Time to get serious

Ready for action

The summer term has started, and hopefully all the long AS /A2 Lit. assignments are safely handed in and out of the way. The weather has cheered up and everyone should be refreshed by the Easter break and ready for the intensity of the coming weeks.

For A Level English Lit. students now is the season of going back over texts studied earlier in the year. It is the time when you start to look at your notes and get a sight of how all the pieces fit together into a bigger picture…

Let down by your notes?

Unless, of course, you find yourself faced with pages of skimpy headings, half caught sentences or missing conclusions (but amazing doodles!) and you can’t actually make head nor tail of what they are referring to. We all have days when brain function isn’t sharp (obviously nothing to do with an active social life..) but now is not the time to panic.

Solutions

Ask nicely

Generally teachers really go the extra mile at this time of the year to help students. If you ask very nicely they are often willing to run additional revision sessions based on tricky texts or areas of concern. They know what the syllabus is asking for and are your first port of call.

Check out the web

Revision resources on the web are another useful tool, but do check that they actually cover the kind of areas that will be expected in your exam answers. Many sites (e.g. Sparknotes) are written for the American market, which covers a broader range of literature but in much less depth. Chapter synopses and one paragraph per character can only get you so far..

In greater depth are e-notes and York notes Advanced online – but you have to pay to access most of the material. The S-cool revision site asks some really helpful questions, and is free, but doesn’t provide detail on the texts.

Free, detailed, with helpful questions

Examiners know what students need to address as they get ready for external assessment, so there is logic in looking at a free access site they have had a hand in developing. Many of you already know that Crossref-it.info material is peppered with ‘Investigate’ boxes. If you are now needing to go back and plug the gaps in you’re A Level notes, why not use the questions posed as ‘prompts’ about what you need to cover?

Teaching Blake and pushed for time?

Happy holidays!

I hope the current Easter holidays are providing a great break for you (and not just ‘time for illness’)! Wonderful weather would be a real bonus, but this year it seems too much to hope for…

Time to assess

Within the Easter holidays there is always that scary point as an A Level English teacher when you review the work you have covered so far and realise just how much there is still to fit in. This past term has doubtless had its fair share of staff illness and school closure, which may have thrown your carefully structured lesson plan off course.

So now an element of (controlled) panic may start to assail you. Perhaps a text still isn’t properly covered - and then there are all the revision sessions to fit it, particularly on those texts which you weren’t confident the class really ‘got’ first time around.

Ready made and reliable

Whether you are getting your students ready for AS levels or A2s, you don’t want anxiety to rob you of the remaining days of your holiday. Yes, time is now of the essence, but there are some easy shortcuts you can use.

The recently launched Crossref-it.info guide on Songs of Innocence and Experience is full of information you can send your students to for research. It has the usual interactive timeline, contextual info and clear textual analyses.

Even better, it is now accompanied by a variety of teachers’ worksheets. Devised by the English HOD of a successful state school, each provides three to five lessons’ worth of different approaches to the poems, so that you can make them accessible for the weakest to the brightest of your students.

Check them out on Crossref-it.info then you have got one less thing to worry about…

Songs of Innocence and Experience - new text guide!

Sorry for a delay in the usual missives. It has been ‘heads down’ time as we get as much ready as possible, to help you do as well as possible, in the forthcoming unmentionables (duh.. exams!).

Poetry help

If you are trying to get to grips with how to identify different styles of poetry – a skill you need for any unseen lit. paper – try checking out the expanding range of articles at www.crossref-it.info > Aspects of literature > Recognising poetic form. In around 300 words each they provide a helpful introduction to some of the standard styles poets have worked within, or adapted to suit their needs.

Songs of Innocence and Experience

Many students will be answering on Blake this summer. Deceptively simple in tone and diction, they actually encompass a range of quite complex themes and ideas. Blake was idiosyncratic in his take on contemporary society, what made humans tick and his understanding of God and faith.

Conventional allusions

It’s not always easy getting to grips with the way poets have drawn on texts like the Bible to convey meaning to their readers. However, over the centuries, and in the face of conventional church teaching, a standard interpretation has arisen. This means that if a writer refers to a shepherd for example, you can be confident that s/he is expecting readers to think of:

• Caring leadership
• Practical concern
• Wise guidance
• Sacrificial love
• The call for sheep to follow

All of the above, linked to the person of Jesus, whom the Bible portrays as a ‘good shepherd’.

An unconventional understanding

Grappling with allusions like these gets trickier when the poet doesn’t use such images conventionally. This is often the case with Blake:

• The Shepherd represents a leader who is alongside, but does not rule his flock
• His care does not repress or direct the sheep but enables them to live fully as sheep
• He is full of praise for them rather than demanding obedience from them
• In fact Blake saw any idea of religious authority as the opposite to his understanding of God, even though it was a consistent theme in the Bible.

The new Crossref-it.info text guide on Songs of Innocence and Experience unpacks each poem without assuming that students know all the background that Blake was referring to. It helps readers see where Blake was in line with his society and where he developed his own unique vision.

If you are starting to revise there are lots of handy questions to focus your notes on, as well as sample essay questions and a worked example.

Meanwhile, best of luck as you get down to the serious stuff!

Poetic form – layout (part 2)

Last week we looked at how the way a poet sets out the text on the page is a way of conveying meaning. We thought about the questions:

• Why does the poet use shorter or longer lines?
• What is the impact of dividing up the work into stanzas of particular lengths?
• Why might some lines be indented before they commence? etc.

Hardy’s wintry poem Snow in the suburbs was posted as an example.

What did you come up with? Check your ideas against the ones given here, which you are free to take issue with!

• As the snow accumulates, so the lines of the first stanza grow wider
• The long lines and enjambement of l.5-6 demonstrate the meandering, circuitous journey taken by some of the snow-flakes
• l.7-8 are more solidly part of the main shape of the stanza, indicating the solidity of the snowy fence
• The white space between l.8-9 conveys the blankness of a still, white landscape, until it is broken by the sudden movement of the sparrow
• L.11-12 are longer than l. 9-10, indicating the greater size of the snowball relative to the sparrow
• The shortness of l.13-14
• increases the pace and highlights the drama of the event
• creates a visually small bundle of words, bound between the lines above and below, just as the lump of snow almost buries the tiny sparrow
• L.16 sticks out, just as the consequent fall of snow cascades more widely through the tree
• The white space between l.16-17 again conveys the cessation of movement and return to still whiteness
• L.17-8 create a steep climb up for the cat
• The cat’s colour (black?) and movement is isolated in the snow, as is l.19 in the white space
• The indentation of l.20 and the sudden ending of the stanza, capture the safe ‘gathering in’ of the hungry cat.

As you can see, there is quite a lot to see when you start looking!

Poetic form – layout (part 1)

The way a poet sets out the text on the page is a way of conveying meaning. When analysing a poem, it always helps to look at the visual impression it makes and ask:

• Why does the poet use shorter or longer lines?
• What is the impact of dividing up the work into stanzas of particular lengths?
• Why might some lines be indented before they commence? etc.

Below is a very seasonal example of a poet’s use of layout to convey meaning.

Next week there will be a few thoughts from www.crossref-it.info to check yourself against, but meanwhile have a look at Hardy’s poem and make a few jottings about its impact on your understanding of the situation:

Snow in the suburbs

Every branch big with it, 1

Bent every twig with it; 2

Every fork like a white web-foot; 3
Every street and pavement mute: 4

Some flakes have lost their way, and grope back upward when 5
Meeting those meandering down they turn and descend again. 6

The palings are glued together like a wall, 7
And there is no waft of wind with the fleecy fall. 8

A sparrow enters the tree, 9
Whereon immediately 10

A snow-lump thrice his own slight size 11
Descends on him and showers his head and eyes 12

And overturns him, 13
And near inurns him, 14

And lights on a nether twig, when its brush 15

Starts off a volley of other lodging lumps with a rush. 16

The steps are a blanched slope, 17

Up which, with feeble hope, 18

A black cat comes, wide-eyed and thin; 19

And we take him in. 20

Thomas Hardy, 1840-1928

Last minute exam help

If you have managed to make it into school and are sitting any English modules this week, well done and good luck! Hopefully last week’s snow meant that you got in some uninterrupted revision time.

Select your detail

This may be your first time of needing to write an exam answer at a greater level of detail than previously. Knowing this, it is tempting to put in as much as possible, but DON’T!

The examiner knows that you are answering under pressure of time and can’t include every example – instead they are looking for you to select the most relevant instances, and to ruthlessly ignore anything that is not pertinent to exactly what you are being asked. So keep reminding yourself of the question!

Time management

The best way to lose marks is to fail to regulate the time you spend on each answer. In a paper of four equally weighted questions, one extensive piece that gains you 25% won’t make up for the fact that you only half do the third question and don’t even get to the last – that’s 37.5% lost without even trying and no-one can afford to do that!

Believe in yourself and what you have been taught – and while it snows, keep revising…

NATE digs Crossref-it.info

Those of you who teach English in the United Kingdom will know what NATE is. To keep teachers in the loop about the latest developments in the field, The National Association of Teachers of English publishes the NATE Classroom magazine, the latest issue of which has a nice spread about your favourite English Literature website!

NATE have kindly agreed to let us share the article with those of you who don't yet subscribe to their magazine: