Unseens for examinations

As many exams now require students to look at unseen text, I have been thinking of ways to address the issue of establishing understanding of a text, whether prose or verse. I attach a powerpoint which might be useful – the flow chart is a bit of an eye-ful, but might be used to provoke discussion.

unseen writing

I hope I have stressed the need ot be aware of anomalies – those moments which stand out from the “ordinary”, that is the norm for whatever text is in front of the reader. I am always surprised when students miss out the unusual “because it is hard” – that’s the point. The unusual may well be the element the writer considered and redrafted for hours before settling on the right form of langauge – that is why it matters!

In the powerpoint I use Pride and Prejudice, Sonnet 116 and Blessing (Imtiaz Dharker) as three texts to review in brief. I have used the Dharker before to illustrate my ideas: https://jwpblog.wordpress.com/2014/05/06/blessing-imtiaz-dharker-a-slime-and-a-scasi-response/

The Sonnet is one of the current Edexcel IGCSE set texts.

A group of posts on unseen writing can be found under this tag: https://jwpblog.wordpress.com/?s=unseen