English Literature Revision Guide Unit 1 Section A ‘The Woman in Black’ 45 minutes What are you assessed on?: Responding to the text critically and imaginatively and selecting relevant quotations or examples to support your point. Explaining how language, structure and form contribute to the writer’s presentation of the ideas, themes and settings. The acronym you are using is SCILS with the main emphasis on ‘I’ and ‘L’: SC (setting and context) I (ideas and themes) L (language) S (structure) Higher Questions: 1. How does Hill create a sense of isolation in the novel? 2. Hill writes that setting is ‘so important’ in a ghost story. How does Hill present the setting of Eel Marsh House and why do you think it is important? 3. In Chapter 3, The Journey North, how does Hill’s description of the train journey from London to Crythin Gifford prepare the reader for what is to come in the novel? 4. How do you respond to Hill’s presentation of the woman in black in the novel? Foundation Questions: 1. How does Hill make Eel Marsh House seem threatening? Write about: the description of the house, the way the characters feel about the house and the methods Hill used to describe the house. 2. Write about the woman in black in the novel. You should write about: the actions of the woman in black and the methods Hill uses to present her. Unit 1 Section B ‘Of Mice and Men’ 45 minutes What are you assessed on?: Relating texts to their social, cultural and historical contexts (this is not tested in Section A Responding to the text critically and imaginatively and selecting relevant quotations or examples to support your point. Explaining how language, structure and form contribute to the writer’s presentation of the ideas, themes and settings. The acronym you are using is SCILS with the main emphasis on ‘I’ and ‘L’: SC (setting and context) I (ideas and themes) L (language) S (structure) Suggested Revision tasks for Unit 1 (both ‘The Woman in Black’ and ‘Of Mice and Men’) 1. Plan and respond to the practise exam questions above and attached. 2. Use the attached mark scheme to help you assess your responses. 3. Create detailed mind-maps of each novel. 4. Re-read both novels. 5. Brainstorm key themes from each novel and select quotes to back up each theme 6. Create chapter summaries of both novels under key headings of themes, characters, language 7. Select key quotations for each chapter/theme/character Unit 2 Section A ‘Conflict Poetry’ 45 minutes What are you assessed on?: Responding to the text critically and imaginatively and selecting relevant quotations or examples to support your point. Explaining how language, structure and form contribute to the writers’ presentation of the ideas, themes and settings. Make comparisons and explain links between texts, evaluation writers’ different ways of expressing meaning and achieving effects. Higher Questions: 1. Compare how poets present the effects of conflict in ‘Belfast Confetti’ and one other poet from Conflict. 2. Compare how poets present the experience of soldiers in ‘Bayonet Charge’ and one other poem from Conflict. Foundation Questions: 1. Compare how poets present the effects of conflict in ‘Belfast Confetti’ and one other poem from Conflict. 2. Compare how poets presents the experience of soldiers in ‘Bayonet Charge’ and one other poem from Conflict. Suggested Revision tasks for Unit 2 1. Plan and respond to the practise exam questions above and attached. 2. Use the attached mark scheme to help you assess your responses. 3. 4. 5. 6. Create detailed mind-maps of each poem including comparisons and links. Select key quotes to from each poem and analyse in terms of language Create planning grid like the example in the pack Create summaries of each poem using WHAT, HOW and COMPARE Unit 2: Section B Unseen Poetry What are you assessed on? What? What is the poem about? Ideas/attitudes/feelings. How? How has it been written? Techniques and language linked to the ideas/attitudes and feelings. Why has the poet used these techniques/language to get their ideas across? Why particular language choices? Writer’s intentions/Effect on the reader. Use the poems below to practise for the unseen section of the poetry exam. Remember to plan briefly and that you have 35 minutes to spend on this section. REMEMBER: You don’t have to understand all of the poem. Choose 4-5 lines that ‘speak’ to you, and focus on these to answer the essay question. The question will always ask: What is the poem about? How does the poet present these ideas? (the wording may be slightly different, but the idea will always be the same!) Stop the Clocks Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead, Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves, Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves. He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong. The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood; For nothing now can ever come to any good. W H Auden For an A* analysis, look at the next page, but don’t do this until you’ve had a go yourself. Highlight where the essay tackles ‘What?’ and ‘How?’ to help you to see how to structure an essay. Identify where the mark scheme is being addressed and what this looks like by annotating, so that you can do this in your own essay. W. H. Auden's poem, "Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone" conveys the meaning of overwhelming grief, tragic loss, and an unrelenting pessimism best exemplified in the last lines, "For nothing now can ever come to any good." The tone of the poem is that of a melancholy sadness enforced by the internal rhyme scheme (aabb) . The title and first line of the poem demonstrate the author's inconsolable grief by commanding the audience to do something which is not possible, "Stop all the clocks." This reference to time could also be an allusion to the death and brevity of life which cause the author such agony. The verbs of the first three lines of the first stanza represent how the author wants to eliminate the distractions; clocks ticking, telephones ringing, dogs barking, pianos playing, of the day in order that everyone may mourn this death. These imperative verbs are all forbidding something and not until the mention of the coffin in line 4 do the verbs begin to be more allowing; "Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come." The next stanza continues to develop the idea of public mourning. The author has been so deeply touched by such a personal loss that he feels the entire world should share in his grief. The subjects of this stanza; the aeroplane, the sky, the white necks of the public doves, and the traffic policemen, are not typically associated with death. However, by incorporating these things into an elaborate funeral procession, the author emphasizes the need for public mourning. Lines 5 and 6 illustrate the importance of the death to the author, for he wants news of it spread across the sky where everyone on Earth can see it. The funeral procession described in lines 7 and 8 serves to further represent both the importance of the deceased and the grief caused by this death. The third stanza, particularly lines 9, 10, and 11, again conveys the intimacy of the relationship between the author and the deceased. The author shows reverence for this man by using exaggerated metaphors to imply his importance to the author. Line 9, "He was my North, my South, my East and West," demonstrates the relationship between the two and combined with the next line, "My working week and my Sunday rest," implies this relationship to be of a very intimate nature. This is echoed in line 12, "I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong." This can be interpreted to represent the speaker’s ignorance toward an inevitable death. The author’s love for this man is so all encompassing he describes him as the points of the globe. This love is so strong that the speaker believes it will last forever, not until the death of his companion was the realization made that love, like everything else, will come to an end. The last stanza and in particular line 16 affirms the hopelessness of the poem. The commanding verbs conclude in this stanza where the author serves to convey a purposeless life without the deceased. The readers are instructed to again perform extraordinary tasks in order that the author may mourn. Lines 13 and 14, “The stars are not wanted now: Put out every one: Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;” express the despair of the author. A world without the sun and moon would be void of everything, including life. This sentiment is echoed in the following line, “Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;” Both these metaphors are again intended to symbolize the aimless feelings of the author and the void left by the death of this man. By commanding the audience to dispel of the oceans and remove the forests of the world, the speaker shows both how meaningless life is without his lover. The pessimism of the poem is captured best in line 16, “For nothing now can ever come to any good.” The death of this man has devastated the speaker in such a way that he feels both without purpose and unable to see any good in the world. This line concludes the poem and emphasizes the melancholy tone evident throughout. Like the death of his lover, the last line emphasizes the finality of life and an end void of purpose. More poems to practise with… IF..... IF you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don't deal in lies, Or being hated, don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise: If you can dream - and not make dreams your master; If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools: If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!' If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, ' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch, if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds' worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son! Neighbours I am the type you are supposed to fear Black and foreign Big and dreadlocks An uneducated grass eater. I talk in tongues I chant at night I appear anywhere, I sleep with lions And when the moon gets me I am a Wailer. I am moving in Next door to you So you can get to know me, You will see my shadow In the bathroom window, My aromas will occupy Your space, Our ball will be in your court. How will you feel? You should feel good You have been chosen. I am the type you are supposed to love Dark and mysterious Tall and natural Thinking, tea total. I talk in schools I sing on TV I am in the papers, I keep cool cats And when the sun is shining I go Carnival. Benjamin Zephaniah A useful website to find more poems: www.poemhunter.com
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