Eduqas GCSE English Literature Poetry Key Messages Sample

Eduqas GCSE English Literature Poetry Key Messages

Sample questions: Component 1 Section B: Poetry (given poem) Read the poem below, A Wife in London, by Thomas Hardy. A Wife in London is a poem about loss. How does Thomas Hardy present loss in the poem? Remember to refer to the contexts of the poem in your answer. [15] (The poem is printed on the page and a list of all the anthology poems is printed on the facing page)

Approaching the Poetry anthology question (given poem) • Read the question TWICE to identify the key focus. • Tracking the poem chronologically is the best approach. This should include reference to the title and should go right through to the final line, selecting the most important ideas for the question focus. • Make sure that the text is seen as poetry and that there is reference to key elements of poetry texts. While linguistic features such as word classes may sometimes be useful, it is not necessary to label every quote with a word class. • Context is assessed here: include a reference to context in the introduction and then integrate contextual references into the rest of the response. Context needs to be specific and accurate.

Sample questions: Component 1 Section B: Poetry (comparison) Choose one other poem from the anthology in which the poet also writes about loss. Compare the way the poet presents loss in your chosen poem with the way Thomas Hardy presents loss in A Wife in London. In your answer you should compare: • the content and structure of the poems – what they are about and how they are organized • how the writers create effects, using appropriate terminology where relevant • the contexts of the poems, and how these may have influenced the ideas in them [25]

Approaching the Poetry anthology comparison question • Think carefully about your choice of poem before starting to write and make a brief plan so that there are enough points of connection/contrast to make. • Ensure the question focus is maintained throughout- comparisons can’t be about anything, they must be linked to the question focus. • Students should use quotations explicitly for AO 2 as well as to illustrate a key aspect of the question focus. • As in the first part question, context should be specific, accurate and integrated throughout. • Plan for a structured response to enable the best comparative approach e. g. a key point of comparison should be the topic sentence for the start of each paragraph. • It is fine to repeat elements of the response to the first part question where this is being used to illustrate a given connection/comparison with the chosen poem.

Eduqas resources to support teaching of the poetry anthology Eduqas Poetry Anthology Resources Using contexts effectively in response to poetry GCSE English Literature Component 1

Sample questions: Component 2 Section C: Unseen Poetry Read the two poems, Yesterday by Patricia Pogson and Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden. Both poems describe the relationship between a parent and a child. Write about the poem Yesterday by Patricia Pogson, and its effect on you. [15] You may wish to consider: • what the poem is about and how it is organised • the ideas the poet may have wanted us to think about • the poet’s choice of words, phrases and images and the effects they create • how you respond to the poem

Sample questions: Component 2 Section C: Unseen Poetry Now compare Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden, and Yesterday by Patricia Pogson. [25] You should compare: • what the poems are about and how they are organized • the ideas the poets may have wanted us to think about • the poets’ choice of words, phrases and images and the effects they create • how you respond to the poems

Approaching the unseen poetry questions • The structure of this section is the same as that for the Poetry (anthology) section in Component 1 and students should approach it in the same way. • The introduction to the question gives a clear focus on the topic of the poems, in this case, ‘the relationship between a parent and a child’. Read this carefully, TWICE. • As these poems are unseen, students must spend time reading the poems carefully. On the first reading, try to get the ‘gist’ of the ideas in the poems. It will probably need two further readings to understand some of the ideas in the poem and then to select the best evidence for the question. • The approach should then be as for the anthology poetry questions: in the first part, track the poem chronologically being sure to include reference to title, opening and ending as well as key ideas throughout and to make explicit reference to AO 2 when quoting; in the comparison, plan briefly by key points of comparison. • Poetry answers can be prone to ‘feature spotting’ approaches. Students should lead with meaning rather than device in order to avoid this.

Eduqas resources to support teaching of Component 2 Approaches to 19 th Century Texts Approaches to Unseen Poetry GCSE English Literature Component 2