Aqa English paper 2 - poems

[Flyhigher]

They have to learn 15 poems for a one hour exam. And no idea which will come up. Seems a bit OTT to me.

Are there any English lit examiners on here do the kids do a good job on the comparison between poems?

Seems such a lottery. Do not remember having 15 poems when I did it. Admittedly a long time ago.

Do English teachers think 15 poem anthology is a good idea? Do the kids do a good job on them in the exam?

Surely the majority must do this section badly.

My daughter did this last year. The important thing with English is that they know the mark scheme and how many points are awarded for each question. So they don't spend ages on a low point questions and then run out of time to answer the higher point questions, which for her exam were later in the paper.

I've never really been a fan of poetry, but I tried to help her last year and I actually enjoyed some of the poems and found them very moving.

She didn't learn all 15 poems (and I'm definitely in the 'not a Gove fan' camp), but she learnt a quote or two from each and prioritised the ones that could be used for a few different themes. She was lucky that her favourite, Ozymandias, came up as the given one and this gave her confidence.

They don't have to remember 15 tho! For today, for example, most of the war poems would have worked with the question on Kamikaze. Personally I would have chosen Poppies as there is the personal aspect and the idea of loss in war. But War Photographer or even Exposure would have worked or maybe Bayonet Charge.

@clary they don’t have to remember fifteen off by heart but yes, they DO need to know the themes and the content in a rough sort of way.

You keep on and on repeating that they don’t need to know fifteen. I don’t know whether you’re just being really literal or not but all the poems do need covering and they do need to be familiar with them.

OK, obviously they need to know the themes but hopefully when they actually see a poem on the exam paper, they will be OK if they don't know that one off by heart - one would hope. I think others have agreed with me that they don't need to know more than about 5 carefully chosen ones well - as in learning quotes from them and being able to give a detailed analysis without having the poem in front of you.

You could just as well be outraged at having to learn an entire Shakespeare play for a 30-mark, one-hour element of an exam. Except you don't need to learn the whole play - you need to learn themes, main characters, the main story of the play and a few key quotes.

This was one of my favourite bits of the Lit exam when I taught it and, in my experience, students liked it, understood it and did well in it.

You put the poems in chronological order, use them as a mini history of literature and history (make a timeline) and explore the change. Looking at poems from different times prepares them for the unseen and really helps language terminology which is useful for Lang and Lit papers.

There’s a hierarchy of poems that are likely to appear, students need to know 2/3 poems well, no more than three quotations from each. The given poem gives you loads. Your teacher should be able to tell you the ‘power’ poems and quotations.

All GCSE subjects are overloaded with content and you’re always going to miss out loads of things you know in every subject in the exam itself.

There are lots of complimentary skills across all four Lit and Lang papers. Good teachers teach it holistically and make connections to build confidence and skills. And what’s the alternative - teach a poetry unit by looking at four poems?

I’m not outraged at all. I’m saying that what you keep insisting on this thread is not quite correct.

They do not need to know the fifteen poems by heart, or any poems by heart. But let’s say they follow your advice and revise five key poems: let’s say for arguments sake Kamikaze, Ozymandias, London, Poppies and War Photographer. What are they going to do then when Prelude turns up on the exam paper? Having it there in front of them doesn’t mean they are going to know the themes and understand it on a level that’s deep enough to write about it to pass their GCSE, is it?

It’s not the same thing at all as a Shakespeare play. The fifteen different poems are different, at the risk of stating the blindingly obvious.

Absolutely no one needs to be memorising quotations. But they DO need to know enough about the poem that’s on the paper to address the question.

15 poems is the bare minimum students should read and study over a two year GCSE. Having said that, the way poetry is currently examined at GCSE is disgraceful.
A Level is open book with a clean anthology and there is no reason whatsoever why students should have a memory test at GCSE.

The A level spec I teach is all closed book.

Really? Students have clean copies of all texts in their exam for both AQA specs taught at my childenr’s school- Lit and Combined. So why allow that for A Level students and not GCSE students?

Yes, really.
From long experience, having the texts doesn't help as much as people think - they just spend ages looking for "the" quotation.

OCR?

Yes. It's a great spec.

Agreed @MrsHamlet - not having the texts actually helps!

I still remember the time a student came out of a lit exam (Of Mice and Men I think) and told me they had spent 25 minutes looking for a specific quotation.

With a closed book exam you paraphrase, are credited appropriately, then move on.

(Fingers crossed for a decent Hamlet question on Friday! I love that spec)

@Evvyjb yes to Hamlet being good please. Madness would be nice... at least it won't be comedy!!

It isn’t great and they should know all fifteen well enough that they know context/author/key themes/language devices without reading it as another unseen. Students make poor comparison choices under pressure and find it stressful - am not a fan at all.

Well, you should @Evvyjb . The other problem is when they memorise quotations and are determined to use no matter what - but they shouldn’t, of course.

My son did the English literature paper 2 yesterday he wasn’t very confident but was told to write loads and get marks from that.
He came home and said it wasn’t bad .
He’s been doing Macbeth, the Christmas carol and the inspector calls .

sal

Having 15 to choose from for the comparison is arguably better for students as they can focus on the 4 or 5 that they like/understand best as the ones to learn in depth.

For Edexcel, marks are given for
context, so you do need to have a general understanding of all 15 poems. Saying that- my DD only knew 4 in detail, but got very lucky that one of the 4 came up.

I think it depends on the child. My DS is striving to get a 4 in maths, but others were saying they were disappointed with the maths exam because they wouldn't get a 9 now. But in English he was disappointed because he had too much to say and ran out of time to say it. I've been moaning about maths because he has to remember so much. In 3 years I'll probably be moaning about the English as DS2 is dyslexic, hates reading and writing but can do maths very easily.

But context doesn't mean detailed background to the author or text or time at this level. A general understanding of those is sufficient.

No but they do need to know it @MrsHamlet (I know you weren’t suggesting otherwise) - they can’t just revise a handful and treat the one that comes up like an unseen poem.

Just for clarity I never said students should only look at or work on 4-5 poems. I suggested that they pick 4 or 5 (hah! I see I said 3-4 - maybe 5 is better) suitable poems that between them covered all themes (I think this info is available on the AQA website; certainly if not it is easy to find online) and focus on those in terms of learning quotes, picking out elements that show specific themes, so that they are able to reference them in a meaningful way.

Of course they should have worked on all poems – tbh if they see the given poem and it is like an unseen, something has gone very wrong in their learning! Every student should have covered every poem, and it’s obviously worth looking them over as part of revision.

My point about the Shakespeare was that, while you would hope the student would have read the whole play and the extract would not be something they have never seen before, equally it might not be a text they had focused on. DD had the opening scene from R&J fgs! But the theme was male aggression which of course she had revised.

Btw I wonder if @MrsHamlet would agree - I genuinely don’t think they will ever set Tissue – since the exam is not tiered it has to be at least on some level accessible to a level 1-2 candidate and I think Tissue would just be too opaque as a compulsory – obvs fine to have it as an option for candidates.

I'm from the O level era and we did not have 15 poems to learn.

It really seems excessive.
I like the themes idea , however fitting in 15 poems alongside three other works for 1 GSCE, bearing in mind there's no foundation paper is madness.

Also how can teachers actually teach all this meaningfully to 35 or 39 in a class? The top sets often have more kids in.

10 poems would seem much more manageable.

It's not really two years. It's more like 20 months.

Anyway rant over. I think it must put people off .

It does @Flyhigher . There's a reason teacher training in English recruited fewer teachers from after the 2017 GCSE cohort than in previous years!

The points about poetry are all valid- there's just zero need to make 16 year olds do a poetry comparison from memory.

I should add, I've been a teacher for a long time!