Improving Literature Knowledge?

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btressler
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Re: Improving Literature Knowledge?

Post by btressler »

I'm not sure I qualify as a "better" lit player, but I have no qualms in sharing the things I've done over the year to learn some literature.

First of all, you have to know title / author pairs. NAQT sells a list of its most-frequently asked titles and you should either buy the list or make up one of your own. I used to use index cards (how primitive!) but now there's plenty of digitial flashcard programs out there.

The next step is to recognize character names. When I coached, I started such a list and out of all the things I ever did, I thought this was the one that paid the most dividends. Start with the main characters, and later pick up minor ones. Doing such a task today is much easier than I did it years ago in the pre-Wikipedia days.

You need to know the main ideas of plots. I couldn't give you too many details about J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace, but I do know it's about a teacher who loses his job.

It helps to write questions. Then you start to think about minor plot points that you can put in early clues.

I think the very best literature players enjoy reading such works. If a tossup is written correctly, the first clues are directed to people who have read the work.

Hope this helps.
Bill Tressler,
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Rufous-capped Thornbill
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Re: Improving Literature Knowledge?

Post by Rufous-capped Thornbill »

This trend of high schoolers telling other high schoolers that actually reading things is a waste of time is really annoying and should stop. Starting to learn things for quizbowl can be a very daunting task, but the best advice ever given to anyone when trying to improve is also the simplest: "Read a book." Sure, packet reading, lists and just playing a lot are important for understanding the game and what comes up, but if you ever, ever want to beat anyone good, you have to actually, you know, read things and learn about whatever it is you want to know more about organically. That's all there is to it.

Matt's 100% right in that there is no magic bullet to this game. It's a very simple process to improve at quizbowl, it just happens to take a lot of time and effort. There are no shortcuts to becoming a great player. So if you want to learn about Ibsen or whoever, you should totally just read a few of his major plays and then write a well-written tossup that includes his more minor ones. It'll give you deeper knowledge of him and his works, and it'll stick in your mind a lot better than anything gleaned from packet study or notecards, which tend to fade if not reviewed frequently.

So yeah, stop saying that learning things in a way that fosters deeper knowledge is a waste of time, because it's the only real way to get great, not just good.
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Re: Improving Literature Knowledge?

Post by Eddie »

I think that the problem with the "read a book" strategy is that literature has such a large canon. Poetry and short stories are very easy to read and digest quickly, and some significant and common novels and plays (those on NAQT's You Gotta Know, etc.) are very useful to read firsthand, but once you get to drier, more obscure literature, it gets difficulty to read everything. That said, I'm not a literature specialist, so I may not be an expert on this topic.
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Re: Improving Literature Knowledge?

Post by Jason Cheng »

In my opinion, the "read a book" strategy is most helpful at higher levels of play. For the typical novice, who's usually the one asking these questions, "learn your frequency lists" and "read lots of packets" is far better advice, for one reason alone: novices don't know the canon and are struggling to get 1 tossup a game and convert 20 points out of a bonus will benefit a lot more from learning giveaways and building a foundation to improve off of. At that level, it's true that "read a book" is a waste of time, as said novice will gain maybe one power per ten rounds from spending four days reading Macbeth, whereas spending that time reading packets will lead to a much faster improvement rate.

Only knowing many common clues and work-author associations simply won't fly against the top lit players in the nation, but common sense dictates that a complete beginner isn't going to be playing against a very strong lit player every round of a tournament.

Reading books only comes into play as the most effective strategy when a player is at the level where he or she needs to start competing against elite players who simply know all the stock clues, one-line summaries, and work-author associations better than anyone else. Until then, however, the strategies people on these forums usually attack as silly, annoying, and idiotic will actually help a new player improve much faster, because most people can't read both Chanson de Roland and Don Quixote in one night of quiz bowl study and hope to retain power-garnering knowledge.
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Re: Improving Literature Knowledge?

Post by The Stately Rhododendron »

DJCocoPuffs wrote:In my opinion, the "read a book" strategy is most helpful at higher levels of play. For the typical novice, who's usually the one asking these questions, "learn your frequency lists" and "read lots of packets" is far better advice, for one reason alone: novices don't know the canon and are struggling to get 1 tossup a game and convert 20 points out of a bonus will benefit a lot more from learning giveaways and building a foundation to improve off of. At that level, it's true that "read a book" is a waste of time, as said novice will gain maybe one power per ten rounds from spending four days reading Macbeth, whereas spending that time reading packets will lead to a much faster improvement rate.
I got better at literature by reading books and by studying. They're not mutually exclusive.
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Re: Improving Literature Knowledge?

Post by Schmidt Sting Pain Index »

I have another question. What is the best place to start when studying lit? Should I be going down the frequency list or looking up what I hear in tournaments/practice?

Thanks
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Re: Improving Literature Knowledge?

Post by Great Bustard »

shady jawn wrote:I have another question. What is the best place to start when studying lit? Should I be going down the frequency list or looking up what I hear in tournaments/practice?

Thanks
Start with the relevant NAQT you gotta know lists and ACE quiz bowl camp study guides (available on those respective websites). Looking up stuff is good too of course, but make sure you go about it efficiently. Don't just write down every fact in every tossup you hear, but focus on the facts that appear in tossups right before you would ring in. So if there's a tossup on War and Peace, and you know it was by Tolstoy and it is set in the time of Napoleon, but don't know Pierre Bezukhov is a major character in it, that's something to focus on (since that will probably be mentioned towards the end of the question). Trying to memorize first lines may get you the odd power here and there, but that's usually a less efficient way towards amassing the most points quickly.
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