REVISION TASKS 

Try a few of these tasks to prepare for the exam. Hope you did some wider reading during the Easter holiday?

1.       Re-read the poems.

2.       Mindmap each poem.  You could use language, structure, form, content, themes and Carol Ann Duffy’s concerns as your skeleton map.

3.       Choose three images / phrases in each poem you think are particularly effective.  Make some notes that you could use to help explain in detail what you find interesting about them.

4.       Select a theme or concern from Carol Ann Duffy’s work and list all the other poems that also touch on this area.

5.       Choose a motif / recurring image.  Find three poems in which it occurs.  Explain in detail why Carol Ann Duffy uses it in each context.

6.       Choose a really difficult poem that you struggle with and discuss it with someone else.  Read it with them.  Try to explain it to them.  Get them to ask you questions about it.

7.       Go through the vocabulary appropriate to use when discussing Carol Ann Duffy’s poetry.  Write any unfamiliar words and their meanings on post-its.  Put these somewhere you will see them and remove them as you learn them.

8.       Write down ten things you know about Carol Ann Duffy and her life.  Try to connect each of these points to a different poem.

9.       Choose a poem and identify one feature of language, one of structure and one of form that you think are particularly significant about your poem.  Explain your choices.

10.    Read each poem’s title.  Think about why it was chosen.  Consider what you would write in an essay to explain Carol Ann Duffy’s possible reasons for choosing the title.

11.    Choose two past questions; write an essay plan for each.  Try replacing the suggested poems with others that could have been used for these questions.

12.    Practise writing an essay to time.  Check the introduction, topic sentences and conclusion are clearly focused on the assessment objectives and examination question.