English Poetry

wireless101

anyway, just startin 5th year, doing honours English, hoping for an A1.

My teacher does poetry different to the other teachers in the school, she makes us learn the whole poem as opposed to key quotations which the other classes learn. I think it's very time consuming.

Did/does anybody here have a teacher that does this and if so how did things work out for you?

jaycummins

the whole poem? jaysus you'll have a lot of **** to learn. i suppose you'll do much better in the poetry section than most people. i reckon just learn hte poem off for whatever test she gives you, but when ur studying for the leaving, dont bother lkearning off ever single poem, thats crazy youll only need to know about 10 quotes for every poet. but learn them for now to keep the teacher happy

Mars Bar

I think thats horrible...just learn quotes that are relevant and from the key themes...

Xhristy

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PurpleFistMixer

A teacher in my school does that. Not mine, thankfully. Seems entirely pointless.

The only possible use I can see is the following:
Spend the year learning off every poem you'll use, write them all down in the exam and analyse them on the spot.

But that's just crazy.

In the end, the poetry section is what, 12%? No point learning off pages and pages of poems (stuff you won't even necessarily use at all at all) for that.

JC 2K3

PurpleFistMixer wrote:

The only possible use I can see is the following:
Spend the year learning off every poem you'll use, write them all down in the exam and analyse them on the spot.

A year? To learn off about 30 poems? You have more than enough time to both learn off and analyse the poems.

While there's technically no need to learn the poems off by heart, knowing most of every poem makes you far more flexible in terms of what you can write about in the exam. But in any case, if you've engaged enough with the poems you should naturally be able to recite most of them IMO.

As for analysis on the spot, well it worked for me... About 50% of my LC answer was stuff I came up with in the exam.

Naikon

You could do what I did and just print off all the poetry answers from e-xamit the night before the exam till you can recite a bit about each poem and just plant the model answers down. Then just change things slightly and give your own "opinion".

Make sure you cover five though, I picked the presumably less popular Frost this year, unlike most people I know doing Plath. This probably means more marks from the examiner tbh.
It Worked well enough for me:D

PurpleFistMixer

JC 2K3 wrote:

A year? To learn off about 30 poems? You have more than enough time to both learn off and analyse the poems.

Well you'd be doing other things as well.. but if you're gonna just learn off the poem, the idea is that you don't need to analyse them beforehand. As I said, crazy idea.

It'd be great if they gave you the poems on the paper like in Irish, but I guess that would involve handing out a little booklet, like maths tables with the English paper, to get all the poems by the poets (and while they're at it, might as well throw in all the texts...).

irish_boy90

teacher did that to us in fifth year.
not a big surprise i failed the weekly poetry test every single week.

don't worry about it just mark the important bits and learn those

CarefulNow

My teacher is making us learn the poems as well. God I hate poetry so much.

Corruptedmorals

Pointless. It's far more important to know the quotes that will tie into your points, and quotes that illustrate technical things in poetry, like metaphors blahhh. Don't get sucked into poetry and spend all your time on it, at the end of the day, it's only 50 marks, the play and comparative are worth more on Paper 2.

On the other hand, don't learn 2 poets and think you have it in the bag. Be covered for any female and Irish poets, and any others who haven't come up in a while. We did 5 poets out of 8 in class, Plath, Yeats, Kavanagh, Bishop and Frost. I studied Plath, Kavanagh and Frost for the LC, and Frost and Plath came up...did Plath, got full marks on it actually.

You don't need to do 6 poems per poet, you don't have time. 5 isn't always neccessary either, I was pressed for time and did 4 poems, and kept repeating myself.

JC 2K3

I think most people here are seriously overreacting to what is probably a teacher making students spend one night learning a poem and asking some of them to recite it the next day rather than a teacher not teaching anything and just telling them to learn the poems off.

ryanairzer

Corruptedmorals wrote:

Pointless. It's far more important to know the quotes that will tie into your points

Strictly speaking, you don't know what the question will be before hand, so you don't actually have any points yet.

Anyways you only study 48 poems over 2 years, and most people will know all the lyrics of a good album (~15 "poems") a week after buying it so yeah, just learn the damn things.

JC 2K3

ryanairzer wrote:

Strictly speaking, you don't know what the question will be before hand, so you don't actually have any points yet.

Anyways you only study 48 poems over 2 years, and most people will know all the lyrics of a good album (~15 "poems") a week after buying it so yeah, just learn the damn things.

QFT.

The idea that learning them off would be a massive extra workload or "completely ridiculous/pointless" is a bit silly.

PurpleFistMixer

It's much easier to remember things put to music, tbh... memorising a poem may not be a gigantic amount of work but it seems unnecessary. What's the point wasting time doing things you don't need to do?

Thomas_S_Hunterson

You'll get better results.

wireless101

these poems arent short either tho,the first poem we learned is 'in the waiting room' by elizabeth bishop and it's like 60 lines long

Jack Sheehan

Is she having a laugh? You'll have a lot to learn...

JSK 252

Examiners will be very impressed if you can recite a whole poem AND analyse it. Obviously depends on the question though

Well for Shakespeare anyway, examiners love big long quotes because it fills the page, and at times can succesfully condense what you want to say in half instead of giving your own version of it.

PurpleFistMixer

You're hardly going to use the entire poem to back up one point, so you'd be quoting unnecessarily if you recited the poem, something I would have guessed would cause you to lose marks. Quoting big chunks shows you know there's a relevant piece of information somewhere in there, I'd say it's much more impressive to be able to pick out the specific phrases that relate to what you want to say.

JSK 252

PurpleFistMixer wrote:

You're hardly going to use the entire poem to back up one point, so you'd be quoting unnecessarily if you recited the poem, something I would have guessed would cause you to lose marks. Quoting big chunks shows you know there's a relevant piece of information somewhere in there, I'd say it's much more impressive to be able to pick out the specific phrases that relate to what you want to say.

Examiners want well in my teachers case, for Shakespeare anyway at higher level students that can have 9 - 10 quotes of reasonable length instead of set phrases of 1 or 2 words in an answer. It impresses the examiner because he or she knows you went to the time of learning the quotes instead of "nit picking" little words here and there and that you were able to put that specific quote into the overall cohesion of the answer. i.e your answer make sense

Thats what I was told anyway. I suppose different teachers have different styles....................................................

kisaragi

JSK 252 wrote:

Examiners will be very impressed if you can recite a whole poem AND analyse it. Obviously depends on the question though

Well for Shakespeare anyway, examiners love big long quotes because it fills the page, and at times can succesfully condense what you want to say in half instead of giving your own version of it.

Umm... why would you waste your time in the exam transcribing a whole poem? And I don't think examiners "love big long quotes" or you saying your point through quotes instead of well, saying it.

Filling up the pages isn't the objective of the English exam! Quality over quantity anyone?

I hope you realise that in the Leaving Cert, the examiner is trying to see if you ENGAGED with the text, not just learnt off answers And incase anyone's interested... I got an A1 in English, didn't "learn off" a single poem, probably had about 6-8 quotes in my whole exam. I didn't bother learning quotes, those were ones I naturally remembered.

I didn't learn off any essays (for paper one or two) or any of that, I read over all my essays mind you but on the day I just made up my own answers to the questions. I knew all the texts very well, and you don't need quotes to prove that. Anyone can learn a few lines, it doesn't say anything about your ability with the subject...

PurpleFistMixer

Well my point was that surely a more concise quote demonstrates a better understanding, that you can refine the quote to the bare essentials, as opposed to quoting off a line that's a couple lines long but could fit into any number of possible points.
Like, surely it should be more about demonstrating your understanding of the text and backing that up with quotes, than showing how long you spent learning off lines of text...

wireless101

kisaragi wrote:

Umm... why would you waste your time in the exam transcribing a whole poem? And I don't think examiners "love big long quotes" or you saying your point through quotes instead of well, saying it.

Filling up the pages isn't the objective of the English exam! Quality over quantity anyone?

I hope you realise that in the Leaving Cert, the examiner is trying to see if you ENGAGED with the text, not just learnt off answers And incase anyone's interested... I got an A1 in English, didn't "learn off" a single poem, probably had about 6-8 quotes in my whole exam. I didn't bother learning quotes, those were ones I naturally remembered.

I didn't learn off any essays (for paper one or two) or any of that, I read over all my essays mind you but on the day I just made up my own answers to the questions. I knew all the texts very well, and you don't need quotes to prove that. Anyone can learn a few lines, it doesn't say anything about your ability with the subject...

I'm pleased that you got an A1, because it proves that examiers reward those who have the English skills the answer things on the day, and not those who learn everything off.

I think i will ignore my teacher and wont waste my time learning whole poems. im sure if i go over the poems well enough i will know the important quotes without ever really learning them.

JSK 252

kisaragi wrote:

Umm... why would you waste your time in the exam transcribing a whole poem? And I don't think examiners "love big long quotes" or you saying your point through quotes instead of well, saying it.

Filling up the pages isn't the objective of the English exam! Quality over quantity anyone?

I hope you realise that in the Leaving Cert, the examiner is trying to see if you ENGAGED with the text, not just learnt off answers And incase anyone's interested... I got an A1 in English, didn't "learn off" a single poem, probably had about 6-8 quotes in my whole exam. I didn't bother learning quotes, those were ones I naturally remembered.

I didn't learn off any essays (for paper one or two) or any of that, I read over all my essays mind you but on the day I just made up my own answers to the questions. I knew all the texts very well, and you don't need quotes to prove that. Anyone can learn a few lines, it doesn't say anything about your ability with the subject...

I do know that quality is greater than quantity. What gave you that impression? I was only minorly saying that having loads of quotes to back every single point you make will make your answer concrete and will show the examiner that you have clearly analysed the text to the best of your ability.

From listening to my sisters and my friends experiences learning essays were the only to get A1s in the exam. You have no time to think in the exam unless your the next JK Rowling who can write on the spot.

Its definetely clear that everybody has different ways of doing questions and therefore there is no right or wrong formula in approaching a question.

JC 2K3

JSK 252 wrote:

Well for Shakespeare anyway, examiners love big long quotes because it fills the page

That's the most ridiculous thing I've heard anyone say on the LC board in a long time.

wireless101 wrote:

im sure if i go over the poems well enough i will know the important quotes without ever really learning them.

That's basically it really. As I said in my earlier post, if you can't recite most of most of the the poems you've studied, or at least know what every stanza is about, then you haven't engaged with them enough. Though learning them off isn't a bad thing or a waste of time IMO. Optional yes, I didn't really do it for example, but definately a valid method of studying poetry.

JSK 252

JC 2K3 wrote:

That's the most ridiculous thing I've heard anyone say on the LC board in a long time.

I suppose nobodys elses point is valid on boards.ie . Whats the point in replying. Im just going to be told Im wrong as per usual.

JC 2K3

Examiners don't love big quotes for the sake of them filling the page.

No one's conspiring against you and no one will disrespect your points as long as they are reasonable, which this one wasn't.

kisaragi

JSK 252 wrote:

I do know that quality is greater than quantity. What gave you that impression? I was only minorly saying that having loads of quotes to back every single point you make will make your answer concrete and will show the examiner that you have clearly analysed the text to the best of your ability.

From listening to my sisters and my friends experiences learning essays were the only to get A1s in the exam. You have no time to think in the exam unless your the next JK Rowling who can write on the spot.

Its definetely clear that everybody has different ways of doing questions and therefore there is no right or wrong formula in approaching a question.

Just what you said about filling up pages You're right it's good to back up your points with quotes, but (as far as i know) you can reference the text without actually quoting it.

Well... if learning essays worked for your sisters and friends that's great, but it's not the only way to go Obviously they already had English talent if they could prepare those A1 essays to recite in the first place, so the "learning off" isn't the only factor deciding who was getting A1s or not.

And you have time in the exam! In my mocks I scribbled up to the minute, but in my LC I was finished maybe 20 mins before the end in both papers? Definitly in paper 2. I made my story up on the spot, and I got 100 in it

I think if you go in knowing your texts and poems really well you should be able to answer any question they throw at you anyway right? And this years questions were easy. If you'd learned your texts at all you'd have been grand.

JCK mentioned about engaging and that's key! Absolutely! And if you scribble down some essay you learnt off in a panic and don't actually answer the question then you'll lose so many marks.

So it depends on your personality! But I'd urge not to think you HAVE to learn off essays Or the poems for that matter! And about learning 6 or 7 poems per poet... I always choose my favourite 3 or 4 (or 3 or 4 that showed contrasting styles/ideas/techniques) and answered on those, how could you fit 6 into one answer? In my LC I answered on Sylvia Plath, about Elm, Morning Song, and Child. And don't bother learning six poets... pick your favourite five and do those ones Now you've only got 15-20 poems to know.

And Wireless... You needn't learn off the poems if you don't want to, it's your own prerogative. We had an excellent teacher, we'd read the poems and discuss them in class, we'd read the notes at the back of the book ourselves, our teacher would talk about them and we'd take some notes, and then we'd write our essays on that poet (And if your essay is a personal response, make it personal, don't just copy notes...). So, keep those essays, and before your exam go to skoool.ie (best site ever, their english notes are excellent!) read the poems, read the notes, make your own notes, read over your essays, and by this time they should be fairly well stuck in your head And then you should be able to write any esssay.

For example, our question on Plath was "her poetry is intense, deeply personal and disturbing" and then respond to this, do you agree? etc etc...

Now I would bet that 90% of people said, yeah, totally right. But I said, yes it's intense and deeply personal, but no it's not disturbing. I wrote about how people who have experienced a similar depression find solace in someone who speaks openly in her poems like this, and they connect with it. I wrote how it's refreshing to read a poet who writes showing her true feelings and who isn't afraid to write this dark poetry. That was my personal opinion and what I felt, it didn't come out of any notes... Obviously it was a bit better than those few sentences but basically, (I think ) I didn't follow the clichéd "yep, she's so dark and her poetry is so violent, disturbing as hell!" (which is also a valid viewpoint I guess...). But my main point is I gave the examiner my opinion and feelings and that's what they want, YOUR response to the poetry, not to see that you can quote 60 lines of Elizabeth Bishop

Phew... long answer :cool:

Corruptedmorals

ryanairzer wrote:

Strictly speaking, you don't know what the question will be before hand, so you don't actually have any points yet.

You can roughly tell. If it's a personal response- lines containing imagery, etc. If it's Plath, something along the lines of intense, personal, tragic. You'll hardly be asked to pick out happy imagery from Plath or something, so yeah you will basically know which lines to throw on the page. My method worked for me and I got full marks on the poetry question

ZorbaTehZ

She deserves a slap tbh. Don't bother - waste of time learning the entire thing off.

jaycummins

when my teacher is doing a poem he reads it at least four times before he says anything about it. when we were doing a disused shed in co. wexford by derrick mahon (really long poem) he spent and entire class just reading the poem over and over again. good teacher anyway, but i dont like learning poetry, im gonna forget it all by this time next year.

mise19

i got an A1 in english last year. As far as poetry is concerned, i learned a lot of poems fully. This is definitely not necessary, however, i just loved poetry and found it easier to remember the rhythm and feel of the poem if i knew it off by heart.
When i answered the poetry question in the leaving cert, i had a great choice of poets and poems to write about. went with Plath in the end, and the answer i wrote was unlike any other answer i wrote during school.
As long as you have a feel for the poetry and know a good few quotes to back up your opinions, you'll be fine.
Personal reaction is what examiners are looking for, and the more original the better.
They can tell straight away if an answer is learnt off by heart!

By the way, just because you may learn poems off by heart, certainly does NOT mean you should write them down in your answer. In fact, that would not be advisable!
Use relevant quotes and references but don't overdo it.

Good luck!

Xhristy

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