Feedback for sexuality essays

You have all been emailed your feedback as well as your mark for this essay. Check your school email account, and respond if you have any questions.

Overall: much better analysis of editing, so keep revising that glossary and keep using it when analyzing extracts in preparation for the exam.

Top tips for improvement:

• Revise Barthes' narrative codes: click here Some of you were not using them accurately, which will lose you marks; get them right.

• Start your essay by outlining what stereotypes you may expect to see of that particular area of representation in the media. (You can do this for EVERY area of representation.)

• Make sure you cover all of the areas of textual analysis (the bullet points). If you need to write about each bullet point separately to ensure you do this, go for it.

• Some of you were not using the guidance about representations of sexuality to inform your knowledge of the stereotypes - instead you were making stereotypes up. You need to revise the stereotypes for each area, so you can pick up RELEVANT examples in the extracts. Use the teaching blogs (the search function), your class notes and your past essays to revise the stereotypes.

To demonstrate how you can link to stereotypes perceptively, whilst keeping your response technical, please see the example student essay below. This was completed in timed conditions, and has been typed-up to show you examples of strong student work.


It received a mark of 40/50.

Student Example. Timed Essay. Ashes to Ashes Extract (40 Out of 50 B+/A-) by teachermisskp