Wednesday 3 December 2008

Not My Business

Hurrican Hits England - Grace Nichols

Tom Leonard Speaks!

Unrelated Incidents

Mid Term Break - The Film!

Mid Term Break - Seamus Heaney

Gillian Clarke - The Field Mouse

Analysis of Cold Knap Lake - Gillian Clarke

Poetry Exam Question

Poetry Answer
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Literary Beginnings

Beginnings
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Avoiding Cliche

Putting the Original into Original Writing

Cliche
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Your Questions Answered

Here is a powerpoint created to answer some of the questions we've come up with in class, focusing on responding to Other Cultures Poetry.

Workshop
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Tuesday 2 December 2008

Writing Funny!

Writing To Entertain
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I'm The King of the Castle

King Of The Castle1
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An Introduction to Mid-Term Break

Mid Term Break
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Copywright- TeachIt

Seamus Heaney - Death of a Naturalist

Naturalist
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Not My Business - An Introduction

Notmy Business
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Thinking about Kid - Simon Armitage

Kid
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Some Thoughts on Stealing - Carol Ann Duffy

Stealing
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Love After Love

Love After Love
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Some Thoughts on Hurrican Hits England

Hurrican
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Half Caste

Half Caste
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Thoughts on Cold Knap Lake - Gillian Clarke

Knap
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Thoughts on The Field Mouse - Gillian Clarke

Field Mouse
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Thoughts on Catrin - Gillian Clarke

Catrin
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Ten Top Tips for Planning Writing to Persuade

Plan your answer:
· make a list of ideas
· number them to give you a paragraph plan
· remember to add an introduction and a concluding paragraph

1. Define your audience

2. Make your purpose explicit

3. Choose the appropriate form: a letter
· greeting, opening, conclusion, farewell

4. Choose your language with care:
· formal but friendly
· avoid abbreviations, slang, clichés, common sayings
· choose words to influence your reader

5. Pay attention to sentences:
· vary length
· link complex sentences properly with connectives not commas

6. Use paragraphs to give a clear structure:
· make them short, one line to six lines
· leave a line between each paragraph
· one paragraph covers one idea
· link each paragraph to the previous one
· point direction of the paragraph with opening sentence

7. Spell simple and common words accurately

8. Look for opportunities to use different punctuation:
· full stops, commas, question marks, exclamation marks
· colons, semi-colons, speech marks, hyphens

9. Make your content interesting:
· give details
· provide examples, stories, evidence

10. Use deliberate devices to catch the reader’s attention:
· repetition and emphasis
· rhetorical questions
· a surprising opening or conclusion
· unusual images or comparison

Writing to Persuade

Write a letter to a local celebrity inviting her/him to support your school in setting up a link with a school abroad.

Plan
1. Explain who celebrity is and why chosen him/her
2. Which school linked with and kind of school it is
3. What we’re trying to do to help students in Uganda
4. How our school can benefit from the link
5. What fundraising we’ve done so far
6. How celebrity can help
7. What we hope to achieve on the day
8. Thank celebrity for considering our invitation
9. Hope to hear from him/her soon



Our school is trying to set up a link with a school in Uganda to try to help them get better buildings and textbooks and so on. We have raised about £500 so far and want to get more money so they can get better teaching in future.

We thought it would help if we had a famous person supporting our fundraising, we’d like to invite you to come to a fundraising day we’re having in school in June. Their will be stalls and competitions and games for the kids and food and drink, we hope it will be a big event with loads of people there, they can spend lots of money and help us get more books so they can have better teaching in there school.

If you could open our day for us that would be really good as it would mean lots of people would come to see you and it would help us raise lots of money for the children in Uganda.

Please write and let us know if you can come.

Peter

Poetry Model Answer

In “My Last Duchess” Robert Browning’s Duke seems to have been jealous of his former wife. Compare Browning’s treatment of this idea with the same theme in one other pre-1914 poem and two poems by Carol Ann Duffy or Simon Armitage.

“My Last Duchess” opens with the speaker, the Duke, inviting his visitor to admire a painting of his ex-wife: “I call
That piece a wonder”
He seems to treasure
“The depth and passion of its earnest glance”
and we might expect in this early part of the poem that the painting helps him to recall the serious love of his (dead?) wife fondly.

The painting is so important to him that he rarely allows other people to view it – it is hidden by a curtain, and he is the only person permitted to reveal the painting. By now we may start to feel alarmed: why does he want to hide his ex-wife from view?

Gradually the reason emerges: he was, and still is, jealous of her, because her joy came not just from her husband’s company. She was “too easily impressed”, and “her looks went everywhere.” Her fault, in his eyes, was that she considered pleasing him no more important than enjoying the sunset, eating cherries or riding her horse.

She failed to give him the attention he craved, and worse still, she took no account of his breeding, his nine hundred years old family name. Yet he could not tell her of his displeasure because that would mean stooping to her level, “and I choose
never to stoop.”

His jealousy at her constant smiling grew and grew, until the sinister conclusion:
“I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together.”
The Duke dismisses her fate, presumed dead, coldly, abruptly, as he admires instead a bronze statue which he has been able to bend to his will.

In “The Song of the Old Mother”, in contrast, we feel not horror but sympathy. Her envy is directed at the young. Her lament is brief, despairing, almost monosyllabic, which gives the poem a tone of slow, sad resignation.
She describes in simple language her chores: rising early, lighting the fire, cleaning, cooking. Her life holds no pleasures, unlike those of the young, whose only thoughts are of trivial matters:
“the matching of ribbons for bosom and head”

The poem ends in a bitter couplet which points up her passive resignation, with the powerful rhyming of “old” and “cold” to emphasise the burden of age and “the seed of the fire” of her life dying feebly away.

The protagonist of “Education for Leisure” seems younger, filled with envy of the whole world. He (his simple speech, the emphasis on “I”, and the tendency to violence sound more male than female) expresses his frustration at the outset:
“Today I am going to kill something. Anything.”

Because he is constantly ignored, he, like the Duke, is determined to take control, to play God with other creatures’ lives. His aggression increases in scale, from crushing a fly to flushing away a goldfish. At first his threats have a humorous edge, when the cat and the budgie try to escape him.

However, his self-delusion is growing rapidly. He believes he is a genius, and is desperate to be noticed by “them” as one:
“I breathe out talent on the glass to write my name.”
When the people at the job centre and the radio presenter spurn his autograph and his “superstar” status, something snaps inside him.

The poem ends in four sudden, short sentences laden with danger:
“The pavements glitter suddenly. I touch your arm.”

The violent assault comes earlier in “Hitcher”, enabling the reader to feel the weight of the speaker’s callous indifference to the life he has ended. Bored by his job, and jealous of his hitch-hiker’s untroubled attitude to life,
“following the sun to west from east”
he attacks him, repeatedly, gratuitously, and ejects him from the moving car.

The speaker is proud of the skill with which he dispatched his victim – “didn’t even swerve” – rather than showing any remorse. On the contrary, having watched him
“bouncing off the kerb”
he concludes with a vengeful, harsh farewell, completely out of touch with reality, just like the killer in “Education for Leisure”:
“Stitch that, I remember thinking,
you can walk from there.”
In both poems, as in “My Last Duchess”, we find little to like or sympathise with in the central figure because he reveals no emotions other than naked envy or jealousy.

GCSE English Literature - Of Mice and Men

Model Theme-Based Answer

Do you agree that all the characters in “Of Mice and Men” are seeking companionship more than anything else?


It is human nature to seek companionship, and Steinbeck is keen to emphasise that his characters are ordinary human beings, many of them on the lower rungs of society. They have little status, few possessions, no savings, no home, and little control over their own destinies. It is this ordinariness which makes us sympathise with most of Steinbeck’s characters.

These are mostly men who travel from place to place seeking work. They have no job security, and no real prospects of securing a long-term job or a place to call their own. As a result most are lonely, but unwilling to admit that they are, and unable to express their sense of loneliness in an articulate manner.

Their lives are also complicated by the presence of one woman, Curley’s wife, who is attractive, unhappy, and desperate to find somebody to talk to. She expresses her loneliness in anger when on Saturday evening she is forced to seek the company of Crooks, Lennie and Candy,
“ ‘ a nigger an’ a dum-dum and a lousy ol’ sheep – an’ likin’ it because they ain’t nobody else.’ “
She insults all three at the same time as she is willing to accept their companionship, even if it is only temporary and short-lived.

Candy finds companionship in his old dog, although it is now smelly and unable to work, rather like Candy himself.
“ ‘I been around him so much I never notice how he stinks.’ “
He resists the pressure from the other men to have the dog shot, and turns sadly to the wall when it is shot.

He is quick to listen in to George’s and Lennie’s dream, and grasps a way to become part of it, offering the only thing he has, his savings. For a brief period of optimism, he believes they can fulfil the dream together and he can once again find purpose, friendship and independence.

Crooks has become so accustomed to his loneliness that he appears to resent an intrusion into his private space, even if it offers companionship.
“He kept his distance and demanded that other people kept theirs.”
He is an outsider even more than the other characters because of his colour. He lives with constant physical pain, which Steinbeck intends us to interpret as an emotional pain as well.

Given the chance of companionship with Lennie, he cannot resist the opportunity to inflict pain on Lennie when he senses Lennie’s vulnerability.
“ ‘S’pose he gets killed or hurt so he can’t come back.’ “
If he has to remain lonely, he is jealous of Lennie’s friendship and tries to wish it away, if only to let Lennie see how fortunate he is to have a good companion.

Slim comes closest to accepting and making the best of being single. He is more independent than the other men by virtue of his skill and status as a jerkline skinner. He invites and earns their trust, for example encouraging George to tell the story of his relationship with Lennie. In this way he gains a kind of detached companionship.

George and Lennie have found a kind of companionship which is not entirely one-sided. It gives George a sense of authority over Lennie, but also teaches him to care for and protect Lennie because of all the troubles Lennie has caused them both.
“ ‘Made me seem God damn smart alongside of him.’ “
Although to begin with George enjoyed playing jokes on Lennie, he has learnt a sense of humility from Lennie’s gentle reactions to being outsmarted.

In return, Lennie, although a constant burden to George –
“ ‘ if I was alone I could live so easy’ “ –
is extremely loyal, as Crooks nearly finds to his cost when he threatens their friendship. Lennie also recognises deep down that he complicates George’s life, and that he has done things wrong.
“ ‘I done another bad thing.’ “
even if he is incapable of anticipating when things will go wrong.

Steinbeck uses the ending of his novel to emphasise just how alone his characters are. Those with most to lose, because they have a relationship which has stood the test of time, are bought to a tragic end. Lennie dies with his dream ahead of him over the river, while George is left to mourn his companion in the knowledge that he took the impossible decision to end Lennie’s life for Lennie’s own sake. The only character who understands what George has lost, and why he had to execute Lennie, is Slim, the one person who is at least in part happy in his singleness.

GCSE English Literature - Of Mice and Men

Model Text-Based Answer

Re-read pages 90-91, where Lennie crushes Curley’s hand. What does this extract tell you about a) Lennie b) Curley c) the way the story might develop?


The extract begins with Curley, uneasy about his wife’s loyalty and suspicious of Slim in particular, pestering Slim with repeated ill-judged questions. When Slim rejects his questions, Carlson is quick to join the attack, openly insulting Curley:
“ ‘You’re yella as a frog belly.’ “

The way Candy “joined the attack with joy” emphasises just how unpopular Curley is with the ranch hands, something Curley must sense. In a place of work where all the men see themselves as equals, in status and poverty, someone who assumes a superior status as Curley does is quickly resented.

Suspiciously jealous of his wife, and belittled by the treatment he has just received from three of the ranch-hands, Curley sights an easier target in Lennie. He reacts to the taunt of cowardice,
“ ‘I’ll show ya who’s yella.’ “
and sees an opportunity to prove his toughness by tackling the biggest man on the ranch. His response is typical of these working men, for whom words do not come easily, whereas actions are a natural part of the hard life they lead outdoors.

Lennie, on the other hand, is only a man of action when he is directed closely in what to do, for example bucking bags of grain, at which he excels. He is completely oblivious to the tension around him, for in his idealised world people and animals live in harmony and peace. He is remembering details of the ranch he and George dream of owning, “smiling with delight.”

Curley, typically insensitive, misinterprets Lennie’s smile as a further attempt to humiliate him in front of the other men. His attack is brutal and calculated, “balanced and poised”, in much the same way as he hunts Lennie down at the end of the novel. Hurting Lennie becomes a way to prove himself when he has been unable to scare Slim, Carlson or even the old man, Candy.

Lennie’s response to the attack shows how right George is when he claims, at several points in the novel, that Lennie doesn’t act out of meanness, a desire to hurt others. Lennie is terrified by the violence of Curley’s assault: he is “too frightened to defend himself,” his hands useless at his sides. He is not a natural fighter like Curley.

Lennie is entirely dependent upon George to guide him, repeating George’s name and appealing
“ ‘Make ‘um let me alone, George.’ “
He is compared with a frightened animal, his hands like “paws” and his voice a lamb’s – “bleated”. Having few words to express himself, Lennie simply repeats his plea,
“ ‘Make ‘um stop, George.’ “

Lennie’s reactions are slow too. George has to yell his instruction twice. The way in which he looks about him, and his big face, add to the sense of Lennie’s helplessness to act independently. Having been given the instruction, Lennie has no notion of acting on his own, so merely holds on tight, crushing Curley’s hand.

George is fully aware of the danger Lennie presents, and rushes over to free Curley. Lennie’s strength is such that, intensified by his terror of Curley, he instantly crushes Curley’s hand. He is so strong that George is compelled to slap Lennie repeatedly in the face to force him to release Curley.

The episode is concluded when Steinbeck emphasises Lennie’s naturally gentle disposition by having him say to George
“ ‘I didn’t wanta, I didn’t wanta hurt him.’ “

This extract describes both the comradeship which exists among the working men on the ranch, and the threat to harmony which an outsider like Curley can pose. It prepares us for the hatred which Curley nurtures for Lennie as a result of his public humiliation, being robbed of the one attribute he felt he had, his capabilities as a fighter.

It demonstrates just how much Lennie depends upon George to rescue him from the troubles he finds himself in, and warns us that Lennie will always be liable to do unintentional damage to those he meets.

It gives George a reminder, if he needed one, that he will constantly have to rescue Lennie from scrapes, that Lennie’s dependence upon him will always hold him back, and that, as he finally admits at the end of the novel, all their dreams will be destroyed by Lennie’s inability to think or act for himself.