an EXPLANATION OF CRITERIA FOR COMPARING POEMS – EDUQAS

For lots of teachers, knowing what the appropriate balance is for answering the comparative poetry section has remained an inscrutable affair. Below is some guidance from the wonderfully kind and informative Eduqas subject officer for Literature, Julia Harrison.

My initial question centred around the ratio of discussion, and whether repeating comments made in part A was required.

To double check my understanding of this I submitted a short example:

To which Julia replied:

So, with this in mind, I have been instructing my students to very much focus more of their discussions on the second text, using the expression ‘as previously discussed’ to refer back to analysis explanations of the first text in the response, as can be seen in this developmental model here, and in a real comparison of To Autumn with Excerpt from The Prelude here. This significantly allows for more discussion on the 2nd poem. A strategy to help revise for what poems would be worth revising assiduously is here.

I’m Paul Moss. Follow me on Twitter @edmerger, and follow this blog for more English teaching resources.