[Section 4a]
Generally speaking, thinking about responses that were less successful
– what advice would you give?] [Tom] Well I think I’ve already touched
on quite a few of these, and they often stem from just not reading the poems carefully
enough in the first instance, so that the student seems anxious to jump in and find
some meaning instead of just listening to the poem for what it's trying to say to them,
and letting the poem lead the way. Various other things perhaps, they're not balancing
the two poems more or less equally. They're not integrating the comparison in the way
that we talked about earlier. They're using technical terms without explaining what they
mean or what their effect is. It's obviously a combination of a whole number of things.
Oh, and there is one other thing that I think every examiner would want to say to you students.
If you can't write clearly and we can't read what you’ve written, we really can't give
you that credit we'd like to give to you. Seriously, you know if that's an issue for
you, you've got another year before you take your exam, please take the time to learn how
to write legibly, it doesn’t have to be super neat but really, we might be able to
make it look a bit bigger on the screen but if it’s still a scrawl we can't read it
I’m afraid, we can’t give you the credit for it. And we lose the thread of what you’re
trying to say. So think about that too, keeping the thread of what you want to say is obviously
part of what your planning is about, but it's also to do with your expression.
[Section 4b. Extract 4] [Student voice speaking]
Simmonds’ poem makes heavy use of enjambment and caesura in order to portray the feeling
that the poem is free running thought rather than carefully laid out words on the page.
This, paired with the lack of rhyme scheme and the single stanza, creates a feeling of
authenticity in the poem which serves to encapsulate the reader into the vivid imager of Simmonds'
piece. [Section 4c. Tom’s response]
[Tom] So, this candidate does I’d like to say go on later to make some perfectly valid
points about the way the first line of the poem for example takes us straight into the
mother and child's day, and yes, that could be said to emphasise the newness of the bond
between the parent and the child. But we also get here some technical terms used without
any examples, so I don’t know that the candidate understands really what they mean, and I certainly
don’t see where they are in the poem and why they're important. So we've made this
point already, if you're going to use technical terms make sure you can explain how they work,
and later on the answer improved again, talking about the running point throughout the poem
and the extended metaphor of the physical bond between the parent and child. That you
will remember is part of the question, so the candidate does know they've got to address
the question. It's typical of a mid-range answer, it does some things actually quite
well, other things it really struggles with. But I’d leave you with one thing about this,
if you just remember that we're not trying to catch you out, we're actually trying to
find the best that you can do. [Section 4d. In summary]
[Tom] Well I think there are five things that I want to say at this stage. First of all,
obviously, know the poems. Be confident about those. Think about structuring your answer,
planning, practice, make sure you can write a good, convincing, persuasive essay. Find
new poems and try out comparing them with the ones you’re studying in the anthology.
As much practice as you can get, as you possibly can. Integrate, compare your poems side by
side. Don’t try and write two separate essays with just a little bit of tying together at
the beginning and the end. And finally, keep learning how poetry works. The more you read,
the more you talk about it, the more you think about it, the more you will get a real appreciation
and develop your skills in writing about it as well.