1. Poems from Other Cultures
What the examiners say…

2. Poems from Other Cultures
The following tips are from the examiner’s report on last year’s GCSE…

3. Answer on the right poems
Do not, under any circumstances answer this question using your Carol Ann Duffy, Simon Armitage or pre-1914 poems.
YOU MUST ONLY USE POEMS FROM THE ‘CLUSTER’ YOU HAVE STUDIED.

4. Look for the key words in the question
How does the poet present conflict in ‘Not my business’? Compare his methods with the ways conflict is presented in one other poem.

5. Know all the poems in your cluster
You can’t get away with only learning a few of the poems in your cluster – you have to know them all, because they are all likely to come up.

6. You must know the context of your poem
Context means background.
To answer properly you should know how this context influences the poem e.g. where does the poet come from?
Each of your poems has some background information printed with it (or in the revision book). Learn it.
When you write your essay make links between the content of the poem and the context.

7. Every question asks you to do the same five things:
Make points of similarity of difference between the poems
Write about technique
Focus on a specific aspect
Write about a named poem
Write about a poem of their choice.
Compare the way the poet reveals feelings about a place in ‘Nothings Changed’ with the way another poet reveals feeling about a place or places in one other poem.

8. Answer the question
You can’t plan your question before you go in to the exam
Some schools have been criticised for ‘prepping’ their students, so they write a pre-practised answer and don’t actually answer the set question.

9. Choose your second poem very carefully.
Do not just pick a poem because you think you know it well. It has to be appropriate for the question.
So for the conflict question good poems could be:
Search for my tongue
Half Caste
Presents from my Aunts (possibly)
But not so good:
Love after love
This room
Hurricane hits England.

10. Plan You must plan – but only quickly.
Spend no more than five minutes.
These might help:
Venn
Spider diagram
Flow chart
List of points

11. You must COMPARE
To access the higher band marks you must compare your poems.
The best way of doing this is by alternating between the poem:
Do not just write about one poem and then the other with just one comment like ‘another poem which is similar is’. THIS DOES NOT COUNT AS COMPARISON AND WILL NOT GET YOU MANY MARKS AT ALL.

12. A visual representation of a good comparative essay
Intro and conclusion
Poem 1
Poem 2

13. Know your poetic terms and explain their effect
You will seriously damage your chances of getting a good mark if you don’t mention things like simile and metaphor.
However, only naming the thing you spot and not then discussing its effect will also not get you many marks.
A bad example:
“The writer uses a simile on line 5, (quote) it means the sea is like a best friend.”
A better example:
“The writer uses a simile on line 5 to describe how the sea is like a best friend (quote). The use of the word ‘buddy’ makes the reader think of being young and carefree, almost like a child, so the sea becomes part of the narrator’s childhood.

14. The basic poetic terms you should know
Alliteration
Assonance
Simile
Metaphor
Sibilance
Caesura
Rhythm
Stanza
Personification
Onomatopoeia
Enjambment
Rhyme

15. PEE
Use the PEE structure to help you – but make sure you are really explaining, not just stating the obvious.
Point
Example
Explain
A bad example:
“The writer uses a simile on line 5, (quote) it means the sea is like a best friend.” (but you could write so much more!)
A better example:
“The writer uses a simile on line 5 to describe how the sea is like a best friend (quote). The use of the word ‘buddy’ makes the reader think of being young and carefree, almost like a child, so the sea becomes part of the narrator’s childhood.