I'm sure that you are missing your English lessons...

So I am going to give you some fish to feed. Click the mouse to create food for them, which they will eat.

Dont' forget to feed them over the holidays!

And looking forward to seeing a few of you over pre-6th, as I'll be a year 12 tutor next year

What did you think of paper 2?

...and how did it go?

Well done; you're finished now.

Happy days.

Past Papers for paper 1

As I said, they're hard to find on the net because of copyright issues. If you haven't already looked, though, the BBC Bitesize revision English Mock is a good example of what you might get in the paper, and it also has a markscheme.

There's also some revision help on this site about persuasive writing.

And, of course, you will have a session tomorrow morning from me for last-minute stuff.

Hope this helps...

Paper 1 practice

Internet off again....and on again....now I have a lovely new computer, so hopefully will work for more than 8 hours this time.

The board tend not to put up paper 1 because they are often things which are copyright-heavy, so they can have them for the exam, but can't put them up on the web. That's why it's good to think of your own possible paper 1 pieces.

There will certainly be standard questions; always one to test your understandiong (like a precis), asking you to briefly out line the argument; always one to compare texts--perhaps layout or language or often both--always something that is testing how you respond to and if you can distinguish between fact and opinion.

The exam board have given really precise guidelines here:

GCSE English (Specification A): Paper 1 Section A
The following AOs will be assessed in all questions in Section A rather than in specific
questions:
• read, with insight and engagement, making appropriate references to texts (AO2 (i));
• select material appropriate to their purpose (AO2 (iv))
HIGHER TIER
• Question 01 tests the ability to follow an argument (AO2 (iii))
• Question 02 tests the ability to distinguish between fact and opinion (AO2 (ii))
• Question 03 and 04 will test the ability to understand and evaluate how writers use
linguistic, structural and presentational devices to achieve their effects (AO2 (v))
• Either Question 03 or 04 will test the ability to make cross references (AO2 (iv))

Hope this helps!

I'm Back!

Did you notice I was gone? All revising too hard for next week, no doubt. My internet has been down, but now I'm back, o joy and bliss.

So.... next week it's the whole paper 1 business... I hope that you're still practising with your media notebooks!

REVISION SESSIONS TOMORROW

Just to remind you all that there are revision sessions tomorrow, at the normal time of our English lessons. I'll be going through the format of the paper, looking briefly at Of Mice and Men and explaining strategies for answering questions and planning essays.

Some of you have asked if you can go to the 'other' session because of language exams. Of course, that's absolutely fine (and should work perfectly in terms of numbers), but I wouldn't recommend (as some have suggested) that you should try coming to both sessions, as though I appreciate such keenness, you'll just find them a repeat of each other.

Looking forward to seeing you all again!

Literature exam queries

Oh Rupert--I'm sorry! Of course there are textual variants, though that may just be my bad memory. Stick with the Anthology version, it's what will be in the exam...

In answer to Paridhi... In the literature exam you will be given (probably) two named poems, though they do sometimes vary this, for instance by giving you two lists from which you can pick. They will never give you more than two named poems, but they can choose from either Duffy, Armitage or the pre-1914 poetry bank.

You can compare the poems however you like--you don't have to compare two and two--in fact, if you do you may limit what you can say. For instance, when looking at a comparison involving 'My Last Duchess', 'The Laboratory', 'Havisham' and 'Hitcher', you might well want to compare the two Browning poems, but then move on to consider how female speaking voices are created by Duffy and Browning.

Good practice for this paper is to make cards with all the poem names on them, and question cards, and pick up four poem cards, trying to make connections between them quickly with regard to a particular question--this will sharpen you up for the quick thinking you need in the exam! In the same way, writing introductions rather than full essays can be good practice for establishing that initial comparison. I've just been doing this with the revision groups, and although you do come up with some strange combinations (compare parent/child relationships in 'Inversnaid' and 'My Last Duchess' for instance) at the least it makes you realise how relatively easy the exam is in comparison! I'm assuming here that you have detailed notes on all the poems and know them well--that is the very first step for revision.

I'll post a list of question openers below, which you could use for that game if you like...



• Compare how attitudes towards other people are shown

• Compare the ways relationships between parents and children are presented

• Compare the ways family relationships are presented

• Compare features of language which have interested you

• Compare the ways suffering is presented

• Compare the ways the poets present violence

• Compare how strong feelings are presented

• Compare how memories are presented

• Compare how death or the threat of death is presented

• Compare how women are presented

• Compare the ways the poets present family relationships

• Compare how attitudes to loved ones are presented

• Compare how speakers are presented (male or female)

• Compare how young people are presented

• Did you enjoy reading the poems in the AQA English Literature Anthology?
Compare your responses to…

• People sometimes have strong reactions to the poems in the AQA English Literature Anthology. Compare your responses to…

The Buzz words for poetry

All you ever wanted to know about 'technical' poetry words - but were too frightened to ask ...

Alliteration: repetition of closely connected words beginning with the same letter, usually a consonant. It is used to highlight the feeling of sound and movement, to intensify meaning, or to bind words together, e.g. "the burning bushes" or " Sing a song of sixpence"!

Antithesis: contrasting two unlike things, often in the same line, or phrase. Antithesis is often part of the use of Petrachan convention in love poetry, e.g. “Alas, what is this wonder malady? For heat of cold, for cold of heat I die!”

Assonance: repetition of similar or identical vowel sounds in words which follow each other, especially when the vowel is stressed, i.e. "Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs/ About the lilting house and happy as the grass is green."

Ballad: a simple song which tells a story through dialogue, and which is characterized by uncomplicated language and melodic refrain. The literary ballad is a narrative poem written in imitation of the folk ballad. Each verse is made up of four lines, with the second and fourth line endings rhyming.

Bathos: ‘from the sublime to the ridiculous’; a sudden, usually comic, change of tone from the heightened to the down-to-earth.

Couplet: Two successive lines of poetry that rhyme. ‘Heroic Couplets’ are couplets written in iambic pentameter.

Dramatic Monologue: A poem in the first person, which is set as though it were a speech from a play, with an unseen listener to whom it is directed. The monologue is usually ironic, revealing things about the speaker’s character or motives in addition to those things which the speaker intends to reveal.

Enjambement (or enjambment; both spellings are acceptable): a line ending in which the syntax, rhythm and thought are continued and completed in the next line, i.e. "But in contentment I still feel/ the need of some imperishable bliss."

Half-Rhyme: a rhyme which, although it creates a similarity of sound, does not rhyme on every syllable, or (like ‘blue’ and ‘truly’) rhymes on only the first part of the word.

Hyperbole: ‘over the top’ exaggeration

Iambic: A two-beat metre made up of iambs. Each iambic unit has a weak stress followed by a strong stress. Five iambic units of stress make iambic pentameter, e.g. ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’ (strong stresses underlined).

Imagery: use of pictures, figures of speech and description to evoke ideas feelings, objects actions, states of mind etc.

Irony: saying one thing while implying its opposite, or something that transforms the first idea.

Lyric: originally poetry meant to be sung, accompanied by lyre or lute. Now refers to category of poetry that is short, concentrated in expression, personal in its subject matter, and songlike in quality.

Metaphor: like the simile, is based on a point of similarity between two things; but whereas the simile states that one thing is like another, the metaphor identifies them completely. Thus, "the child chattered like a monkey" is a simile, but "that child is a perfect monkey" is a metaphor.

Metre: The pattern of stress within a line or lines of poetry. Most common metres, like iambic pentameter, rely on alternating strong and weak stresses.

Onomatopoeia: use of words which echo their meaning in sound, e.g. "snap", crackle" and "pop"!

Personification: technique of presenting things which are not human as if they were human, i.e. "The Ballad of John Barleycorn"

Petrachan Conventions: Exaggerated and hyperbolic praise of the beloved, together with the idea that the lover suffers and strives towards an unattainable ideal. The ideas that Shakespeare satirizes in sonnet 130.

Quatrain: A four-line stanza.

Refrain: a recurring phrase or line, especially at the end of a verse, or appearing irregularly throughout a song or poem. It is used to create unity, to accumulate plot and meaning or to maintain rhythm and melody.

Rhyme: The use of words with matching sounds, usually at the end of each line.

Similes: compare things which are alike in some respect, although they may be different in their general nature, i.e. "as light as a feather" or "sleeping like a baby". Similes always use ‘like’ or ‘as’.

Sonnet: A poem of fourteen lines, generally in iambic pentameter, consisting of a closely-rhymed octet followed by a similarly rhymed sestet. Generally, a problem is proposed in the first half of the poem, which is then resolved in the second, with a ‘turn’ between the octet and sestet. Shakespearian sonnets generally end with a couplet.

Stanza: another word for verse. NEVER use ‘paragraph’ to refer to poetry!

Symbol: when a word, phrase or image 'stands for' or evokes a complex set of ideas, the meaning of which is determined by the surrounding context, i.e. the sun can symbolize life and energy, a red rose can symbolize romantic love.

Trochaic: A metre which is the opposite to iambic, consisting of a strong stress followed by a weak stress. A line such as ‘Hubble bubble toil and trouble’ (strong stresses underlined) is an example of trochaic tetrameter—that is, each line is made up of four trochees.

Revision and other matters

Great to see so many people getting involved--and sorry for not replying earlier. SO... I shall create a list of questions both for Of Mice and Men and for the poetry, and post it up. Also a list of useful terms...

When you're thinking about the effects of poetic structures such as alliteration and assonance, a good way to approach it is to just consider how it would work if they weren't there... think of a synonym that works in every way apart from the alliteration or whatever, and see how it changes the impact of the poem. Remember my exercise about 'The Eagle'?

He holds/grips/clasps the crag with crooked hands
Close to the sun in lonely/distant/foreign lands
Ringed by the blue/azure/cobalt world he stands


The wrinkled/scarred/wavy sea beneath him crawls
He gazes/watches/looks from his mountain walls
And like a thunderbolt he swoops/falls/dives

If you look at the choices there, it's a good way of seeing why Tennyson puts in those devices.

Writing Introductions

REmember, that your introducetion should really be like a mini-essay plan. It is the way that your examiner will be able to find their way around your essay--like a map, if you like. DON'T, whatever you do, think that you have a wonderful, secret idea that you will spring on the reader at the last minute--bu then they might have lost interest, and find it hard to make the connection. Never save the best until last in an essay.

Essay writing strategies

Eleanor has raised some interesting questions about how to handle your introduction (you can see her whole comment after the last post if you like). I thought it would be worth making this the subject of a new post, as I suspect others may have similar questions. Her first example of an introduction goes like this:

'Many of the characters are lonely, in particular George, Candy and Curley's wife'

This is ok, but that is the sort of answer that lots of students will give. I think that it's better to give a lot more detail, so that the examiner knows where you are heading with your answer. Her alternative opening goes like this:


'Many of the characters are lonely, but all in different ways - Curley's wife is married to a man she doesn't love, Candy is crippled and relies on an old dog for company, and George must keep moving, giving up jobs to look after Lennie, and never making other friends'

I think that is a much stronger opening, because it is more precise and detailed.

Eleanor's concern, which I am sure some of the rest of you share is that

I sometimes feel that if I put all my ideas into the introduction, I won't have anything new to say in the rest of my essay, and will just repeat myself.

Please DON'T worry about this. You certainly won't be using up your best ideas by writing a clear introduction. Remember always that you are simply laying out your stall in the opening paragraphs--explaining the area of your interest, and that doing this will make it easier for the examiners to follow your closer analysis in the next sections.

Another issue Eleanor raises is that of how to quote smoothly.

Can you change quotes to fit them into your sentence, as sometimes they don't make sense, if you want to embed them, but the verb isn't conjugated right, as you're saying, 'he does this' but the book says 'I do this'. Do you just split the quote up around the verb, or put it in brackets or something like that?

This is really important if you want to embed your quotations. ALWAYS make the syntax work. If it doesn't, then don't quote, just refer--in Eleanor's example, imagine that the novel says

"'I do this every day' said George". and you want to say that this quotation shows his exasperation.

You then have various alternatives, if the syntax desn't fit smoothly into your planned sentence. You could use the quotation by framing it as reported speech rather than direct speech: 'George's comment that he does this every day shows his exasperation'

OR, if it is especially dear to your heart that you quote, then just use the words that will fit: 'When George says that he does this "every day", it shows his exasperation'

OR rephrase your own sentence: 'When George says "I do this every day", we see his exasperation'

In the last resort, if you want to change part of a word, you can do this, and indicate it by square brackets. So:

'When George comments how he "do[es] this every day" we sympathise with his exasperation'

This last solution should be used with caution, as it can look inelegant if you are not careful.

Hope this helps.

Of Mice and Men essays

Ah.... essays. Most of you have problems with quotations and analysis. Lots and lots of good ideas, but you need to quote to back the ideas up (and not just storytell) and then push that anaysis further so that it becomes really interesting. Don't forget the assessment objectives! How we love them...

Creating Quoties

Do make sure to create your quoties packets, if you haven't already, or finish them off if you started them earlier this week. They are incredibly useful for helping you to remember key facts--and can be SO pretty. I'm hoping to get some pictures of the most appealing to put on this site as examples...

The politics of the Playground

Which do you think is most important in Of Mice and Men, loneliness or friendship? The examiners tend to be very excited by loneliness (so to speak) and it regularly comes up as a question in one form or another. But I've been thinking about it, and I'm not so sure--perhaps the focus of the book is realy friendship?

Certainly the friendship of Lennie and George (one so often misinterpreted by others)is of key importance in the novel, but consider others also--how Slim offers friendship to George, almost shyly, how Curley has no friends, how much of the interactions in the bunkhouse are almost like primary school--everyone looks to Slim, because he's the most important, to decide the fate of Candy's dog; Crooks is isolated; the guys get the courage to gang up on Curley (the school bully?) once Slim stands up for himself.

Actually, the more I think about it, the more I think that the interactions of the men in that novel are like the interactions of children. Perhaps the lack of independence breeds immaturity? Look how Curley is always out for attention, wanting to prove himself sexually, wanting to be the toughest in the playground... but ultimately threatneing people with 'my dad can get you canned'. There's not a lot of maturity there, is there? Candy, unable to make decisions for himself, relying on popular opinion to make an important, life-or-death decision... George and Lennie, wanting to fit in, not get into trouble... and when Curley's wife is killed, like kids they try to sort it out themselves rather than call the law (the teacher)?

What do you think?

Your Wish is My Command

So, a list of useful media terms: Well, you can have my list, but as it's in my school files, you'll have to wait until Monday, when I can easily get into that without the five-hundred-year wait that 'Easylink' involves. If you'd like something faster than that, then I suggets that you look further afield, as there's plenty of good information, appropriately enough, on the web, if you know where to look.

For instance, there's a useful list to be found from the Media Awareness Network and another (which opens as a word document) from Geoff Barton which is well worth a look.

More on dreams...

Well, once you start thinking about the novel in these terms, there are dreams all over the place--poor Candy's dream of being cared for, being independent, and not just being a burden on the ranch; his dream of his dog living on and on; Crooks's very quickly stifled dream of belonging; George's dream of being free of Lennie (which so tragically comes true); even Curley's dream of being something other than he is--a little bully. Isn't there a poignancy in the fact that his wife doesn't love him, and people don't really respect him? His father also, with those tragic 'higheeled boots' to show that he isn't an ordinary 'labouring man'. Everywhere you look you see people putting on faces to impress other people, or hiding secret yearnings--apart from Slim, of course, who doesn't seem to do this.

So dreams connect immediately to loneliness--because having a dream, in the novel at least, seems to imply that you are not happy with your life as it is. Isolation in the novel is such a central theme, partly because people don't share their dreams. Crooks barely dares to admit his, has to pretend he doesn't want company in case he's rejected; Candy can't admit his real feelings about his dog and stand up to Carlson. Imagine how different the novel would be if Curley's wife had confided in Curley rather than in Lennie.... Or perhaps it wouldn't be so different. People's dreams are not always crushed because they don't share them, after all, but sometimes because they do.

Interesting, though, what an enlivening thing George and Lennie's dream is... it enriches people's lives, it draws them into warmth and friendship. Curley's dream of being the best boxer doesn't exactly do that, does it?

Of Mice and Men

By popular request... What are the main themes of Of Mice and Men? Well first of all, and probably most importantly of all (as everything else connects to this in some way) you need to consider The American dream. This menas, very simply, the idea that because America is not (like England was perceived to be) a class-ridden society, where the position that you are born in determines your future, Americans in Steinbeck's time believed (as many still do) that it was possible to be born into a relatively humble position, and pull yourself up by your bootstraps, so to speak, and make a success of your like. Therefore, many people speak of Obama as 'living the American Dream' because he managed to overcome prejudice (though not huge economic disadvantage) and rise to the highest office in the land. Similarly, George and Lennie believe that they can make something of themselves and buy a small farm--be independent and a success in their own terms. Even this very humble dream is seen as unrealistic by others--for instance, by Crooks and by Curley's Wife.

The idea of the American dream connects to other kinds of dreams and ambitions. Curley's Wife, of course, longs to be famous, a 'movie star', which is another kind of dream at this time, when films were becoming a big industry, and it seemed possible for relatively unknown people to 'make it big' in the movies. It was a bit of a cliche that men would try and pick up young, pretty girls by telling them that they could do well in films, and so to a contemporary readership, Curley's Wife's report of the man who let her down would appear very naive. Her belief that her mother was hiding his letters would have been seen as foolish but also would have added to her innocence.

More later...

Today's Revision Task

Just in case you are getting bored with paper 1 revision already... Here's a new challenge. Create a persuasive manifesto for your own political party--or the party that you would like to be running the country--using as many rhetorical strategies as you can.

The Election

How many of you remember 'Vote for Me' from year 8? Coming back to you now that it is election time? All those skills that you learned then are still very relevant and useful for paper one--not only so that you can pick apart and analyse the ways that people are trying to persuade you, but so that you can imitate them in your onw persuasive writing.

Really good revision would be to keep all the leaflets that will come through your doors in the nest few weeks, and start to analyse them, working out the persuasive strategies each party uses. Whose is the most effective? Does the subtle use of persuasion actually bypass the critical faculties, or are you now so media-aware that you are not lured in?

Back to Revision

I hope that you had a good break over the long weekend--but, alas, no rest fo the examined ones, so by now you should be back to revision, and planning out your schedule for the next days and weeks.

A good place to start is with your paper 1 revision for your media book. Sticking in adverts and so on can be a restful occupation, while annotating them can be genuinely useful. For an interesting angle on the language of advertising, look at this article from the Guardian, published on April 1st. How many of those who saw it realised it was an April fool, and why? How do they use language to create an effective pastiche of political advertising campaigns?

Just to let you know....

I shall be posting every day during the Easter break to keep in touch with you, and give you more revision ideas. However, today is Good Friday, and you should not be working (neither should I) so I shall post at more length tomorrow.

Welcome to Miss Caldwell!

It is very exciting to see Miss Caldwell as a follower here because... she is the original inspirer of the Cherwell blogs (she created a fabulous one for year 9). Very very cheering to be followed by an expert, so the quality of comments and posts will have to improve immeasureably.

Spelling 'immeasureably' correctly is quite a good start, I suppose.

I've been thinking about the choice of poems in the anthology quite a lot recently, because the syllabus is changing, and soon there will be a new set to teach. Why do you think that the examiners chose the poems that they did? What does it tell you about them (if anything)? And if YOU were responsible for choosing the new poems for the anthology, what would you want to include for next year's year 10 students?

Your homework for the weekend--play in the semantic fields

Semantic fields, as we have discussed before, are groups of words which all link into a particular topic, so that immediately they call up certain ideas or associations. So, for instance, if I say 'playground, chalk, blackboard, class, teach' it is fairly clear that I am talking about school. If I say 'in the playground that is the House of Commons, we need to chalk up on the blackboard of experience what class can teach us about politics' I am implying--without actually saying it--an educational context for my critique of parliament.

Authors often use this for humour--or to create a rich web of meaning--think of Simon Armitage with 'I'm making a will'; using the semantic fields of food and machinery to describe his body, and consider the effect it has.

This kind of use of semantic fields couldn't have the impact it has without the multivalent nature of language--it has been suggested that that all language is metaphorical in one way or another--what do you think?

In harmony with this theme, today's new word--a gift for your weekend--is going to be 'polysemous'. What that means is that a word has more than one meaning, or many different shades of meaning, all of which might be discussed when you are analysing the work of literature concerned. For your HOMEWORK, I would like you to find some examples of polysemy in the anthology.

Sadly, 'polysemous' is not itself polysemous.

This is called a paradox, children. But a great word, all the same.

hanged or hung?

This is one of the great spelling dilemmas, because it memorialises a class distinction as well as spelling choice. Originally, 'hanged' and 'hung' were not so distinct, but time and usage meant that 'hanged' came to mean 'killed by being suspended with a rope round one's neck' while 'hung' described non-human suspension.

Thus you could say that a tyrant hanged peasants but he hung pheasants. And that's how I remember it--the shorter word with the longer word each time. Though you could equally well thnk of the tarot card 'the hanged man' (see above). This is in fact not as gruesome as you might think, and generally considered a symbol of good fortune--perhaps because whoever is hanging him put the noose round his foot rather than his neck...

This reminds me of Eleanor's query about spelled/spelt. In fact, either version is acceptable, but in America the regularised form 'spelled' is preferred, and this has had an influence on the rest of the world. So if someone corrects you on this, Eleanor, you can tell them that they're wrong, as a verb 'spelt' is perfectly respectable, just very English. Stand up for irregular verbs, I say!

There's a lovely page here which has explanations and clarifcations of common errors of English Usage, which is fun to browse through in an idle moment...

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner

Is a short story by Alan Sillitoe, later made into a film by Tony Richardson. Frankly, I suspect that the loneliness of the long-distance runner is nothing in comparison to the loneliness of the long-distance blogger, as I write these words into nothingness. I would like to have 63 followers, year 11, so you have some distance to go here.

But... the point of this comparison is that you are now, as you revise and head towards your exams, in a kind of race of your own, and it is certainly a long-distance one, as stamina and determination are required. Likewise, careful preparation is essential (if you are not to strain a mental muscle you should stretch carefully first), you need to know the course that you are to run, the distance that you must cover, and the hidden challenges of the countryside, and you should, of course try to warm up by doing little runs first before you try the big one.

It is a race where you are competing against others, but ultimately, you are trying to achieve something for yourself. You might even find a strange companionship in the suffering of those who stagger beside you, out of breath and exhausted, yet still determined to finish.

I could extend the metaphor almost infinitely... can you?

How important are paragraphs?

Do you think that the world could survive without them? Could your essays?

The simple paragraph can give great pleasure, adding force to an argument, point to a point, and luring your reader step by step along the road of your essay.

Start your paragraph well, and it will be well-nigh irresistible to continue reading.
Start it in a dull way and you might as well write 'don't read on' in capital letters (which, paradoxically, would be quite a good way to encourage people to read on in itself, given the contrary nature of most human beings).

End a paragraph with a dextrous link to the next one, and you create a chain of reasoning that can lull the most incisive mind into believing all you say...

Or not?

Havisham

As lots of you missed out on our 'Havisham' lesson due to the drama exams, I promised I'd put up something about it today. You should have the commentary about it, but I shall try and add it as a document to the blog. You could compare it to Andrew Moore's commentary. Which do you find most helpful?

The most interesting thing to read is probably the original extract from Great Expectations where Miss Havisham is described by Pip, which you can find here.

Ideas welcome

Well done, to at least two of you, though I suppose the night is yet young. Dan, you get extra points for the Travers intertextuality.

Some suggestions as to useful links would be very welcome. What would be good to have on here? A question of the day to debate? Recommendations for reading? Or relentless exam focus? Let me know.

In the beginning...

There was spelling.

And 'beginning' is my least favourite word to spell, for some reason. Something about those doubled consonants, though 'assessment' doesn't cause me the same problems at all.

Curious that.

Anyway, the point is that you should be especially careful about spelling in the exams--although some will tell you 'it doesn't matter--it's not assessed', don'tbelieve them. It DOES matter, it matters A LOT because it is part of the general impression that you give to your reader. Clarity in all things, where you can help it.

Of course, it is no good spelling like an angel and not having any ideas in your head, so if it's one or the other go for the ideas.