CSEC ENGLISH
Hello there!
Are you re-reading your English B texts? We hope so. Decide which play and which of the prose options you hope to write on, and reread them, noting carefully any short quotes you could use in the exam. Reading good material will also help you to brush up for English A. Notice how good writers handle descriptions, how they develop paragraphs. Make a list of words you have spelt wrongly, and make sure you learn the correct spelling. Read on now, and see what you can learn from today’s CSEC English page.
ENGLISH B—Writing about literary devices
You are sure to be asked to ‘comment on the effectiveness’ of a literary device in the course of your English B exam. Let’s look at how you can get full marks.
Last week we saw that you need to do FOUR things: i. identify the device, ii. show where it occurs in the poem/play, iii. say what it makes you THINK, iv. and say how it makes you FEEL.
We looked at ALLUSION in Little Boy Crying. Today we work through another example with you—the use of ALLUSION in Sylvia Plath’s poem Mirror. Here’s our model paragraph:
In her poem Mirror, Plath personifies the mirror and allows it to be the speaker. The mirror shows human characteristics when it boasts “I am not cruel, only truthful”. In using this talking mirror, Plath is alluding to the fairy-tale Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, in which the wicked queen daily consults her mirror to check that she still is ‘the fairest of all’. When the mirror tells her that Snow White is ‘the fairest’, the queen is so distressed, so mad with jealousy, that she attempts to kill her rival. The woman in this poem, too, is seeking affirmation; she wants to hear that she is beautiful, but the mirror boasts that he is only telling her the truth (and apparently the truth hurts!). Seeking a kinder answer, the woman looks at her reflection in a lake, ‘searching…for what she really is’, but again she sees only her outward appearance, and not the woman inside. The desperate woman wants to see herself (and be seen) in the gentle light thrown by candles or the moon, but the mirror scornfully refers to these two as ‘liars’. The woman cannot escape the ‘truth’ offered by the mirror that her face no longer is that of a young girl, but looks dreadfully like a ‘terrible fish’. We feel the woman’s distress as she has to face the fact of aging, but we wonder why she places so much emphasis on physical beauty. We feel, with her, the need for someone to recognize not just her outward appearance, but also her inner beauty.
Check back and make sure that we have done the FOUR things we listed! Now write a similar paragraph on the use of Biblical allusion in The Woman Speaks, following the instructions.
REPORTED SPEECH
How do we put questions into reported speech? It’s easy. Look! Here are questions with question words:
1. . 2.
3. 4. 5.
“Where are you going?” the man asked them.
The man asked them where they were going. “What are you doing?” she asked us.
She wanted to know what we were doing.
“When will he be leaving?” she asked me.
She asked me when he would be leaving.
“Why are you smiling?” he asked the children. He asked the children why they were smiling.
“How do you know that?” the teacher asked the boy. The teacher asked the boy how he knew that.
Notice that we did these things when we put the direct speech into reported speech:
1. We removed the quotation marks
2. We changed the pronouns (us, them, him, etc.) 3. We put the verb in the past tense (were, would,
knew instead of was, will, know).
YOUR TURN NOW
Work with a partner or on your own. Make up a list of short questions beginning with a question word (How, When, What, Where, etc.). Now play like this. Your partner fires a question at you: “When are you going home?”
You turn to someone else and say, He just asked me when I was going home.
Remember the three rules that we gave you above.
BUILDING YOUR VOCABULARY
For each of the words in List A, find an antonym from List B. When you have your pairs of antonyms, fit them appropriately into the blanks in the sentences.
List A:
condone, reduce, shabby, stimulating, exhaustive, liberal, ruthless, accidental, neat, inexpensive
censure, increase, smart, monotonous, cursory, stingy, merciful, deliberate, dishevelled, costly
You won’t get the job if you go to the interview in that _______ outfit! Try wearing something _________ to impress your prospective employer.
Rather than planning to ________ the amount of money given to Education, the Government should try to _______ it.
No one should ________ such corrupt practices: the entire community should ________ his behaviour!
Instead of making an ___________ search of the entire premises, the policeman just took a _________ glance around the main office.
When I trod on his toe it was ___________, but when he poured hot tea over my hand, that was __________.
Although his father had earned the reputation of being a philanthropist because he was so __________, the son was so __________ that beggars didn’t even stop at his house.
The main speech at this year’s prize-giving was enjoyable and ___________: not like that dull, __________ talk we had last year.
Having your photograph taken is fairly _________, but it would be very ________ for you to hire someone to paint your portrait.
In parts of Africa where __________ killings took place during tribal wars, many survivors are now forgiving the murderers and being amazingly __________ to them.