Preparing for your Leaving Cert English exam and the poetry section more specifically involves a combination of learning from prescribed texts and practising key skills. In this article, I will outline all areas of poetry identifying the approach you must take to achieve success in your exams.
As a leaving certificate student, you have seven months to organise your preparation in order to guarantee a high grade for your performance in June.
It is crucial to make sure you thoroughly cover all of the course material. You must read from a list of the works of eight poets for your course, analyse them, and learn a variety of new things. Each year, eight poets are recommended for students to study, but only five of them are included in the final paper.
You MUST read at least four poems in order to ensure that you are familiar with enough poetry to respond to a question in the required area. From the required list of eight poets, your instructor will discuss six poems by each of the four poets. Don't forget to read these four poets.
Since five of the recommended eight will be tested, it is crucial to understand the other four in order to ensure that you can successfully complete this portion.
In order to maximize your results on the two papers, you must work on certain poetry and writing methods.
The Poetry Section evaluates your ability to analyse your reactions to poetry using appropriate language. The Unseen and Prescribed questions assess the same analytic abilities.
In this article, I will take a look at how reading poetry will help you develop your eye for poetic techniques and improve your scores in this section of the leaving cert English paper.
Reading can also help to improve your comprehension skills, this will help you to jump up a few grades in the exam.
Poetry to help with your English scores
When you get around to studying for your leaving cert exams it is important that you are working not just hard, but smart. Given the time constraints that come with being a leaving cert student, it is important that you prioritise the tasks that you have at hand.
If you are focussed on maximising your grades in the leaving certificate English exam, then you might also want to consider prioritising your time in the exam hall. Given the number of marks that are up for grabs in paper two for poetry, it is certainly worth your time practising and developing your understanding of it.
You would be surprised at how much your understanding of poetry can improve just by reading some pieces on a regular basis. Becoming familiar with a wide variety of poetic techniques will help you with your own writing if you wish to progress as a poet.
It will also help you in the unseen portion of the exam. Remember that you can always get unlucky with the poem that is on your exam paper and have difficulty understanding the underlying message or theme. Having an extensive Knowledge of poetic techniques means that you will have plenty to write about in your answers.
It is also not uncommon for a full question devoted to poetic techniques to appear in the studied poetry section of your English exam paper.
If you are looking to jump up a few grades in the leaving cert English exam then take a look at how reading can help!
Delving into the art of poetry
Poetry may be a creative release for some people or a heavy intellectual load for others. Every Leaving Cert English student, whether taking the Higher or Ordinary track, is required to read a number of poets' works.
It may be torture for many people to have their art critiqued and regurgitated. A poem's true motivation for being produced is frequently destroyed when someone dissects it in search of illusive significance and essay points.
You would not believe that Philip Larkin had youngsters studying his symbolism in order to achieve the ever-elusive passing grades on their leaving cert examinations in mind when he wrote "The Whitsun Weddings," a poem about marital life.
No matter your skill level, you can encounter poets whose work speaks to you more subtly than only in terms of tone, subjects, and style.
Take for instance Sylvia Plath, whose confessional style and enigmatic imagery, defy dissection. She is a great poet to look at if you are trying to develop your understanding of melancholic themes and how metaphors can be used for description, in her case painting a picture of internal suffering.
If you come across a poet whose work you like, read them. More reading will improve your English grades and help you comprehend written poetry on a deeper level.
If you are looking for some inspiration on where to get started with your reading, give this article a try!
Improving your poetry writing
A creative poet aspires to write original tales in a recognizable voice. However, with the abundance of fiction writing currently existing in the world, it might be challenging to believe that your work is truly original compared to the competitors.
You could be a novice poet finishing a creative writing course in high school, a hobbyist working on your first poem or an experienced poet with a degree in English literature who is only trying to improve as a writer while avoiding writer's block.
You can benefit from setting aside time to evaluate your writing abilities and consider whether there are any new methods you can set your work apart, regardless of your background or the sorts of writing you undertake.
There are various ways to develop as a poet, but reading and becoming knowledgeable about a wide range of poetry forms is likely the most efficient method to do it.
The first poem that you write will likely be a big step behind anything that you make after. The more time that you spend reading poems, the better you will be able to write. As a result of this, students that read poetry in their own time generally achieve higher marks in their English exams.
When you write up your study plan for leaving cert English, make sure to include reading poems, reading literature and learning to write both of these too! If you study each of these it will help exam results.
Reading the works of a number of different poets on a variety of different subject matters will certainly make you a more well-rounded poet.
In the English exam, many students write down key notes for their poetry answers first. You will likely have a lot of information on the poems that you study bottled inside your head. Getting this information down as text on your exam paper is key when you sit down for the English exam. You should write down any notes you have on poetry or literature before you answer.
Learn leaving certificate English with Superprof
When you open up your leaving cert English paper 1 you will need to take sufficient time to read through the exam paper. The second step is to study the prescribed texts and try to find examples of appealing literature, images, themes or poetic techniques that you can discuss from your leaving cert English course.
With the leaving cert English paper 2 exam paper you will need to read the questions carefully of course, though you will spend most of your time writing. Students will need to write about the poetry, literature and text that they study for the comparative section.
The intense poetry revision classes and English paper 2 courses in Ireland are interesting and put a lot of emphasis on developing abilities based on your own chosen poetic style. Getting assistance from a certified English teacher could be helpful if you want to hasten your learning process.
You should think about speaking with a teacher from Superprof first if you want to start taking English classes to aid with your leaving cert course. Even if you ultimately decide against weekly classes, you could still benefit from your session. An hour-long class with a qualified English instructor may teach you a lot.
Due to their individualized nature, face-to-face lessons are typically the most economical. With larger sessions, though, you'll have to split your tutor's time with other students rather than having them all to yourself.
Nevertheless, the tutor will continue to customize the lessons as much as possible for each student. Due to all the extra work, the tutor must perform outside of the lessons in order to give customized service to you and your family, these tutorials are often the most expensive sort.
Since everyone in attendance pays for the tutor's time and competence, group tutorials often cost far less per person per hour than face-to-face ones. It's doubtful that you'll be able to complete these lessons in the comfort of your own home.
The majority of English or poetry educators on the site provide their first lesson for free as if that weren't enough to catch your attention.
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