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EnglandEnglish LiteratureQuick questions
Component 1: Poetry
Quick questions on The post-1900 poetry comparison: the Section B comparative essay - Eduqas A-Level English Literature
6short Q&A pairs drawn directly from our worked dot-point answer. For full context and worked exam questions, read the parent dot-point page.
What is structure by idea, not by poet?Show answer
The weakest Section B answers write everything about poet A, then everything about poet B, and bolt on a comparison at the end. The strongest organise by aspects of the question's idea, and within each paragraph put the two poets into contact. For "memory and the past", paragraphs might run: how each roots memory (in body, in landscape, in family); how each handles loss; how each connects private memory to public history. In each, both poets appear, compared by similarity and difference.
What is a model AO4 paragraph?Show answer
"Both poets locate memory in place, but they root it differently. Heaney drives memory into the body and the ground, his tactile, monosyllabic verbs making recollection a kind of physical labour, so the past is something dug for and inherited. Sheers, by contrast, reads memory into the landscape itself, the hill fort and the field holding history in their contours, so for him the past is not excavated but encountered, already written into the land.
What is a weak paragraph upgraded?Show answer
"Both poets write about the past and their families." Upgraded: where Heaney's tactile diction makes memory an inherited physical act, Sheers's landscape imagery makes the past a place already inscribed, so the two treat inheritance as labour and as encounter respectively. Subject becomes a comparison of method.
What is q1?Show answer
Why should Section B be structured by idea rather than by poet? [2 marks]
What is q2?Show answer
How does context (AO3) earn its marks in this comparison? [2 marks]
What is q3?Show answer
Compare how your two post-1900 poets present identity. [Section B; marked out of 60]
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