1.8: Significant Connections

1.8: Significant Connections

This task is an extension of our investigation into the nature of ambition. This is an opportunity to explore how unifying elements are employed across different texts by different authors that lead you to deeper insight into this very human drive.

Ozymandias

Ozymandias

Percy Shelley's "Ozymandias" I met a traveller from an antique landWho said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stoneStand in the desert... near them, on the sand,Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,Tell that its...

Film Study: Gattaca

Film Study: Gattaca

This study will concentrate on the viewing of the film Gattaca, directed by New Zealander Andrew Niccol. We’ll explore the film’s primary themes and how these are communicated in the script, images, allusions and cinematography of the film.

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Course Content

Choosing Dire Ambition as your English programme for Level 1 means that you probably like the world to see you as a political, more socially-conscious type; you’re probably irritated by injustice and your ironic humour has probably got you into trouble on more than one occasion… This programme will explore way ambition can destroy or empower groups and individuals. You’re not here to study English for the sake of it, you’re acquiring a set of skills that you will immediately put to use in life. You’ll need to think fast, question everything and be willing to speak up. You will be asked to challenge yourself as well as others, take risks and show ambition.

We’ll explore modern text communication and online language and compare this with your own speech to learn why, in spite of social attitudes to the contrary, these modern idiolects thrive. 

We’ll read Macbeth and you’ll have the option to explore the impact of unfettered ambition in Lord of the Flies as well as the moral injunctions presented in the film Gattaca and its meditation on the consequences of human ambition. Throughout, you will be practising the key skills required to succeed in the NCEA examinations. In parallel to this everyone will be completing for homework their own longitudinal inquiry by investigating links between self-selected books, films and art and presenting these in written form.

Podcast

Listen to this course’s companion podcast to help make sense of everything you find published here