Poetry In English Literature GCSE Exams

How Is Poetry Examined In The English Literature GCSE Exam?

To answer this question, let’s start with the basic facts…

Paper 2 of your English Literature examination consists of the following three parts:

• Section A is a question about the modern prose/drama which you studied.
  Section B is about your poetry Anthology.
  Section C is about unseen poetry.

You will need to spend approximately 45 minutes on each Section.

For Section B, there is no real choice. Find the page which lists the poems you have studied (i.e. either Love and Relationships or Power and Conflict) and that is the question you must answer. Every candidate must answer both the questions in Section C.

• What poems will I be examined on?

You will have been studying a series of poems in preparation for your examination this summer. You (or more likely, your teacher) will have chosen whether to study of collection of fifteen poems about Love and Relationships, or fifteen poems about Power and Conflict. You must be able to write about any of the fifteen poems from your chosen cluster. A new twist this year is that the exam is closed book. This means that students are not allowed a copy of the Anthology in the exam. This is a change from previous years.

• How do I answer the Section B question?

  Section B is one 30-mark question. You will be given the text of one poem from your cluster. The question will ask you to compare a theme in that poem with one other poem of your choice (from the other poems you have studied). For example:

‘Compare how poets present the idea of romantic love in ‘Love’s Philosophy’ and in one other poem from your cluster’.

You will notice that the question is asking you to think about how the poet writes. You will need to focus on the poet’s technique in your answer. What imagery do they use? Is is effective? What is the voice? Do they move you?

An advantage to the English Literature closed book exam is that you will be more focused in your answer. Preparation is key here and you will need to have learned key themes in advance. If the question asks you to consider romantic love, you need to be able to quickly consider the poems you have studied which address the issue and then decide which would work best in the comparison with the text selected. You will not be able to spend lots of time deciding between which poem to discuss or which quotations to use. Your quotations need to be in your head already! For more advice about answering Section B questions, see a separate blog post, to be published next week (March 2nd).

Lastly, how should you approach the Section C questions? Well, there are two questions in Section C and all candidates must answer both of them. The first question asks you to consider one unseen poem. The second question asks you to compare the first poem with an additional unseen poem. The first question is worth 24 marks, whilst the second is only worth 8 marks so you can see where your priorities need to lie. Again, more help with tackling an unseen poem will be given in another blog post to come (Thursday 9th March).