pages.
Yet, we also had a session to make use of books and encyclopedias. In comparison to social
media, old-fashioned sources had an extensive amount of content but equally they were hard to
access and were time-consuming to master. After all, social media is the most favored and
practical way to access information which makes it so substantial when it comes to research. As
a connection to politics we notice that authoritarian governments in the modern day make
attempt to gain control over the supplies of social media in order to manipulate their nation while
censoring information that opposes them. This is a solid example proving how large-scaled the
power of social media is. A real-life example to this are countries like North-Korea, China,
Turkey and U.S.A. where social platforms are monitored and pressured by the government.
Above all, the world heard about the recent attacks in Paris thorough the voice of social media.
However, it is crucial to realize that social media is too general to be classified as an element of
expressing peace & conflict. Within social media there are differential formats of carrying out
information. As far as English is concerned, the key elements were poetry, articles, audio-books
and documentaries that led us to the information about the Holocaust. Yet, the power and
effectiveness of these key elements are dependent to its publisher/producer. For instance, I came
across a documentary that was fifty minutes long and yet it repeated the same clip that was
fifteen minutes four times over. Oppositely, I read a short poem by Elie Wiesel which in the end
was very fruitful because it was very descriptive about the ambience of Auschwitz. That is the
reason why a post can go viral or unheard, simply because of its qualities. Besides this, for
Drama we were able to access any type of information wed been looking for. The overall
meaning of this is that social media inarguably has become the best tool of sharing out
information by any means and within itself the key elements are visual and authored sources that
extend from documentaries to articles. Having said this, it is noteworthy to mention that in the
old day newspapers, encyclopedias, books and TVs were among the leading elements of media
as our research about the Holocaust and Apartheid indicates that people were informed about
events through these elements. However, one should not be mistaken that these elements have
been abandoned for use after the introduction of social media. The only change is that in the
modern day social media has become a roof for all elements like these where nearly anything can
be accessed upon.
Another aspect to the peace & conflict unit that is worth synthesizing is the way a work of art &
literature can instigate a change in society. This is a complex case and yet in history we have
seen examples of art works, books, articles being the reason for the outbreak of social
movements or changes. However, when investigating cases like this, one must be very careful to
not disregard other causes that have built up on generating the change. First of all, we must
signify that a work of art or literature has to entitle and represent the concerns of a community. If
this work of art is empowering enough with its ideals and motives, it can then instigate the

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people it represents to take physical action such as protesting. In modern day, authoritarian
governments have restricted the publicity of various art & literature works simply because of the
hazardous content in them. This is indication that works of art & literature always have the
potential to cause change as governments fear from some of them. The best example of this is
seen in the Apartheid Africa where black & colored citizens of the country underwent through
tumultuous times under the Apartheid laws. After imprisoned Mandela managed to leak some of
his prison letters to the black people, the mass Soweto riots took place. The letters of Mandela
strictly ordered the black citizens the not give up on their struggle for peace. In contrast, the
letters of Mandela should not be seen as the number one reason for the outbreak of the riots as
the Apartheid case is very sophisticated. Another example to this discussion is the honorable play
written by Samuel Beckett waiting for Godot. This play has major influence on the shaping up
of 1950s theatre and is exampled as one of the revolutionary plays in theatrical history.
However, when it was first acted out in 1953, the play was noted the be a disgrace to watch. Yet,
it valued and concerned a fundamental which no other play had ever captured before. The ideal
of this play was that life was a pointless destiny and that everything was absurd. Later on the
basic values of this play transformed into a new genre in theatre, the so-called theatre of the
absurd. The play was very much inspired and empowered by the social depression Europeans
were experiencing after WW2 and its motive of life being absurd can be resonated to all the
innocent people who were pointlessly murdered during the holocaust. This example is more than
supportive enough to state that a work of art can instigate change in society. However, there are
also examples of works of literature that are as impactful and have rather failed to instigate
change in society. A perfect example to this is the novel & autobiography Night authored by
holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. As Elie Wiesel has stated, he wrote his book in attempt to prevent
a holocaust from repeating itself. Absurdly, the 1992 persecutions in Bosnia, the 2010 bombings
in Gaza and many other events have shown that Elie Wiesels Night has failed to do its job by
any means. In other words the book hasnt instigated any change. To get a whole meaning out of
these these three examples, we can conclude that to determine whether a work of art can instigate
change in society we must consider its qualities and observe outside factors. Finally, if the
qualities of this work match with outside factors than a possibility for change in society is born.
Anothertopicthatremainscrucialtotheschemeofthisessayisthewaythatmylearningsinthe
IDUhavehelpedmewithmygalleryguideandperformance.Toremainclear,Imustpointout
thatbeforetheIDUIhadvoluminousknowledgeabouttheconflictIchose.Hence,intermsof
knowledgemylearningswereminor.Onthecontrary,theIDUthoughtmehowtostructurea
longtermprojectinoverbuildingstepstoattainasuccessfulendresult.Therewasaparticular
skillthatImasteredinmyI&SclasseswhichIwillmakelifelonguseof.Wewerethoughthow
toanalyzeasourcebyextractingallthequalitiesofit.Inordertodoso,wewereintroducedto
thefollowinganalysisstructure;content(what'sinit?)origin(whomadeit,where?)purpose(why
wasitmade?)value(why/howisitusefulforyourstudy?)limitations(why/howisitnotuseful?).
Thislearningfacilitatedmyworkbothonthegalleryguideandthesourceanalysis.Iwasableto
choseanytypeofsourceinanyformatandanalyzeittofullextent.Aboveall,theanalysis
structurealsoactedasaguidelinetomyworkwhichenabledmetoselfassesmywork.
RegardingmyperformanceforDrama,ourcomprehensivestudyonthehistoryoftheatreandthe
existentgenresintheatreplayedakeyroleonmyprogressformyperformance.Asmyresearch
onthevariousgenresintheatrethoughtme,thetheateroftheabsurdverymuchgotintomy

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interest.Iwasreflectedmylearningsofthetheateroftheabsurdevenintothisessayasitcanbe
seenonthefirstparagraph.Similarly,Ifoundoutalotaboutthegenreofinyerfacetheatre.It
wassomethingIheardoftenbutneverknewthemeaningto.Iadaptedmylearningsofthatinto
ourperformanceaswechoseitasourgenre.RegardingmylearningsinEnglish,ithascometo
myattentionthatIhavetakenthemostoutofit.Ourcollaborativeworkasaclassto
comprehendtheuseoflinguisticfeaturesinasourcehasmademywayuptocompletinga
thoroughgalleryguideandpresentinganinformativepresentationinEnglishandI&S.
Specifically,wemasteredtheuseofstylisticfeatures,mood,structureandgenreinatext.The
bestexampleofthiscanbeshowninreferencetomygalleryguidewhereImadecommentabout
theuseoflinguisticfeaturesinsomeofthesources.Thiswasextratothespecificationsofour
taskyetitwasagoodwaytorepresentmygraspofthetopic.Toconclude,Icansaythatmy
learningsoftheIDUhaveempoweredmetoworkdeliberatelythroughoutthisprojectonallmy
assignments.
Lastofalltherehavebeenanomaliesinthisunit.Forinstance,therehavebeentimeswhere
wevediscussedtopicsinonesubjectbutitwouldhavebeentoouradvantagetodiscussitin
anothersubject.InmyopinioninourDramaclass,wecouldhavespentlesstimeon
investigatingtheholocaustwherewecouldhavesparedmoretimeonourperformances.Itwas
pointlesstouseourlimitedrangeoftimeforinvestigatingtheHolocaustbecauseoftworeasons
ThefirstreasonisduetothefactthatwewerealsomasteringtheholocaustbothinourEnglish
andI&Sclasses.ThesecondreasonoutofmyopinionisthefactthattheHolocausthasonlya
minorconnectiontowhatweweretodonextwhichwastowriteaplayaboutourchosen
conflict.Ontheotherhand,asacriticalthinkeritwasmyobservationthatthesourceanalysiswe
didinI&SclasswouldhavebeenmoreapttodoinEnglishsincewewerebusyanalyzing
differenttexttypesverysimilartowhatwedidinI&S.Toextendtheboundariesofthis
discussion,itisalsoofgreatlogictoevaluatesomeofthethingswedidnotdobutthatwecould
havedone.InthecaseofDrama,wecouldhavewatchedmoviesoftwodifferentialgenres,
analyzedthemandthenadaptourlearningfromthemoviesintoourplays.InEnglishwecould
havebeenassignedtoreadabookofourownchoiceaboutourchosenconflictandlateron
preparedadetailedanalysisaboutit.Wecouldalsomakeuseofthisanalysisinourgallery
guide.ConcerningI&S,wecouldhavedebatedabouttheApartheidlawstoextendour
comprehensionofhowitcameintoexistence.
Toconcludethisessaywithitisnecessarytooutlinesomeofthemostcrucialvaluesand
statementsoftheparagraphs.Asstrictlycarriedoutinthefirstparagraph,thisunithasshownme
thatsocialmediahasbecomethenumberonefacilityofaccessinganykindofsource.Thisis
proveninthetextbythereallifeexamplesgiven.Thesecondparagraphwhichevaluatesa
complextopicispointingoutthataworkofart&literaturecouldpossiblytriggerchangesin
societyifitsvaluesandcontentmatchwithoutsidefactors.Bothpositiveandnegativeexamples
havebeenprovidedtobackthisup.Thethirdparagraphwhichismorefocusedonmy
experiencewiththeIDUisforwardingthattheIDUhasthoughtmehowtocopewithlongterm
projectstoreachasuccessintheend.Thelastparagraphwhichrevolvesaroundtheanomaliesof
thisunitispointingoutwhatelsecouldhavebeendoneinthisunitwhilealsofiguringoutsome
oftheunnecessarytaskswedidthatwouldhavebeenbettertodoinothersubjects.

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