Notes · WelshUK · A-Levels

Barddoniaeth Fodern (Modern Poetry)

Section B of AS Unit 3 is an essay on twelve prescribed poems of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, written in Welsh, with no dictionary. The specification names what a personal response should cover — themes and ideas, poetic skills, metre, language, styles and figures of speech, and the poet's attitude to life — and adds three requirements that are easy to skim past: consider other interpretations, use quotation and critical terminology appropriately, and COMPARE THE WORK OF POETS. One amendment matters more than any other to how this section is prepared: since summer 2023 a copy of the poems which are the focus of the Section B questions is provided in the examination. That does not remove the need to know the poems; it moves the marks decisively from recall towards analysis and comparison. WJEC reserves the right to change the poets and poems on adequate notice, so confirm the list current for your series.

5 sections~33 min reading time3 competenciesLevel Foundation 2 · Standard 2 · Advanced 1

T·0666 / 14

Exam profile

AO2 · Demonstrate knowledge of specific texts and their background by means of a critical analysis which discusses and evaluates other interpretationsAO2 · Appreciate and respond to literary texts coherently by selecting and interpreting relevant material; refer specifically to the original text and justify the referenceAO3 · Write correctly, clearly and proficiently, demonstrating a range of linguistic resources

Operators:analysecompareevaluatediscussexplainjustifyrespondselect

basic level

Twelve poems is a finite syllabus and it is the whole of Section B. Read all twelve early and repeatedly rather than studying four in depth, because the question chooses the poems and you do not. Build one page per poem: what it does, how it is made, and two other poems it can be set beside.

higher level

The comparison requirement is where the higher marks live, and comparison is a skill rather than an accumulation. A candidate who has read all twelve and can produce a non-obvious pairing with a reason will out-argue a candidate who knows four poems better. Note also that the printed copies provided in the examination are of the poems the questions FOCUS on — the poem you bring in for comparison may not be in front of you, so at least one poem needs to be known by heart at quotation level.

Depth

Text

Contents · 5 sections

Barddoniaeth Fodern (Modern Poetry)

What Section B asks, and what changed in 2023#

FoundationAS Unit 3 Section B — an essay question set on twentieth and twenty-first century poetry; candidates answer two questions in the unit, one on each sectionAspects to cover in a personal response: themes and ideas, poetic skills, metre, language, styles and figures of speech, the poet's attitude to lifeCandidates are expected to consider other interpretations, to make appropriate use of quotations and terminology for literary criticism, and to compare the work of poetsVersion 4 amendment: from the summer 2023 exam series, a copy of the poems which are the focus of the Section B questions will be provided for use in the examination. Dictionaries are prohibited.

Section B is an essay, written in Welsh, on the prescribed twentieth- and twenty-first-century poetry, and it is one of the two answers Unit 3 requires. The specification sets out what a personal response is expected to cover, and the list is worth treating as a checklist because it names six different things: themes and ideas; poetic skills; metre; language; styles and figures of speech; and the poet's attitude to life. Those are not synonyms for one another. Themes are what the poem is about, poetic skills and metre are how it is built, language and figures of speech are what it is made of, and attitude to life is the position it takes. An essay that covers only the first and the last is an essay about a subject rather than about a poem.

Three further requirements sit beside that list and each of them is a separate demand. Candidates are expected to consider other interpretations — other pupils, teachers and literary critics — which makes the reading of criticism examinable. They should be taught to make appropriate use of quotations and terminology for literary criticism, which in a Welsh-medium examination means the terminology in Welsh: trosiad, cyffelybiaeth, delweddaeth, cynghanedd, mydr, naws, cywair, arddull, adeiladwaith. And they are expected to COMPARE THE WORK OF POETS. That last one is easy to miss because it is the final clause of a long sentence, and it is where the strongest essays are made.

The single most consequential thing to know about this section is an amendment made in version 4 of the specification. From the summer 2023 series, a copy of the poems which are the focus of the Section B questions is provided for candidates' use during the examination. Read that carefully: it is the poems the questions FOCUS ON, not necessarily all twelve. So the poem the question sets will be in front of you, and the poem you choose to bring in for comparison may not be. The practical consequence is that memorising quotation is no longer the main constraint on this section, but at least one poem still needs to be known well enough to quote from memory.

What that change does to the marks is the important part. When candidates had to reproduce quotations, a proportion of every essay was spent on recall and a proportion of every mark scheme's discrimination sat there. With the poem printed, the ability to find and use the right four words is what is tested instead, and that is a harder and more interesting skill. It also removes the commonest excuse for vagueness: with the text in front of you there is no reason for a general claim about imagery that does not point at a line. Expect the standard expected of close analysis to be correspondingly higher, and prepare by practising selection rather than memorisation.

Worked example

What the printed poem changes, in practice

Compare how you would prepare and write a Section B answer before and after the 2023 amendment, and identify what has genuinely become harder.

What used to be prepared
Before the change, preparation for a closed-text poetry essay divided roughly into three: knowing what the poems do, knowing what to say about them, and holding enough quotation in memory to prove either. The third of those consumed a great deal of revision time and rewarded a particular kind of memory. Under examination pressure it also produced a familiar failure — a candidate who had memorised the wrong four lines for the question that came up.
What is prepared now
The recall load on the focus poems is gone, so the time goes to the other two. Knowing what the poems DO becomes more valuable, not less, because the essay now has to say something the text in front of the reader does not say for itself. And the ability to select — to read the printed poem under time pressure and find the four words that carry the claim you want to make — becomes a skill in its own right, and it is trainable.
What has become harder
Vagueness is no longer survivable. With the poem on the desk, a sentence such as “mae'r ddelweddaeth yn drawiadol” is visibly empty, because the reader can look at the imagery and see that nothing has been said about it. Everything you assert can be checked instantly against the text. That raises the floor of what counts as analysis and it removes the shelter that closed-text conditions used to offer to generalisation.
The asymmetry to plan for
The printed copies are of the poems the questions focus on. If you satisfy the comparison requirement by bringing in a poem the question did not name, that poem will not be in front of you. So the strategy that follows is: know all twelve well enough to write about them intelligently, and know two or three well enough to quote from memory, choosing those two or three as your standing comparison partners because they connect usefully to several of the others.
How to train selection
Set a timer for four minutes, take a poem you have not looked at recently, and find three quotations of no more than six words each that would support three different claims. Then write the claim each one supports. Four minutes is roughly what you will have in the examination for this operation, and doing it fifty times over a year makes it a reflex rather than a search.

Result: The recall load on the focus poems has gone; the value has moved to knowing what a poem DOES and to selecting under time pressure. Vagueness is now visibly empty because the reader can check every claim against the printed text. Plan for the asymmetry: know all twelve to write about, and two or three by heart as standing comparison partners.

Typical mistakes

Writing about the subject of a poem and never about how it is made.
Treating comparison as an optional final paragraph rather than as a structural principle of the essay.
Assuming that because the poems are printed, they need not be known — the printed poems are the ones the question chooses.
Reaching for English critical vocabulary in a Welsh-medium essay because the Welsh was never made automatic.

Active revision

Take the specification's six aspects and write them across the top of a page, then read one prescribed poem and fill in a line under each. Do this for all twelve poems over a term. Two things will happen: you will find that some poems are almost silent under one heading, which is itself a finding worth writing about, and you will find pairs of poems that answer each other under the same heading — which is where your comparisons come from.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: WJEC GCE AS/A level Welsh (First Language) specification — AS Unit 3 Section B and the version 4 amendment on provision of the poems (WJEC CBAC)

The twelve prescribed poems, and the connections inside the list#

FoundationUnit 3 Section B — the names of the poets and the titles of the poems to be studied are specified; the poems are from Blodeugerdd o Farddoniaeth yr Ugeinfed Ganrif unless otherwise statedThe WJEC has the right to change the poets and poems studied; adequate notice will be given

The twelve prescribed poems of Unit 3 Section B

Fig. 1Twelve poems, twelve poets, roughly a century. Eight carry an anthology number and four come from the poets' own volumes. The emphasised cell is the syllabus's own hidden link: Alan Llwyd is also the writer of the prescribed Unit 1 film, and Iwan Llwyd's poem takes its title from the poet studied in Unit 5.

The prescribed list runs to twelve poems by twelve poets, and eight of them are given with a number, which is the poem's number in the anthology the specification names: Blodeugerdd o Farddoniaeth yr Ugeinfed Ganrif. The other four carry a volume title in brackets instead, because they are drawn from the poets' own collections rather than from the anthology. That distinction is a small practical matter with a large practical consequence — half the reading can be done from one book and half cannot, and a candidate who does not notice this in September discovers it in February.

The list spans a very long generation. It begins with poets whose reputations were made in the first half of the twentieth century — T. H. Parry-Williams, Gwenallt, Waldo Williams — and ends with poets who are writing now. That range is itself examinable material, because the specification asks about the poet's attitude to life and about styles, and a hundred years of Welsh poetry contains several quite different answers to both. It also means the twelve poems are not a school of writing but a cross-section, and comparisons across the list will usually be comparisons across a distance rather than between neighbours.

Two connections inside the syllabus are worth noticing early because the specification creates them without pointing them out. Alan Llwyd appears twice in this qualification: here, as the poet of Y Genhedlaeth Goll, and in Unit 1, as the writer of the prescribed film. And Iwan Llwyd's prescribed poem is titled Aneirin — the name of the poet to whom the Gododdin awdlau prescribed in Unit 5 are attributed. Those two links are gifts to a synoptic answer, and Units 4, 5 and 6 all carry synoptic assessment.

A third feature of the list is worth naming because it is about the language rather than about the poems. Grahame Davies's prescribed poem is titled DIY — three English letters standing as the title of a Welsh poem — and Ifor ap Glyn's names Beaufort and Blaenau Gwent, places in the south-eastern valleys, in a volume whose title borrows the London Underground. Contemporary Welsh writing lives inside a bilingual country and says so on its title pages. That is not an incidental fact about these two poets; it is one of the things the twenty-first-century end of this list is FOR, and it connects directly to the material of y-gymraeg-yn-ei-chyd-destun.

Worked example

Building the one-page card for a poem you have just read

You have read a prescribed poem twice. Build the card that will still be useful in June, using the specification's own headings rather than your impressions.

Line one — what it does, in a sentence with a verb
Not what it is about, which is a noun, but what it DOES, which is a verb: it argues, it refuses, it remembers, it accuses, it withholds. “Mae'r gerdd yn gwrthod cysuro.” A noun-summary produces an essay that describes; a verb-summary produces an essay that argues, because a verb can be disputed and a subject cannot.
Line two — the form, named
State the form and the metre if it has one: soned, vers libre, cywydd, penillion, a poem in y wers rydd. If it uses cynghanedd, say so; if it uses rhyme irregularly, say where. This is the specification's 'poetic skills, metre' heading, and it is the line most candidates cannot fill because they read for meaning and stop.
Line three — one device with a location
One device, named in Welsh, with the words it operates on: “Trosiad estynedig, o'r drydedd linell hyd y diwedd.” One is enough. A card that lists six devices is a card nobody will use, because in the examination you will want one thing you can say with certainty rather than six you half-remember.
Line four — attitude to life
The specification's own heading and the one that connects a poem to a poet. Phrase it as a position that could be disagreed with: “Bod colled yn beth y mae'n rhaid ei enwi yn hytrach na'i esbonio.” If you cannot phrase it as something arguable, you have not yet found the poem's position, and the essay will describe rather than respond.
Line five — two poems to set it beside, and why
Two titles from the other eleven, each with three words of reason: one that shares the subject and differs in method, and one that shares the method and differs in subject. That pairing rule generates comparisons that are worth making, and it stops you defaulting to the obvious pairing that everyone else in the room will also have made.

Result: Five lines per poem: what it does as a verb; the form and metre named; one device with its location; the attitude to life phrased as something arguable; and two comparison partners chosen by the same-subject-different-method and same-method-different-subject rule. Sixty lines covers the whole of Section B.

Typical mistakes

Assuming all twelve poems are in the anthology and discovering four are not, too late to get the books.
Studying four poems in depth when the question chooses which poems the paper is about.
Missing the internal links to Units 1 and 5, which are free synoptic material.
Confirming nothing, when WJEC reserves the right to change the poets and poems on notice.

Active revision

Build a single sheet with the twelve poems in rows and four columns: what it is about, how it is made, one line worth quoting, and two other poems on the list it can be set beside. Fill the fourth column last, when the other three are complete for all twelve, because that is when the pairings become visible. That sheet is the whole of Section B's knowledge base and it will fit on one side of A3.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: WJEC GCE AS/A level Welsh (First Language) specification — Unit 3 Section B prescribed poems (WJEC CBAC)

Reading a poem: form, metre and the claims each licenses#

StandardUnit 3 Section B — candidates are expected to cover poetic skills, metre, language, styles and figures of speechUnit 3 Section B — make appropriate use of quotations and terminology for literary criticismAO2 — refer specifically to the original text and justify the reference

Welsh poetry is written in two great families of metre and a candidate needs the vocabulary of both, even in a section devoted to the modern. Y mesurau caeth, the strict metres, are governed by cynghanedd and by fixed syllable counts, and they have been in continuous use since the fourteenth century; the cywydd and the englyn belong here, and so does anything a modern poet writes in cynghanedd, which many do. Y mesurau rhydd, the free metres, cover rhymed and stanzaic verse without cynghanedd, and y wers rydd is free verse. A poem's family is the first fact about how it is made, and naming it correctly is the first sentence of the specification's 'metre' heading.

Cynghanedd is not confined to the medieval material examined in Unit 5. It survives as a living technique and modern poets use it inside otherwise free forms, sometimes for a single line, which makes a claim about it worth far more than a claim about ordinary alliteration. Because these notes print no invented lines — a fabricated cynghanedd would be checkable and wrong — the method to learn is the reading method: write out the consonants of a line in order, ignoring vowels and h, and see whether the sequence before the caesura is answered after it. If it is, you have a groes or a draws; if the line divides into three with rhyme between the first two parts and consonance between the last two, a sain; if a word inside the line rhymes with the stressed penultimate syllable of the last word, a lusg. Your examples must come from the poems in front of you, where every line is the real thing.

Figures of speech need their Welsh names because the essay is written in Welsh, and the useful set is short: trosiad for metaphor, trosiad estynedig for an extended one, cyffelybiaeth for simile, personoli for personification, delweddaeth for imagery as a whole, gwrthgyferbyniad for contrast, eironi for irony, coegni for the sharper kind, ailadrodd for repetition, cyfochredd for parallelism, ac ati. What matters is not the size of the list but that each term arrives before its English equivalent does, because a moment spent translating is a moment not spent thinking, and in a closed-dictionary examination there is no recovery from a term you cannot produce.

Naming a device is not analysis, and this is the point at which most poetry essays stall. A device identified is an observation; the analysis is the claim about what it does, and the test of a real claim is that it could be false. “Mae'r bardd yn defnyddio trosiad yma” cannot be false and therefore says nothing. “Mae'r trosiad yn gwneud i'r golled ymddangos yn beth naturiol yn hytrach nag yn drychineb, ac mae hynny'n groes i naws gweddill y gerdd” can be false, is arguable, and is the kind of sentence a mark scheme was written to reward. Name, locate, claim — and make sure the claim is one somebody could dispute.

Worked example

From a printed poem to three usable claims in four minutes

The poem is in front of you and you have four minutes before you start writing. Build a procedure that produces three claims you can defend, and show what to do when the poem resists.

Minute one — the shape on the page
Before reading for meaning, look. How many stanzas and are they regular? Do the lines run to a similar length? Is there rhyme at the line ends, and is it regular or occasional? Does any line break in an unexpected place? Every one of those is observable in thirty seconds and every one is evidence under the specification's 'poetic skills, metre' heading. Write three words on the paper: the form, the regularity, and the one thing that breaks it.
Minute two — the consonant skeleton of two lines
Pick the first line and one line that looks deliberately worked, and write out their consonants in order, ignoring vowels and h. If a sequence before a caesura is answered after it, you have cynghanedd and a claim worth far more than an observation about alliteration. If it is not, you have established that the ornament is looser, which is also a finding. Either way you now know something about the poem's craft that most candidates will not have looked for.
Minute three — the turn
Nearly every short poem turns somewhere: a change of tense, of address, of tone, a conjunction that reverses direction, a shortened line. Find it and mark it. The turn is the most productive single feature in a poem because it divides the text into a before and an after, and comparing the two halves generates claims automatically — what the poem could say before it, what it can say after it, and why.
Minute four — three claims, each with four words of text
Write three claims, and beside each write no more than four words from the poem. Four words is enough for a quotation in a closed essay and it forces selection. Claim one about the form, claim two about the turn, claim three about the poet's position. That is the essay's spine, and it took four minutes.
When the poem resists
Some poems have no visible turn and no metrical ornament, and the honest move is to say so and make that the claim: “Mae'r gerdd yn gwrthod pob dyfais amlwg, ac mae'r moelni hwnnw'n rhan o'r ystyr.” That is a real reading, it is disputable, and it is far better than manufacturing a device that is not there. Inventing a feature in a poem printed on the paper in front of the marker is the one error in this section that cannot survive.

Result: Four minutes, four operations: the shape on the page and what breaks it; the consonant skeleton of two lines; the turn; then three claims with four words of text each. If the poem resists, say that its plainness is the meaning — which is a real claim — rather than manufacturing a device the marker can see is not there.

Typical mistakes

Device-spotting: a list of named figures with no claim attached to any of them.
Assuming cynghanedd belongs only to the medieval poems in Unit 5 and missing it where a modern poet uses it.
Writing claims that cannot be false, which are the ones that feel safest to write.
Describing the metre of a free-verse poem as though it had one, rather than saying what governs its lines instead.

Active revision

Take one prescribed poem and write ten sentences about it, then go through and delete every sentence that could not be false. Most candidates delete six or seven. Rewrite those as disputable claims and you will have the paragraph plan for an essay. Repeat with a second poem and you will start to see which of your claims are really about poems and which are about poetry in general.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: WJEC GCE AS/A level Welsh (First Language) specification — Unit 3 Section B, poetic skills, metre and figures of speech (WJEC CBAC)

Cymharu beirdd: the requirement candidates skim past#

StandardUnit 3 Section B — candidates should be taught to make appropriate use of quotations and terminology for literary criticism AND COMPARE THE WORK OF POETSUnit 3 Section B — candidates are expected to consider other interpretations (other pupils, teachers and literary critics)AO2 (A level) — collate, compare and evaluate information presented in various media, cross reference from one text to another, summarise and reach balanced conclusions

The instruction to compare the work of poets is the last clause of a long sentence and it is regularly read as a suggestion. It is not. Comparison also reappears in the A-level extension of AO2, which asks candidates to collate, compare and evaluate, and to cross-reference from one text to another — so the skill is examined here at AS and then again, more heavily, in the A2 units. A candidate who learns to compare properly in Section B is preparing for Unit 5, Unit 6 and the Unit 4 oral at the same time, which makes this the highest-leverage skill in the AS year.

There is a difference between comparison and adjacency, and most essays produce the second. Adjacency is two paragraphs about two poems with a connective between them: this poem does X; the other poem does Y. Nothing has been compared, because the second paragraph would read identically if the first were deleted. Comparison happens when a claim about one poem is only available because of the other — when the second poem shows that the first's method is a choice rather than a necessity, or when the two take the same subject and reach opposite positions, or when one exposes something the other conceals. The test is the same as the test for a claim: could the sentence survive if one of the two poems were removed?

Choosing what to compare is most of the work, and there are three pairings that reliably produce something. Same subject, different method: two poems on the same ground where one is formal and one free, or one direct and one oblique, so that the method becomes visible as a decision. Same method, different subject: two poems using the same device or form to quite different ends, so that the device is shown to have no fixed meaning. And same position, different distance: two poets taking a similar view from opposite ends of a century, which is available here because the prescribed list spans roughly a hundred years.

Comparison also gives the other-interpretations requirement somewhere to live. A published critic's reading of one poem can be brought against a second poem to see whether it holds there too, and that is a genuine evaluation rather than a report. “Mae'r darlleniad hwnnw'n gweithio'n dda ar gyfer y gerdd gyntaf, ond byddai'n chwalu ar yr ail, sy'n awgrymu ei fod yn ddarlleniad am fardd yn hytrach nag am gerdd.” One sentence, and it has compared two poems, evaluated an existing interpretation and drawn a conclusion — three requirements satisfied at once.

Worked example

Turning an adjacency into a comparison

Here is the same material written twice — once as two paragraphs side by side and once as a genuine comparison. Identify precisely what changed.

The adjacency version
“Mae'r gerdd gyntaf yn ymdrin â cholled drwy ddelweddau o'r tir. […] Mae'r ail gerdd hefyd yn ymdrin â cholled, ond mae hi'n gwneud hynny drwy lais person arall.” Both paragraphs are accurate and the second acknowledges the first with hefyd and ond. But delete the first paragraph and the second stands unchanged, which means nothing has been compared — two descriptions have been placed next to each other.
The move that creates a comparison
Make a claim about one poem that depends on the other for its force. “Mae'n hawdd credu bod delweddau'r tir yn y gerdd gyntaf yn anochel — dyna, wedi'r cyfan, sut mae'r Gymraeg wedi canu am golled ers canrif. Yr ail gerdd sy'n dangos nad ydyn nhw: mae hi'n gwrthod y tir yn llwyr ac yn dewis llais yn ei le.” Now the second poem is doing work inside the claim about the first, and deleting it would destroy the sentence.
Why that version scores more
Three reasons. It makes the first poem's method visible as a CHOICE, which is an insight about how poems are made rather than about what they say. It uses the second poem as evidence rather than as a second exhibit. And it produces a claim that could be disputed — somebody might argue that the two poems are not comparable in that way — which is what an arguable essay is made of.
Where to put it in the essay
Not in the conclusion. A comparison that is doing structural work should appear in the second or third paragraph, so that the rest of the essay can build on it. A comparison in the last paragraph is an observation the essay has no time to use, and it usually reads as though the candidate remembered the requirement on the way past.
The economical version, for when time is short
One sentence, deployed inside a paragraph about the first poem: “…sy'n ymddangos yn anochel nes i chi ddarllen [yr ail gerdd], lle mae'r un golled yn cael ei chanu heb un ddelwedd o'r tir.” A subordinate clause is enough to satisfy the requirement if the claim depends on it. Comparison does not require equal wordage; it requires dependence.

Result: Adjacency places two descriptions side by side; comparison makes a claim about one poem that collapses if the other is removed. The move is to use the second poem to show that the first's method was a choice. Put it in paragraph two or three, not the conclusion — and a subordinate clause counts, if the claim genuinely depends on it.

Typical mistakes

Writing two self-contained paragraphs and calling the connective between them a comparison.
Choosing the obvious pairing that every other candidate will also choose.
Comparing subject matter only, when method and position are where the arguable claims are.
Saving the comparison for the conclusion, where there is no room left to develop it.

Active revision

Take the twelve prescribed poems and build a grid of every possible pairing — sixty-six of them. Cross out the ones you can say nothing about. You will typically be left with fifteen to twenty live pairings, and among them three or four that nobody else in your class has noticed. Write one sentence for each of those three or four. That page is your comparison preparation, and it takes an evening.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: WJEC GCE AS/A level Welsh (First Language) specification — Unit 3 Section B, comparison of poets; AO2 (WJEC CBAC)

Exam technique: writing the essay with the poem on the desk#

AdvancedUnit 3 — candidates are expected to answer two questions; Section A composite linguistic question and Section B poetry essay; dictionaries prohibitedVersion 4 amendment — from summer 2023 a copy of the poems which are the focus of the Section B questions is providedUnit 3 AO split — AO2 6.9% and AO3 8.1% of the A level

Unit 3 is one paper with two answers and the AO split tells you how to divide it: AO2 6.9 and AO3 8.1 as percentages of the A level. AO3 is the larger of the two, which is a genuine surprise on a paper that looks literary, and it means that the quality of the Welsh you write is worth marginally more here than the quality of the reading you bring. Both sections contribute to both objectives — Section A is largely AO3 with a reading component, Section B largely AO2 with a substantial AO3 element — so neither can be neglected on the grounds that the other will carry it.

With the focus poems printed, the essay's structure should change from what a closed-text essay wants. A closed-text essay front-loads: it states the argument early because it cannot rely on the reader having the text. An open-text essay can afford to work THROUGH the poem, because reader and writer are looking at the same words. That does not mean a running commentary, which is the failure mode of open-text conditions and produces an essay organised by the poem's line order rather than by an argument. It means the claims can be developed against specific words on the shared page, and quotations can be short because their context is visible.

Quotation discipline changes too. With the text available, long quotation is a waste of time — you are copying out something the marker can already see. Four or five words is almost always enough, and the words should be the ones that carry the claim rather than the ones that summarise the sense. If a claim needs a whole stanza to support it, the claim is probably about the stanza's shape, in which case describe the shape and quote the hinge. The single commonest waste of examination minutes in an open-text paper is transcription.

One thing has not changed and it is worth ending on. The essay is written in Welsh, under time pressure, with no dictionary, and AO3 is watching. Everything from iaith-ar-waith applies here: the mutations, the relative particles, the connectives that shape an argument, the idiom that shows the writer thinks in the language. An essay with excellent readings and unreliable Welsh will be marked as what it is on a paper where AO3 carries the larger share, and the last five minutes spent checking treiglo are worth more than a further paragraph.

Worked example

A Section B essay planned and opened, in Welsh

Plan a comparative essay across two of the prescribed poets and write its opening paragraph in Welsh. Show the whole plan on paper before writing a word of prose.

The plan, in five lines
(1) The claim, in one sentence that could be disputed. (2) The first poem: form named, one device located, what it establishes. (3) The second poem: the same three, plus the sentence that makes it dependent on the first. (4) The other interpretation, tested against both. (5) The conclusion, which must say something the opening did not. Five lines, four minutes, and no paragraph gets written until all five exist — because the commonest structural failure is an essay whose argument was discovered in its fourth paragraph.
The opening sentence
State the claim, not the topic. “Mae'r ddwy gerdd yn canu am yr un golled, ond dim ond un ohonyn nhw sy'n fodlon galw'r golled honno'n drychineb — a'r ffurf, nid y pwnc, sy'n penderfynu hynny.” That sentence names the comparison, states the claim and identifies the ground on which it will be argued, and it can be disagreed with. Openings that announce what the essay will discuss have used a sentence to say nothing.
The second sentence — set the terms
“Mae'r gyntaf yn gweithio o fewn ffurf gaeth, a'r ail yn y wers rydd; ac mae'r gwahaniaeth hwnnw'n cyrraedd ymhellach na sŵn y llinellau.” You have now named both forms — the specification's metre heading — and asserted that form carries meaning, which is the essay's engine. Note yn y wers rydd: gwers is feminine, so it softens after the article, and rhydd softens to rydd after a feminine noun.
The third sentence — what the essay will not claim
“Nid dadl yw hon dros ragoriaeth y naill ffurf ar y llall.” One sentence of disclaimer, and it earns its place: it stops the marker expecting an evaluation you are not going to give, and it demonstrates that you know the difference between describing a difference and ranking it. Note nid at the head of an emphatic negative — the literary construction, correct here because this is written Welsh.
What the opening must NOT do
It must not summarise either poem, because both are printed and the marker has read them; it must not define the terms it uses, because the reader is an examiner and not a novice; and it must not begin with the poet's biography. Three sentences, all of them claims. If your opening paragraph would still be true of a different pair of poems, it is not an opening — it is a warm-up, and you have spent five minutes of a timed paper on it.

Result: Plan in five lines before writing: disputable claim; poem one with form, device and function; poem two made dependent on poem one; the other interpretation tested against both; a conclusion that adds something. The opening is three sentences, all claims — no summary of poems the marker has printed in front of them, no definitions, no biography.

Typical mistakes

Writing a running commentary because the poem is in front of you, which produces an essay shaped by the poem rather than by an argument.
Copying out long quotations the marker can already see.
Neglecting Section A because Section B feels like the real paper, on a unit where they are equally weighted answers.
Spending the final minutes adding material rather than checking the Welsh, on a paper whose larger objective is AO3.

Active revision

Write a full Section B essay to time with the poem in front of you, then reread it and mark every sentence that would still make sense if the poem had not been printed. Those are the sentences carrying your argument. Then mark every sentence that merely reports what is on the page. If the second group is larger than the first, you have written a commentary rather than an essay, and the remedy is to plan the argument before you start reading closely.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: WJEC GCE AS/A level Welsh (First Language) specification — AS Unit 3, structure and assessment objective weightings (WJEC CBAC)

References & sources

Sources

WJEC CBAC

WJEC GCE AS/A level Welsh (First Language) specification — AS Unit 3 Section B and the version 4 amendment on provision of the poems

Barddoniaeth Fodern (Modern Poetry)

Key points

What the printed poem changes, in practice

Key points

Building the one-page card for a poem you have just read

Key points

From a printed poem to three usable claims in four minutes

Key points

Turning an adjacency into a comparison

Key points

A Section B essay planned and opened, in Welsh

Sources

Barddoniaeth Fodern (Modern Poetry)

Key points

What the printed poem changes, in practice

Key points

Building the one-page card for a poem you have just read

Key points

From a printed poem to three usable claims in four minutes

Key points

Turning an adjacency into a comparison

Key points

A Section B essay planned and opened, in Welsh

Sources