Secondary English - Dealing with A02 English Literature

As an examiner for English Literature, it’s fair to say that one of the most prevalent phrases used by students in response to poetry is: ‘the enjambment helps the poem flow’. This is closely followed in over-use by ‘the poet / writer does this to create an effect.’ Full stop.

Of course, poets  do, indeed, use enjambment to ‘help the poem flow’. And they do a lot of other things to ‘create an effect’. This is unarguable. However, bald statements such as these, which are a very, very common feature of exam responses at notional grade D and below, are such a shame if the student doesn’t then go a little bit further… stressed and harried examiners have been known to actually talk to the script itself, asking the student ‘What? What is the effect? Why is it there?’ In one now-famous exam response, the student had actually said ‘He does this to create an effect’ thirty one times in their essay. Without once explaining what the effect was, or what the writer’s themes or ideas were. This was ‘technique-spotting’ at its extreme, of course, but quite a good example of what can happen when students are industriously attempting to do what they think they have to do in order to achieve marks in English Literature exams.

The Literature Assessment Objective to which these type of statements refers is, of course:
AO2: Explain how language, structure and form contribute to writers’ presentation of ideas, themes and settings

In Stevie Smith’s The River God, for example, of course the enjambment ‘makes the poem flow’. That’s one of the key structural techniques, and most students can see that this is a very effective use of enjambment. They can see that she is using structure to deepen the creation of her persona. However, once students have identified the technique, what are they then going on to do with it? Might they, for example, talk about where the enjambment stops – where the end stops are and why Smith might be deviating from the use of enjambment in order to foreground some particularly strong ideas? Might they look at the use of enjambment to really intensify the effects of the two monosyllabic statements: ‘Go’ and ‘Now’, and the ways that the positioning of these two within the enjambment suggest a subconscious command? Because if they do this, then they are starting to analyse the use of structure and how it contributes to meaning, which will enable them to access much higher notional bands than D.

Teaching glossaries of literary techniques can have a place in the Literature classroom. It is arguably a fundamental part of opening students’ eyes to the language of poetry. However, unless students link the technique they want to talk about to some investigation of what the actual effect might be, and how it impacts on meaning, they will produce the kind of frustratingly limiting statements like the ones above.

Sarah Darragh
English Teacher and author of A Bridge to GCSE English 

Secondary English - Obeying the Command Words

The phrasing of exam questions can mystify teachers, let alone panicking year 11s in the exam hall, and to add to it all the command words used often seem to mean different things in different subjects.

As part of my research into improving extended writing in my school, I sifted through the many (oh so many!) command words used across the curriculum.  I found that there were four key words that seem to be used across the significant range of subjects: describe, explain, compare and evaluate. And most amazingly, they didn’t actually mean different things in different subjects.

The Heads of Department in my school were really pleased to know which command words were being used where (e.g. Explain: English, History, Geography, R.E, Science, P.E; Describe: English, History, Geography, R.E, Science, P.E; Compare: English, Geography, Science; Evaluate: Science, P.E). As we all know, it is so much more meaningful for students, when they know how their knowledge and skills link across their subjects.

The next thing to work out was what to do with them. I found lots of good practice across my school, with students highlighting command words and then creating success criteria based on their understanding of them. I also produced the attached sorting activity, which asks students to sort the definitions for these four commonly used command words. Anything that gets students interacting with the exam questions and trying to unpack them has to be good. The trick now is to get them so used to doing it that they remember, in their panic, to do the same in the exam hall!

Naomi Hursthouse
Advance Skills Teacher, Steyning Grammar School