Year 11 mock exams (Part Two)!

English Paper Two Section A (Different Cultures Poems)

The rules

• You have 45 minutes.
• You must answer one question (you will have to answer the first one of the two options at this stage, as we have not done any poems from Cluster Two).
• You must compare two poems in an essay.

My advice

1. Spend 10-15 minutes planning your answer. If you plan well, half an hour is plenty of time to write it. You will want to plan the structure and the content of your answer. The easiest way to structure your answer is chronologically (start at the beginning and go through the poems). If you do it this way, remember to talk about the beginning of both poems before moving to the middle of both poems and then the end of both poems. There are other ways of structuring your answer. You could structure it by technique, for instance. You might do a section on the layout of the poems, a section on the subject and ideas in the poem and a section on the language techniques used.
2. Try to make your writing interesting and enthusiastic by showing your interest in the similarities and differences between the poems. If you do structure your answer chronologically, remember not to tell the 'story' of the poems. What you must do is look at the techniques the poet uses at the various stages of the poem.
3. Remember to use lots of terminology for poetic writing. Keep your quotes short and use your vocabulary for technique, effect and evaluation. Look at this example and the colour-coding that shows how you can show all four skills. 'In 'Nothing's Changed', the narrator describes his "inward-turning hate", and this animated and almost personified feeling shows a tragic and uncomfortable aspect of being an oppressed person. As it is surprising, it strongly encourages the reader to reflect that the oppressed person comes to dislike himself, just as those who oppress him do, which is doubly upsetting.'
4. When comparing the poems, try to find quotes that go well together in some way. It might be that the technique is the same in both, but it may be interesting to notice that the effects are slightly different in some way. Here's an example. 'In 'Two Scavengers' and 'Island Man', the poets both use irregular indentation, but in the former poem it is used repetitively to show the different social status of the garbagemen and the professional people, whereas in the latter poem it is used once to show the character moving from a dream state to waking.'
5. Your planning should therefore have your structure for your answer (chronological or thematic: point 1 above), the terminology you need for technique, effect and evaluation for your different bits of evidence (point 3 above) and any comparative points you want to make: you don't need more than three good ones (point 4 above).
6. Finally, try to show enthusiasm for the poems in the way you write. Good luck!