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[lady_schrapnell]

Anyone who's enjoyed the perfect weather this Bank Holiday Monday should thank their nearest Leaving Cert student (Junior Cert at a pinch).  And if you don't happen to have one in mind, you can just thank Younger Daughter, who's been spending the last couple of weeks studying like mad.  No money necessary for the thanking, but good thoughts for intelligent exam setting and marking would be nice, not to mention endurance to get through the next couple of weeks.  English Paper I on Wednesday morning.  (Ooh - and a personal essay option on that paper would be excellent too.)

We were having a look at some past exam papers, and I hadn't quite taken on board the horror that is the English higher level Leaving Cert exam these days.  The 'single text' (generally done on the Shakespeare play) and 'comparative texts' (usually on the novels and modern play on the year's course) are fine, comprehension and functional writing variable, but the prescribed poetry is dreadful.  I give you the 2005 paper questions:

1. "The appeal of Eavan Boland's poetry"

Using the above title, write an essay outlining what you consider to be the appeal of Boland's poetry.  [Hard thought went into that 'title'! Nice of them to explain it though.]

2. What impact did the poetry of Emily Dickinson make on you as a reader?
     Your answer should deal with the following:
         - Your overall sense of the personality of the poet (!!)
         - The poet's use of language/imagery [oh, right - might as well devote a sentence or two to that, if there's time.]

3. Write about the feelings that T.S. Eliot's poetry creates in you and the aspects of his poetry (content and/or style) that help to create those feelings.  [Feeeeeelings.  Nothing more than -- feeeeeeelings. Trying to for-get my feeeeeelings of...]

4. Write an article for a school magazine introducing the poetry of W.B. Yeats to Leaving Certificate students.  Tell them what he wrote about and explain what you liked in his writing, suggesting some poems that you think they would enjoy reading. [i.e. - talk about the poems on the L.C. course this year, duh.]

I had thought Becca's chosen question "I like (or do not like) to read the poetry of Sylvia Plath" was just demonstrative of exam-question-writing burnout at its most blatant, but hadn't realised quite how lucky she was in getting such a non-nauseating question at least.  (She did like to read the poetry of Sylvia Plath, and knew it very well indeed, btw.)

Comments

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

The horror, the horror! (That's not an attempt at Q.3, btw.)

Sympathy to Y.D. - even more than before.

[lady-schrapnell.livejournal.com]

Heh - good thing you clarified! The horror of measuring out your life in coffee spoons! The horror of the cold coming of it! Well, quite.

[intertext.livejournal.com]

Gawdallmighty. How do they _mark_ questions like that??? I suppose they are SO general, that only the really bright students will make anything of them at all, and that's how they separate the wheat from the chaff, but ... boggle. That's all.

[lady-schrapnell.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I thought about the marking too! But this year, my sympathy's all in the other direction. ;) (I did leave out the 'support your answer with evidence from the poems you studied' bit, admittedly. But that makes it no better!) The ones in which you've to write a letter to the poet must be excruciatingly hard to answer without enormous self-consciousness too: "I love your use of alliteration, as in the line "quote quote quote', as it serves the purpose of ...' Shudder.

[vcmw]

Urk.
Now I feel uneducated, as I haven't the faintest lingering clue who Eavan Boland is or was.

I've read lots of Dickinson, Eliot, and Yeats, but not in the last, umm, 7 or 8 years? So I think I would fail this exam resoundingly. Much luck to your daughter.

Am I remembering right that Yeats called that "tread softly because you tread on my dreams" poem "how not to get the girl" later in life?

[lady-schrapnell.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the good wishes! Eavan Boland is an Irish poet, alive and female. There was one poetry anthology used for the Leaving Cert for about 30 years , and though it was wonderful, Emily Dickinson was the only woman in it (and my year, she wasn't on the syllabus). So since retiring that anthology, they kind of seem to be making an effort to shake up the selection a bit.

I haven't heard that Yeats called it that, though that doesn't mean anything. Possibly it was just as well for him that he didn't get the girl in question though - and not just for the poetic inspiration of it!

[dorianegray.livejournal.com]

Yeccchhh. Those questions remind me of one my English teacher set us for homework in first year: "Why I like 'Upon Westminster Bridge'". I hated said poem and had severe difficulty with the homework!

I'm sure the Leaving Cert English questions were more sensible in 1986.

[lady-schrapnell.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm sure the questions were more sensible in 1975 too, though I can't remember anything about what we were asked! I do think I'd have remembered anything as daft as those.

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

Q.2 makes sense of some of the oddities I got on Dickinson this year from my first years ("In my opinion, being a recluse, she must have got very lonely"). They'd been asked to write a practical critical account of "No Rack can torture me"...well, bully for you, Em, you didn't have to mark these things. Or explain to them - one by one in consultation hour - what soul/body dualism is.

[lady-schrapnell.livejournal.com]

In all fairness, I have to say neither of mine was really taught to that type of L.C. question. (Though there were some horrors coming from English teachers over the years which would make you wonder about the universities passing them through!) But if there was a student in the country planning to go on to study English in uni who didn't get hold of the past paper books and so see that question, I'd be surprised.

(Should be all sympathy for your pain, but I'm afraid the 'bully for you, Em' made me laugh a lot!)

[gair.livejournal.com]

OH DEAR GOD and then they send them to ME. At least I no longer have to go 'What do they teach them in these schools?' because NOW I KNOW AND IT IS WORSE THAN I IMAGINED.

steepholm says you saved me a copy of Glubbslyme btw- many thanks. And huge apologies for not getting back to you about that, it turns out it was one of those (all-too-frequent in the visiting/marking season) LJ comments that I only wrote in my head.

[lady-schrapnell.livejournal.com]

See, now I've gone all 'well, not really - in all fairness...' on it. But neither of mine got taught that approach to poetry, whatever stupidities they were asked on the exam. (C. and I were talking about it, and of course, you'd have to answer most of the questions as if they'd asked a proper one to do well anyway!) Though just sticking to poetry, Bec was told when they started doing Sylvia Plath that she was one of those feminists and had been married to Ted Heath. (May have told you that already.)

No worries about the book - it's a very beat up copy and I realised it would have been silly not to hold it for you even without authorization! I can see how rare the ones you collect are now. So many, many Jacqueline Wilsons, and none of them right.

[gair.livejournal.com]

Oh, not-really and in-all-fairness indeed - sorry for using your LJ (and indeed your daughter!) as launching pad for rant which is really about my students and the English school system!

It's amazing how the pre-Nick-Sharratt era Jacqueline Wilsons have totally disappeared - I only know about them because I garnered a few from charity shops before her fame really took off. And thanks again for Glubbslyme!