A-level English Literature

Just to let you know that the subscription details for emagazine have been updated so if you were trying to access it and couldn’t, you should be able to now.  As before, go to the link at the top of the blog, or click here, then type the password (you should remember it, but get it from your English teacher if not.  Clue: it involves your emotional attachment to the subject!)  This will then give you the login details for the site.

For A2 students, you can search the site for articles on your coursework and exam texts, plus there are new video clips on emagclips about the Gothic (good for Unit 3).

For AS students, you’ll find video clips in emagclips on Othello, Shakespeare in general, Tragedy in general, The Great Gatsby, Narrative and Poetry, all relevant to your course.  You’ll also find relevant articles in the archives.

Enjoy!

You should all have started to read at least one book from the wider reading list.

Post a comment on this post, where you tell the rest of the class about your book, or books (if you have read more than one book, either write two separate comments, or one comment in which you discuss all the books).  Your comment should discuss:

• Features of the opening – how does it engage the reader?
• Narrative voice – who narrates?  1st or 3rd person?  Reliable or unreliable?  Features of the ‘voice’?
• View of war.  If the war hasn’t started yet, consider why the writer may have made this choice in the opening – what other issues is he/she trying to explore?
• Characterisation
• Style and tone

Due by the next lesson: Monday 13th July

Apologies for my absence today.  Please print out the second page of the following resource:

anthem-activity

Complete activity (1) as detailed on the first page, to fill in the blanks.  No cheating or it’s pointless!

Then compare Owen’s choices by looking at the final version of the poem in your booklet.  Write a commentary in your books in which you explain the effects of the different choices made by you and by Owen, and evaluate why you think Owen settled on the choices he did make.

This needs to be done by tomorrow’s lesson.

Ensure that you have completed the worksheet on Suicide in the Trenches (available here, if you didn’t collect a paper copy on Tuesday: suicide1)

The General

1. Why do you think Sassoon uses informal and often colloquial language here?

2. What tone does the narrator use and what is its effect?

3. What is the effect of the change of narrative voice from the first person plural to third person in the last line?

4. Look at the poem’s use of rhythm and rhyme – how does this help to underline the poem’s meaning?

5. The critic Samuel Hynes has defined what he calls the ‘myth’ of the Great War in these terms:

…a generation of innocent young men, their heads full of high abstractions like Honour, Glory and England, went off to war to make the world a safe democracy. They were slaughtered in stupid battles planned by stupid generals.

Do you think Sassoon helps to create this ‘myth’ in his poem The General?

Suicide in the Trenches and The General

The above poems were written after the Battle of the Somme, which became to be seen as a watershed in the war because after 1916 the mood had changed and few idealists remained. The poet David Jones explained the causes of this change in the Preface to In Parenthesis:

This writing has to with some things I saw, felt and was part of. The period covered begins in early December 1915 and ends early in July 1916. The first date corresponds to my going to France. The latter roughly marks a change in the character of our lives in the infantry on the West Front. From then onwards things hardened into a more relentless, mechanical affair, took on a more sinister aspect. The wholesale slaughter of the later years, the conscripted levies filling the gaps in every file of four, knocked the bottom out of the intimate, continuing domestic life of small contingents of men..In the earlier months there was a certain attractive amateurishness, and elbow room for idiosyncrasy that connected one with a less exacting past…How impersonal did each new draft seem arriving each month, and all those new-fangled gadgets to master.

6. Do you think Suicide in the Trenches and The General  support David Jones’s belief that life for the soldier became more ‘relentless… mechanical.. sinister… impersonal…’?

Year 12 please could you email me your responses to the above questions to ecurran@alexandrapark.haringey.sch.uk by Friday 26th June. Please bring all your other work (questions completed on Absolution and Redeemer, all of which are in our booklet as well as the research homework, which was set at the beginning of the course to next Thursday’s lesson – 2nd July, or if you have typed it then email it to me ASAP, so that I can respond sooner). Thank you.

Ms Curran

Welcome back Year 12! Please complete the work below which gets you to research World War One.  Your understanding of this is essential to the work we will be doing on World War One poetry and prose for your A2 coursework. Bring your notes with you to Thursday’s lesson to form the basis of discussion.

Read the article about the western front and the birth of total war (see link):

 http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/total_war_01.shtml

Use the interactive link (World War One Movies) below to research World War One and its impact. Ensure that you listen to each chapter and explore the links after each chapter (diary entries / poetry etc.):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/launch_ani_wwone_movies.shtml

1)      What was daily life like in the trenches?

2)      On average how many days on the battle front did the average soldier experience?

3)      What were the consequences of the gas attacks on the soldiers?

4)      How many casualties were there in the Battle of the Somme and what was the total number of casualties on the western front?

5)      Choose a poem featured on the site that you feel is particularly powerful and consider why this is and how it reflects the ‘true’ experience of war. Be prepared to discuss your choices with the class in the next lesson.

Read and make notes on the key aspects of trench war fare using the link below (make sure you have info on the Battle of the Somme, front line trenches and no man’s land) and then launch the interactive site to explore trench war fare in more depth:

http://www.bbc.colaunch_vt_wwone_trench.shtml.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/

Apologies for my absence; if there are any questions please email me or see me in the English Office at 3.10pm today.

Ms Curran.

Remember that there are lots of useful clips and articles on emagazine to help you with your revision.  Use the link on the top right of the blog to access it.  You have to enter the password, which you should remember (but ask your teacher if not!)

On the site, the most useful things are emagclips, which have clips on Gatsby, narrative in general and poetry in general (including a clip on narrative poetry)

There are also past articles on Tennyson, Rossetti and Gatsby – go to the Archive search A-Z and search by surname of the author.

Well done for your hard work at today’s revision session.  Attached to this post are the photos I took of the first group’s sugar paper activity, looking at features of form, structure and language in Tennyson poems and Gatsby chapters.  I tried to take out glaringly inaccurate cards as I photographed, but there may still be some errors.

Recommended revision activities using this resource:

• Click on one of the images and use it to revisit the poem or chapter. 
• Pick a poem or chapter.  Select the 6 cards you think you could say most about and use them as a basis to write a practice response to the standard question format: ‘Explore Tennyson’s / Fitzgerald’s narrative method in… (name of poem / name of chapter’.  Give yourself 30 minutes only to write this.
• Use the mark scheme here to mark this response.  Scroll down to the first Section A Part (a) question, which is on Auden (it doesn’t matter which writer you use – the band descriptors are all the same.  Just make sure you’re looking at part (a)
• For each image, pick 2 examples of cards relating to form, 2 relating to structure and 2 relating to language.  Then do the activity above.
• Use each image to help you in creating revision cards: one for each poem and chapter, covering form, structure and language for each.  If you want, you can also use these cards to help you with the other sections, by including themes, ideas, your opinions etc on the reverse side.

For Section A, part (b), you will need to respond to a statement, saying how far you agree with it, or to what extent you find it to be true.  Attached below are the sets of statements we discussed today on Gatsby and Tennyson.  There are many more that we didn’t get time to look at.

Suggested activities for this resource:

• Print them all out and arrange them on a continuum line in your bedroom or hallway (with parents’ permission!) from agree to disagree, like we did in class.
• For each one, jot down 2 poems (Tennyson) or examples/events/characters/etc as relevant (Gatsby) that you could use to agree with the statement and to disagree with the statement.
• Use individual statements as mock questions, using the format, ‘To what extent do you agree that… (insert statement)’  Give yourself 30 minutes to plan and write a response to each.
• Use the Unit 1 mark scheme here to mark your answer.  Scroll to the first Section A part (b) question, on Auden (you can use the marks for any of the questions here – the basic statements for each band are identical for all questions.)
• Try to invent more statements of your own – one on each poem in Tennyson, and general ones for both texts.  Consider your response to these.

Here are the statements themselves:

Tennyson: floor-debate-statementss-tennyson

Gatsby: floor-debate-statementss

The important thing to remember is that these categories are fluid and do overlap.  I’ve repeated a couple of the things that I think strongly ‘belong’ to more than one thing, or given slight rephrasings to make subtle differences clear.  But remember these aren’t ‘absolutes’ – the key thing is that you have an awareness that you need to discuss aspects of language, form AND structure to get good marks in Section A, part (a).  Now play the game and enjoy!

Click here for full screen version

Sorry for my absence – I’m on a school trip today.

We urgently need to finish the Rossetti poems and you need to do a lot of the legwork on the last two, so we can finish them off with a brief discussion in Monday’s lesson.  You need to have done this work by Saturday’s revision session in order to maximise your appreciation of the session.

So here are a set of questions on ‘A Royal Princess’ (a-royal-princess-questions), which you’ve already read, and ‘The Convent Threshold’ (the-convent-threshold-questions), which you haven’t.  You need to answer them in your books, and then use those answers to annotate your Anthology (or do this as you go).

You may also find this link and this link useful if you get stuck on ‘The Convent Threshold’.  If you find any other good websites (with the emphasis on good – no rubbish please and no sites with hundreds of pop ups!), please post a link in a comment below.  And post a comment with any questions below – someone may be able to answer them…

Your homework was on my classroom door, but just in case you didn’t spot it, here it is again:  Do whichever Section A question you didn’t do in last week’s mock for this week’s homework.  The questions are here: jan-09-section-a-questions.  Due on Monday.

See you on Saturday – 9am to 1pm!