English Unseen poetry, P1

What you have to do in the exam.

As part of your GCSE AQA English Literature course, you'll have to do a poetry exam. Its called unit 2 Poetry across time.

The exam will have a 'Unseen poetry' section. Your poetry had two sections. It will be split up like this:

Unit one poetry across time: ---> Section A: Answer ONE question on poems from the poetry Anthology.
Section B: Answer one question on an unseen poem that is NOT in the Anthology.

This will help you to how to answer the unseen poetry question in section B.

1) The whole exam lasts one hour and fifteen minutes.
2) Spend about 30 mins on the unseen poetry section.
3) The question is worth 18 marks. You'll be tested on two main things:

1) WHAT the poem is about - the poems message, themes, ideas.

2) HOW the poet communicates these ideas using language, structure and form.

Heres what you have to do:

Read the question and underline the key words..i.e. what themes the question wants you to focus on and what aspects of the poems language and structure you have to look at.

Read the poem three times and analyse it using the five point plan

Plan your essay- pick 3 or 4 good quotes so you've got plenty to say about them, and include these in your plan.

Now you're ready to write your essay once you've followed these steps:

English unseen poetry P2

Five steps to analysing the unseen poem.
When you've read through three times, there are five main things that you need to do.

1) Work out what the poem is about.
Work out the subject of the poem. E.g. 'The poem is about the narrators relationship with this parents'

2) Look at weather its written in the first person.
('I felt), second person ('you felt') or the third person (he/she felt') Think about who the poem is addressing, e.g. the narrators lover..the reader..

3) Identify the purpose, theme or message.
Think about what the poet is saying, why they've written the poem, or what ideas they're exploring. The poem could be an emotional response to something. It might aim to get a response from the reader to put across a message or opinion about something, there could be more than one purpose theme or message in the poem.

4) Explore the emotions, moods or feelings.
Think about the different emotions and feelings in the poem, Identify the poems mood ( the general atmosphere e.g. gloomy) Look at HOW the poet has used different techniques to show those emotions.

5) Identifying the techniques used in the poem.
Put out the different techniques that poet has used and how the create the emotions, moods or feelings in the poem.

Form - things like rhyme and rhythm. You might recognise a particular form e.g. a sonnet. Also look at changes in the lengths of lines or stanzas.
Structure - The order of idea in the poem, swell as any changes in the mood or tone,
Poetic devices - things like alliteration, personification, enjambment,
Imagery - Language that creates a picture in your head, including things like metaphors + similes.

Think about WHY the poet has used these techniques, and what effect they create. Link the way the techniques work on the reader to the ideas the poet is exploring.

6) Include your thoughts and feelings about the poem.
Think about how well the poem gets its message across and what impact it had on you. Try NOT the use 'I thought' its much better to say 'It makes the reader feel the narrators sense of sadness' etc.
Think of other ways that the poem could be interpreted.

	Created by Lucy Horsman almost 10 years ago

Note on English Unseen Poetry exam prep, created by Lucy Horsman on 21/01/2015.