Use of language and poetry

You open the paper and find a composite Section A with five sub-parts and a single Section B essay question. No mark allocations are shown to you in advance. Build the timing plan.

1. 01Read both sections before writing anything

   Five minutes, and it is not wasted. You need to know how many sub-parts Section A has and which Section B question you will answer, because the choice of question determines what you will need to remember and it is better made calmly at the start than hurriedly at minute sixty.

2. 02Allocate by task, not by feeling

   Fifty minutes Section A, fifty-five minutes Section B, ten minutes sweeping, five minutes already spent reading. If Section A has five sub-parts, that is ten minutes each — enough for a considered answer to a transformation or correction exercise and far more than enough for a short one.

3. 03Set a hard boundary

   Write the finish time for Section A at the top of your answer booklet before you begin. When the clock reaches it, stop, even mid-part. An unfinished sub-part costs a few marks; an unfinished poetry essay costs a great many, because the marks in an essay are distributed across the whole argument rather than across separate items.

4. 04Plan Section B on paper

   Spend the first eight of the fifty-five minutes on a written plan: position, two or three developed points each with a located reference, a different reading acknowledged, and a close. That leaves forty-five minutes of writing, which for a candidate writing in a second language is roughly the right amount for a full essay.

5. 05Protect the sweep

   The last ten minutes are not spare. This paper is marked AO3 10 against AO2 5, which means accuracy is worth twice what interpretation is worth — so ten minutes of treiglo, verbs, agreement, spelling, punctuation and register is a better investment than ten more minutes of argument. Sweep both sections, Section A first, because its errors are the easiest to find.

Result: Five minutes reading, fifty on Section A with a hard boundary, fifty-five on Section B including an eight-minute written plan, ten sweeping. The boundary is the load-bearing part: without it Section A expands and the poetry essay is what pays for it.

Answer three short parts. (a) Correct: ‘Aeth hi i Bangor i weld ei brawd.’ (b) Change to the third person plural, past tense: ‘Rydw i’n mynd i’r ysgol bob dydd.’ (c) Write two sentences of personal response to the statement: ‘Mae pob ysgol yng Nghymru yn dysgu drwy’r Gymraeg.’

1. 01(a) Read by trigger, not by meaning

   Triggers present: i (twice) and ei. ‘i Bangor’ — i takes the soft mutation, so i Fangor. ‘i weld’ — gweld already softened to weld, correct. ‘ei brawd’ — this depends on whose brother. If it is her brother, ei takes the aspirate mutation and b has no aspirate form, so brawd is unchanged and correct. If it is his brother, ei takes the soft mutation and it must be ei frawd. Since the subject is hi, ‘ei brawd’ meaning her brother is correct as written.

2. 02(a) State the answer with reasons

   One correction: Aeth hi i Fangor i weld ei brawd. Rule: treiglad meddal ar ôl ‘i’. And one deliberate non-correction, stated: ei brawd is right because ei meaning ‘her’ takes the aspirate mutation and b has no aspirate form. Naming the non-correction is worth doing whenever the exercise looks designed to tempt you.

3. 03(b) Change one thing at a time

   First the person and number: Rydw i’n becomes Maen nhw’n. Sentence: Maen nhw’n mynd i’r ysgol bob dydd. Then the tense: the periphrastic present becomes the short past, and mynd is irregular — third person plural is aethon nhw. Sentence: Aethon nhw i’r ysgol bob dydd.

4. 04(b) Re-read for what else moved

   The pronoun i has gone and nhw has replaced it — done. bob dydd is an adverbial phrase and is unaffected, but note that it now sits with a completed past tense; if the question allows, bob dydd may become am flwyddyn (for a year) or the sentence may keep bob dydd as a habitual past. If in doubt, keep the original adverbial and do not invent. Final answer: Aethon nhw i’r ysgol bob dydd.

5. 05(c) A personal response is an argument, not an essay

   Two sentences, a position and a reason: Dydy hynny ddim yn wir. Mae rhai ysgolion yn dysgu drwy’r Gymraeg, ond mae llawer o rai eraill yn dysgu drwy’r Saesneg, ac mae rhai’n gwneud y ddau. (That is not true. Some schools teach through Welsh, but many others teach through English, and some do both.) Note dydy … ddim, the negative of the present, and llawer o rai eraill, which uses the pronominalia the inventory lists.

Result: One correction plus one reasoned non-correction; a two-stage transformation re-read for knock-on changes; and a two-sentence personal response that takes a position and supports it. In every part the mark is for showing the reasoning, not only for producing the form.

You have four weeks and five poems and no copies will be allowed in the room. Design the routine.

1. 01Week one — the shape

   For each poem write four lines with the book open: how it opens, where it changes direction, how it ends, and what it seems to be doing. Twenty lines in total. Structure is the part of a poem that survives longest in memory and it can be described accurately without any quotation at all, which makes it the safest evidence available in a closed-book examination.

2. 02Week two — the exact fragments

   Choose TWO short exact quotations per poem — a phrase or a line, not a stanza. Ten fragments. Write them out, check them character by character against the anthology, and learn them. Two accurate fragments per poem is enough for any essay; ten approximate ones would be a liability, because an examiner reading a poem they know well sees a misquotation immediately.

3. 03Week three — the closed-book test

   Write for twenty minutes about one poem with the book shut. Then open it and mark yourself: what did you misremember, and what did you avoid saying because you were not sure? The second question is the more useful one. Anything you avoided is a gap, and a gap found in March is free to fix.

4. 04Week four — the pairings

   Take two pairs — the two city poems is the obvious first pair — and write one paragraph on each pairing: what they share, where they differ, and which you find more convincing. A pairing paragraph is insurance against a question that ranges across the set, and it is also the beginning of the synoptic material you will need for Unit 4 Section C.

5. 05Throughout — say it in Welsh

   All of this must be done in Welsh, because the paper is in Welsh and because the unit is marked AO3 10 against AO2 5. Notes in English produce an essay you have to translate under the clock. Build the critical vocabulary as you go — y bardd (the poet), y gerdd (the poem), y pennill (the stanza), delwedd (an image), cyferbyniad (a contrast), tôn (tone), thema (theme) — and use it from the first week.

Result: Shape first, then two exact fragments per poem, then a closed-book test, then the pairings — all of it written in Welsh. The routine is built around the one rule that governs the room: the poems will not be in front of you.

A candidate has written, in Welsh: ‘The poet describes a city. He uses many images. The poem has four stanzas and the last one is short.’ Rebuild it so that it meets all four required elements.

1. 01Diagnose what is there

   Three sentences, all content and form, no theme, no claim about style, no response. Everything in it is true and none of it is arguable — which is the definition of description. The form is also reported rather than used: knowing there are four stanzas is worth nothing until you say what the shortness of the last one does.

2. 02Make the form do work

   Mae’r pennill olaf yn llawer byrrach na’r lleill, ac mae hynny’n gwneud i’r gerdd stopio’n sydyn yn hytrach na gorffen. (The last stanza is much shorter than the others, and that makes the poem stop suddenly rather than finish.) The same fact, now supporting a claim. Note byrrach, the comparative of byr, and the contrast built with yn hytrach na.

3. 03Name the theme and attach it

   Dw i’n meddwl mai thema’r gerdd ydy perthyn — nid y ddinas ei hun, ond y teimlad o beidio â bod yn rhan ohoni. (I think the poem’s theme is belonging — not the city itself, but the feeling of not being part of it.) A theme stated as a distinction is far stronger than a theme stated as a noun, because a distinction can be argued for.

4. 04Use one device precisely

   Instead of ‘many images’, take one and say what it does: Mae’r bardd yn defnyddio delwedd o olau ffenestri i ddangos rhywun y tu allan yn edrych i mewn. (The poet uses an image of window lights to show somebody outside looking in.) One image, named, with its effect. That is what appropriate use of terminology means.

5. 05Respond to the subject

   Ac o ran y pwnc ei hun: dw i’n meddwl bod y bardd yn iawn fod dinas yn gallu bod yn unig, ond dw i ddim yn cytuno mai bai’r ddinas ydy hynny. (And as for the subject itself: I think the poet is right that a city can be lonely, but I do not agree that it is the city’s fault.) A view about the poem AND a view about the thing the poem is about, kept distinguishable — which is exactly the fourth element.

Result: The three descriptive sentences became four claims: form doing work, a theme stated as a distinction, one device with its effect, and a response to the subject that agrees with the poem in part and disagrees in part. Nothing new was learned about the poem; the same material was made arguable.

The question asks: how does one of the prescribed poems present the place or the situation it describes, and how do you respond to it? Plan the answer in six lines and write the opening paragraph.

1. 01Line 1 — the position

   Position: the poem presents its subject through a single sustained contrast, and the contrast is more interesting than the subject. Writing the position with a comparative in it guarantees an argument rather than a topic. Everything below must serve it.

2. 02Lines 2 to 4 — the developed points, each with its evidence NAMED

   Point one: the opening establishes the contrast — evidence, how the first lines set two things side by side. Point two: the middle complicates it — evidence, the moment where the two sides swap. Point three: the ending refuses to resolve it — evidence, the last line and its brevity. Each line of the plan says WHERE the evidence is, because the poem will not be in front of you.

3. 03Line 5 — the other reading

   Other reading: some read the poem as straightforwardly nostalgic. Answer: nostalgia would not need the contrast, and the poem keeps it to the end. Naming a reading you reject and giving a structural reason for rejecting it satisfies the ‘other interpretations’ requirement in one sentence.

4. 04Line 6 — the close

   Close: the poem is less about the place than about being unable to choose between two ways of seeing it — which returns to the position, changed by the three points.

5. 05Write the opening

   Mae’r gerdd hon yn cyflwyno ei phwnc drwy un cyferbyniad sy’n para o’r dechrau i’r diwedd. Dw i am ddadlau mai’r cyferbyniad ei hun, yn hytrach na’r lle, ydy gwir bwnc y gerdd. Bydda i’n edrych ar dri pheth: y dechrau, y newid yn y canol, a’r ffordd mae’r gerdd yn gwrthod gorffen. (This poem presents its subject through a single contrast that lasts from beginning to end. I want to argue that the contrast itself, rather than the place, is the poem’s real subject. I shall look at three things: the opening, the change in the middle, and the way the poem refuses to finish.) Note ei phwnc — ei meaning ‘her’ or ‘its’ with a feminine noun takes the aspirate mutation, and cerdd is feminine.

Result: Six planned lines with the evidence located in each, and a three-sentence opening that names nothing the examiner already knows, states an arguable position and announces the structure. The plan took eight minutes and it is also the memory check that a closed-book paper demands.