Studying For Meg Exams: 1st Year, My experience - By Shadylane

The strategy for MEG 4 is to identify the pattern in old test papers and see which topics are repeating. Next, locate these topics in the study material. Read them, underline the main points, and make short notes (bullet points). Making notes is important because this is the only thing that you can revise the day before the exam. The questions are direct and straightforward. The IGNOU study material is sufficient.

For MEG 3, concentrate on reading and studying any 5 of the 8 novels prescribed. This choice is totally up to you. I chose the ones that I thought were shorter in length. I totally skipped Wuthering Heights, Great Expectations, Middlemarch and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (this was a mistake, I should have left out 3 instead of 4). I read the novels only once. Then I read the study material for each. For each novel, you should be able to write about its themes, narrative technique, unique features, characterization and broad style (modernist, romantic, etc). Most of these are covered in the IGNOU study material. You can also read the questions and answers given in Varun guides. The questions are totally essay-type. So you should be ready to write a good introduction (where you give the name of the book, author, year of publication, brief gist of the plot/theme, what the story is about, and your view about the question asked.). The next 2 paragraphs should answer the question. Try to cover 1 point in each paragraph and give supporting evidence and arguments. The last paragraph should be the conclusion, where you re-phrase your main argument and take a stand with respect to the question asked. Each question is for 20-25 marks, so aim at filling about 3 and half or 4 sheets (single sided), depending on your handwriting.

For MEG 2, it is risky to skip any of the plays. Ideally you should be familiar with all of them. The first question is about annotating 2 or 3 given dialogues. So you should be able to identify which play the dialogues are from. This is possible only if you have read the play. Again, in the annotation (10 marks each I think), you should mention that these lines have been taken from this play, by this author, and that this play was first performed in this year. You should also write a few general comments that this play was considered to be one of the greatest Elizabethan/Absurd/etc plays. Then you should define the context in which the given dialogues are spoken. You will need to write: Who speaks these lines in the play, what is the immediate situation going on, Whom are lines spoken to, and what happens after these lines. Definitely comment on what is the significance or meaning of these lines. You should also add a note about the style, whether the the dialogues are in prose or verse form, whether there is anything unique about the language (for eg, in The Playboy of the Western World, the playwright has imitated the countryside mannerisms of Mayo in Ireland). Also if you notice any rhyme scheme or alliteration or other figures of speech. You should be able to write this answer in about 2 sides of a page.

Varun guides may be helpful for quick studying of essay type questions. For each play, you should be able to discuss its genre (absurd/tragedy/romantic comedy), language, plot and theme.

MEG 1 is like an endless tunnel. What I did was to make a list of all the poets, write their lifespan (1896-1956), the poems that they wrote, and the literary period they belong to.

Then come to the poems which are given in the appendix of each block. Read all the poems (or skip the ones that you think are not important). The question paper has annotation questions, so you should be able to identify which lines come from which poem (I think there are a total of 70-72 poems in our course). In these questions, you need to mention the name of the poem, poet, brief autobiographical details, literary period (eg neoclassical/modernist), what the lines mean, how many stanzas the poem has, any Biblical allusions or other mythological references in the lines, the rhyme scheme, the meter (iamibic pentameter/trimeter etc), any figures of speech (similie, conceit, personification, alliteration etc) and the general place that the poem occupies in British literature (considered one the most unique/greatest/the poet's masterpiece). You will also be asked essay questions on specific poets, literary ages, and forms of poetry. So you will need to make notes on the common features of each literary age (eg, Chaucer's age, neoclassical, modernist), the major poets of those ages and their biographical details.

As you can see, MEG 1 takes the longest to study. There is simply too much to memorize and remember. The study material is ok, but it is not organized the way it should be.

I would suggest you make your own notes, using IGNOU's material, varun guides and websites. You should read the poems again and again and again. The internet can help you in giving a general meaning and summary of a given poem, which is sometimes difficult to understand by yourself.

There is no remedy, actually, except to give a lot of time. 

By shadylane

Collected from IGNOU Online Forum > IGNOU Schools > School of Humanities (SOH) > Master of Arts (English)