Monday 21 January 2008

AS poetry essay style -planning and writing introductions


Summary
Good essay style for AS poetry essays should include most of the following:

(1) Use the stimulus (the brief quotation before the question) to identify key words and phrases that will be important for the argument that will form your answer.

(2) The key words and phrase in the main body of the question will echo the ones in the stimulus. Underline the key words and phrases in this part of the question, too, as this will be equally important for forming the body of your argument. (AO3)

(3) Begin by identifying the poems that you have selected to answer the question. Briefly justify with several key words and phrases in quotation marks from the question and why they are appropriate poems for the question.

(4) Spend five to seven minutes planning your answer by thinking about key words and phrases and then impose a structure on your plan. By numbering its points either in bullet point or spider-gram form, you should be able to write a good, coherent essay.

(5) Work in literary terms such as narrator, form, etc. as appropriate. (That gets you going with AO1).

(6) Be careful not to overload your introduction - you just need to identify relevant poems and briefly justify your reasons using the question's key words, phrases, etc.

(7) Try to avoid making your introduction appear abrupt by not justifying your choices of poems.

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About Me

I teach Film, Media and English Lit.