Essays, news and reviews from Shakespeare's notorious tavern
or simply Much Ado About Nothing … ?
students were in tears after the exam
A multiple choice question for the adults. Or for my students, who sat their Shakespeare exam on Monday just gone. You sit an exam where you have a choice of two questions. One question appears to make no sense. Do you:
If we do meet again, why, we shall smile;
If not, why then, this parting was well made. (Brutus, Julius Caesar: Act V, scene I)
This morning, at 9am, my Y11 students sit their first GCSE English exam – 1 hour, 45 minutes on The Tempest and Conan Doyle’s The Sign of Four … and so begins the ‘long goodbye’ …
Our Y11 (15/16 year old) students have the first of their English Literature GCSE exams on Monday …
This is the last year, at my school, when we will (effectively) have autonomy over the texts we teach. Next year, we will only offer Macbeth or Romeo and Juliet at GCSE. It sounds like a retrograde move, but what it does ensure – I suppose – is that we have teachers, multiple, who can deliver the texts, both in the classroom and – importantly, considering I am in school today (Sunday) – in revision sessions. I am largely in school today because I’m the only one who can do The Tempest … nobody’s fault but mine, as Led Zeppelin might say.
The AQA specification offers the following texts:
If this is the first time you’ve read an essay here, please take a look at this post before proceeding.
MY CLASS WILL BE TAKING THEIR GCSE PAPER ON THE TEMPEST THIS MONDAY. I WISH THEM THE VERY BEST OF LUCK!
It is this lack of intelligence, or of understanding, that propels him towards making the same offers to Stephano as he did to Prospero twelve years earlier – a move which led to his enslavement. Sections of the audience would approve of the ways in which Caliban is easily taken advantage of. John Hawkins started the slave trade with his first voyage in 1562, just two years before Shakespeare was born. For many Europeans, blacks were simply slaves.
GCSE MODEL Essay based on AQA specimen question paper, and marked as follows:
If this is the first time you’ve read an essay here, please take a look at this post before proceeding.
Now that he has everyone in his power, we might expect him to use his magic spitefully and violently. Interestingly, this scene acts as a kind of volta in the plot: the conversation changing Prospero’s philosophy and actions forever.
GCSE Essay based on AQA specimen question paper, and marked as follows:
Continue reading “The Tempest: GCSE Model Essay for my Y11s”
