Poetry, Year 11: unseen poetry and Paper 2

What the poem is about and how the speaker feels

提示Meaning before method.

为什么Read it twice. Work out who is speaking, to whom and about what, and how the feeling changes, before you look for techniques.

24

提示Three times as many as the comparison question that follows it.

为什么It asks how the poet presents something in one poem. Half the marks are for your response and evidence, half for analysing methods.

No: context is not assessed in the unseen section

提示You have never seen the poem, so you could not have prepared any.

为什么The marks are for your reading and your analysis of methods only. Time spent guessing at background is wasted.

The title and the last lines

提示One of them comes before the first line.

为什么Go back to the title after reading the poem: it often means more the second time. Endings are where poems tend to turn, sum up or surprise.

What effect the rhyme has on the poem's meaning or feeling

提示A fact about form is only a start.

为什么The same goes for stanza shape, line length and rhythm. Ask what the pattern does: does it sound settled, childlike, trapped, final?

8

提示The smallest question on either paper.

为什么It is a short answer, not an essay. Both poems are printed on the paper.

The methods the poets use

提示Not their ideas alone.

为什么The answer should set a method from one poem against a method from the other and say what each does: an image against an image, a form against a form.

About a quarter

提示Match the time to the marks.

为什么If you allow about 45 minutes for Section C, that is around ten minutes. Many candidates overrun on the first unseen poem and leave this question out.

No: go straight to a point of comparison

提示There is no time for a frame.

为什么Two or three direct comparisons of method, each with a short quotation from both poems and a comment on effect, make a complete answer.

B

提示One of them could be said of almost any two poems.

为什么A names a feature without saying anything about it. B names the method in each poem and compares its effect.

135

提示It is half an hour longer than Paper 1.

为什么It is half an hour longer than Paper 1 and has three sections to fit in, so the time has to be shared out before you start.

96

提示It is half as much again as Paper 1.

为什么Section A is 30 marks plus 4 for accurate writing, Section B is 30, and Section C is 24 plus 8.

modern; anthology; unseen

提示A play or novel from after 1914; the cluster of poems you studied; poems you have never met.

为什么Sections A and B are each worth about a third of the paper and so is Section C as a whole, which suggests about 45 minutes for each.

A choice of two questions, with no extract

提示Unlike Paper 1, nothing from the text is in front of you.

为什么Every reference has to come from memory. Read both questions before choosing: pick the one for which you can recall the most precise moments.

You choose it yourself from your cluster and write about it from memory

提示Only the named one is in front of you.

为什么You cannot know which poem will be printed, so each poem in the cluster needs a few details you can recall and one or two poems you would pair it with.