GCSE-readyGCSE and International GCSE English Literature: common mistakes
The wrong answers students pick most often in our English Literature questions, and why they are wrong. Read these before a test, then open the lesson for anything that surprises you.
Paper 1B Post-1914: An Inspector Calls
- An Inspector Calls: the plot
- Not “1945”. 1945 is when Priestley wrote it, not when it is set.
Paper 1B Anthology poetry (Part 3)
- Piano by D H Lawrence: context, form and key methods
- Not “An old photograph of his family”. No photograph is mentioned; the trigger is a sound.
- Not “A letter from his mother”. There is no letter; the memory comes through music.
- Not “A visit to the house where he grew up”. He does not go back to his old home; the memory comes to him.
- Half-past Two by U A Fanthorpe: context, form and key methods
- Not “He must write lines”. No lines are mentioned; he is kept in.
- Not “He must miss the school trip”. There is no trip in the poem.
- Not “He must see the head teacher”. Only his teacher is involved.
- Hide and Seek by Vernon Scannell: context, form and key methods
- Not “Up a tree in the garden”. He hides indoors, in the dark of a shed.
- Not “Under his bed”. The game is outside, in the garden and shed.
- Not “In the greenhouse”. The greenhouse is somewhere the seekers might look, not his hiding place.
- Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare: context, form and key methods
- Not “ABBAABBA CDECDE”. That is the Petrarchan pattern, like Remember.
- Not “AABB CCDD EEFF GG”. The quatrains use alternate rhyme, not couplets.
- Not “ABA ABA ABA ABA ABA ABAA”. That is a villanelle, like Do not go gentle.
- Remember by Christina Rossetti: context, form and key methods
- Not “Shakespearean, ending in a couplet”. That is Sonnet 116; Remember splits into eight lines and six.
- Not “A sonnet sequence”. It is a single sonnet.
- Not “A villanelle”. A villanelle has 19 lines; Remember has 14.
- If- by Rudyard Kipling: context, form and key methods
- Not “A son to his dying father”. That is Do not go gentle into that good night.
- Not “A teacher to a class”. The final words are "my son!"
- Not “A king to his army”. Kings are mentioned, but the voice is a father's.
- Poem at Thirty-Nine by Alice Walker: context, form and key methods
- Not “A woman's first day at a new job”. Work is not the subject; her father is.
- Not “A mother giving advice to her son”. The speaker is a daughter remembering her father.
- Not “A wedding anniversary”. The poem is about a parent, not a marriage.
- Do not go gentle into that good night by Dylan Thomas: context, form and key methods
- Not “Sleep after a long day”. It sounds like sleep, but it is a euphemism for death.
- Not “A party”. There is no celebration; the father is dying.
- Not “Peace between enemies”. The poem is about a father, not enemies.
- Search For My Tongue by Sujata Bhatt: context, form and key methods
- Not “Taste and smell”. The poem is about language, not taste.
- Not “Speaking and singing”. Tongue here means a language, as in mother tongue.
- Not “A shoe and a bell”. Those meanings are not used here.
- Blessing by Imtiaz Dharker: context, form and key methods
- Not “A rainy city in Scotland”. Dharker grew up in Glasgow, but the poem's setting is hot and dry.
- Not “A rich holiday resort”. People live in huts and lack water.
- Not “A farm by a river”. Water is scarce, so there is no river.
- The Tyger by William Blake: context, form and key methods
- Not “Songs of Innocence”. The Lamb is in Songs of Innocence; The Tyger is its partner in Experience.
- Not “Lyrical Ballads”. That is by Wordsworth and Coleridge.
- Not “Goblin Market and Other Poems”. That is Rossetti's collection.
- Prayer Before Birth by Louis MacNeice: context, form and key methods
- Not “Because a child cannot speak, so the poem is impossible”. The poem imagines the child's voice to make us think.
- Not “Because the child is a soldier”. It is not born yet; it fears becoming a tool of war.
- Not “Because the child is angry with its mother”. Its fears are of the world, not of its mother.
- War Photographer by Carol Ann Duffy: context, form and key methods
- Not “Carole Satyamurti”. Satyamurti's poem of the same title is in the UK GCSE Conflict anthology, not the International GCSE.
- Not “Simon Armitage”. Armitage is not the poet of War Photographer.
- Not “Imtiaz Dharker”. Dharker wrote Blessing.