Poetry from other cultures and traditions: planning and introducing your essay

1. Poetry from other cultures and traditions: planning and introducing your essay Paper 2: Section A Worth 15% of the English Language GCSE

2. Poems from the anthology: cluster 2 • Search for My Tongue • Unrelated Incidents • Half-Caste • Love After Love • This Room • Not my Business • Presents from my Aunts in Pakistan • Hurricane Hits England 1517

3. Essay planning The experience of examiners and teachers tells us that essays written with plans are better than essays written without them. Some tips about planning Thinking time is NOT wasting time. Planning is NOT wasting time. 1517

4. It doesn’t matter if you don’t stick to your plan. The process is more important than the product.

5. How should you write a plan? • A spider diagram/ brainstorm is NOT a plan. • Spider diagrams are useful as a way of generating ideas and getting ideas on paper but they do not help you to organize your ideas. 1517

6. An example of a spider-diagram type plan • You are about to see the plan one student began when asked to describe a park. • How do you think his writing would be structured if he used this plan? 1517

7. swings trees slide flowers 1517

8. Students who have created spider-diagrams tend to deal with each point in the clockwise order in which it appears on the spider-diagram. This means that points are not grouped together and comparisons and connections are missed. 1517

9. So • If you do use a spider-diagram you then need to number your ideas or re-write them into a structured plan. • You cannot even get a grade D unless your ideas are organised into paragraphs so your plan should indicate where you will begin each new paragraph. 1517

10. For example THE PARK • Paragraph 1 – where it is • Paragraph 2 – the playground area (includes slide and swings) • Paragraph 3 – attractive and good for wildlife (includes trees, flowers, animals) • Paragraph 4 – why I like it 1517

11. Planning a response to the question on poetry from other cultures When planning an answer to the question on poems from other cultures do not consider one poem and then another and then try to make comparisons in your conclusion. You should be comparing (discussing similarities) and contrasting (considering differences) the poems throughout your essay. This will also help you to ANALYSE the poems rather than simply DESCRIBING them. E.g. You don’t get m(any) marks for saying, ‘there is a metaphor in the first stanza’ but you will get credit for writing, ‘the poet compares her use of language to a flower which shows how she feels it is alive and growing’. 1517

12. Your plan should be structured so that your essay ANSWERS THE QUESTION and EXPLORES KEY WORDS in it rather than explaining everything you have learned about about the poems or describing them line by line. 1517

13. An essay plan should look like this: • Introduction – outline key similarities and differences between the poems • Para 1 – discuss how each poem handles the theme of …….. • Para 2 – consider how the structure affects our interpretation of each poem • Para 3 – focus on language and key imagery in each poem • Conclusion – sum up arguments 1517

14. And not like this Introduction – say what I’m going to write about Para 1 - Write about what happens in poem 1 Para 2 - Write about what poem 2 is about Conclusion – write about similarities and differences 1517

15. You have 5-10 mins to write your own plan In ‘Presents from my Aunts in Pakistan’ the speaker of the poem writes about feeling torn between two cultures. Compare this poem with another poem which also deals with this theme. 1517

16. Writing an introduction A good introduction: • Addresses key words in the question • Shows an understanding of the texts and topic that have been selected • Introduces some key arguments (which will be developed in the rest of the essay) 1517

17. A good introduction does not: • Repeat the question • Say what you are going to do • List all the poems you are going to write about. 1517

18. Which is better? A In this essay I am going to write about how the speaker of ‘Presents From My Aunts in Pakistan’ feels torn between two cultures. I will also write about ‘Search For My Tongue’, ‘Hurricane Hits England’ and ‘Half-Caste’. Or… B Both ‘Presents from my Aunts’ and ‘Search For My Tongue’ deal with searching for cultural identity and the conflict this can create. In ‘Presents’ the search for identity is triggered by clothes, which represent conforming to or standing out from British culture, while in ‘Search For My Tongue’ the poet sees language as as the most important part of her culture. 1517

19. Try writing an introduction for the following question: Compare the ways in which the poets use nature in ‘Hurricane Hits England’ and one other poem of your choice. 1517