Poetry and Shakespeare overview quiz - WJEC A-Level English Language and Literature quiz

A modern novel and a collection of short stories

Two unseen non-literary texts and a transcript

The Pre-1914 Poetry Anthology and one Shakespeare play

A film script and a piece of travel journalism

Form is a method only when you show how its shape conditions the reader's experience

Examiners do not want any reference to form in a poetry answer

Form can only be discussed in the comparison, never in single-poem analysis

Naming the form earns full marks on its own without further comment

The final rhyming couplet of any poem regardless of its form

A turn or shift in a poem, such as the change of direction in a sonnet

The metrical pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line

A repeated image that recurs across several stanzas of a poem

By describing each stanza in order and retelling its content

By counting the exact number of lines and stopping there

By avoiding any reference to the poem's language

By tying a structural turn to a precise linguistic marker such as a pronoun or tense shift

A shared concern that both poems address, providing the axis for connection

Whichever poem the candidate happens to prefer reading

A complete biography of each of the two poets involved

The exact publication dates of the two poems being compared

It allows you to ignore one of the two poems entirely

It forces every paragraph to hold both poems together on a shared idea

It is faster because you only need to analyse one poem closely

It avoids the need to use any comparative discourse markers

AO1: applying linguistic and literary methods and terminology

AO5: exploring multiple interpretations of a single text

AO4: exploring connections across texts

AO3: showing how contexts shape meaning

Only the given extract, with no reference to the rest of the play

Only the play as a whole, with no close analysis of the extract

A comparison between two different Shakespeare plays

Close analysis of the given extract and reference to the play as a whole

Stagecraft, including asides, soliloquies and entrances

The rhyme scheme of a fourteen-line sonnet

The chapter divisions of a prose novel

The byline and headline of a newspaper article

A complete summary of the play's entire plot

Dramatic irony, by giving the audience knowledge other characters lack

A change in the printed layout of the script

A pause in which no meaning is conveyed at all

As a printing error with no meaning to analyse

As proof that the passage is written in prose

As a dramatic signal, for example of a character losing control or status

As irrelevant, since metre never affects meaning

Showing how the extract's concern develops elsewhere in the play

Plot-summarising the rest of the play instead of illuminating the extract

Analysing the dramatic methods of the given extract closely

Keeping every point anchored to the named concern

Because sound features have no bearing on a poem's meaning

Because examiners forbid any discussion of imagery

Because rhyme, rhythm and sound patterning shape how a poem feels and what it foregrounds

Because sound can only be discussed in drama, never in poetry

Listing as many contrasts as possible with no judgement

Weighing connections, noting where a likeness masks a real difference

Analysing only the similarities the poems share

Avoiding comparative discourse markers altogether