I'm going to read through hs4 hawk by Helen McDonald this is in preparation for your edexcel GCSE English language exam paper 1 so HS will hawk some background information that may be important this really is about McDonald's dealing with the the death of her father by really distracting herself with a hawk the Hawks take a lot of time a lot of concentration to train and look after and so she this is her this is her way of dealing with the death of her father so we may see how the hawk might reflect her experience of mourning in some way which we'll come back to later I found this really difficult to annotate because I feel like I have much more to say so I try to annotate the most important things and for me but you may have to listen carefully because there will be other things mentioned other than my notes always bear in mind these are just some things that came to my mind when I read it as always you should really think about what you take from it as well and I'm sure your teachers have given their own interpretation of it as well and they're all be valid just to have an open mind and I encourage you to have some original ideas we'll check the ring numbers against the article tens he explained pulling a sheaf of yellow paper from the rucksack and unfolding two of the official forms that accompany captive-bred rare birds throughout their lives don't want you going home with the wrong bird now hopefully you have read this already and know that she did almost go home with the wrong bird so this foreshadows the plot twist it's quite humorous to think now that he said this considering that did almost happen or maybe it does happen so we don't really know we noted the numbers we stare down on the boxes at their parcel tape handles their doors are thin plywood and hinges of carefully tied string then he nowt on the concrete untied a hinge on the smaller box and squinted into its dark interior a sudden thump of feathered shoulders and the Box shook as if someone had punched it hard from within she's got a hood off he said and frowned that lights leather hood was to keep the hope from fearful sights like us so I think the most important things to note here is the onomatopoeic thump as well as the violent imagery of the Box shaking and as if someone had punched it hard so we know that the hawk crominus is very powerful it seems violent so that obviously the onomatopoeic sound as well as the this language helps create tension and the anticipation of MacDonald is mirrored with this really you can imagine how terrified she might feel in waiting to see her bird and now the irony however is that the letter heard that is supposed to be over the Hawks head is supposed to protect it in some respects from us because we are fearful sights for the hall so it's quite ironic to think that the hawk would be afraid of us and I guess that's McDonald's communicating her compassion for the bird and her understanding of or at least her aim to understand what the burden must be going through what might help add tension as well as the man the man is the handler of the bird the professional the one that's supposed to know what he's doing and even he is frowning so that causes some concern as well so that helps add to the tension another hinge untied concentration infinite caution day late daylight irrigating the box scratching talons another thunk and another thump the air turned syrupy slow flex with dust the last few seconds before a battle I'm gonna have to stop throughout this paragraph just because it's a really long paragraph and so straightaway we have the short sentences which help create tension and build that drama we have repetition of thump so again we're just kind of anticipating this terrifying beast to come out of this box you might argue that this is hyperbolic as well the last few seconds before a battle it's at least the melodramatic and again that helps build up that tension that suspense as we await to meet this bird and with the last bow pulled free he reached inside an admit admits a whirring chaotic clutter of wings and feet and talons and a high-pitched twittering and it's all happening at once the man pulls an enormous enormous Hawk out of the box and in a strange coincidence of world and deed a great flood of sunlight wrenches us and everything is brilliance and fury so some things to note here you could mention the the alliteration of chaotic clutter as well which kind of just adds emphasis to this moment but I think this indebted listing highlights how overwhelming this moment is when she sees the bird and etic listing is when you divide the items in a list with and rather than accessory separate the items in a list with and rather than a comma and that just makes the list seem even more extensive so in this case I think she's trying to communicate how overwhelming this experience was for her seeing this great bird before her and look at the repetition of enormous and the fact that the second one is in italics to add emphasis to just how big the hawk is so again just this sense of her feeling completely overwhelmed by what she sees this pathetic fallacy here she says just as the bird emerges there's this great flood of sunlight which happens to kind of fill her her surroundings and everything is brilliance and fury so it's it's pathetic fallacy because she's really viewing this bird almost like it's from another world or almost like it's godlike and that again you could argue once she's in or of the bird because of the way she's describing it but she's also incredibly intimidated by it the hawk swings barred and beating the sharp fingers of her dark tipped primaries cutting the air her feathers raised like the scattered quills of a fretful porpentine so the description here just helps build that tension again we've got alliteration with bard and beating which are plosive sounds as well two enormous eyes my heart jumps sideways she is a conjuring trick a reptile a fallen angel a Griffin from the pages of an illuminated be story so again we have short sentences to create tension it's quite hyperbolic again referring to her as a reptile and fallen angel so she just seems to be from a different world and I think again McDonald it's just completely in awe of her she's never seen anything quite like it something bright and distant like gold falling through water a broken marionette of wings lakes and light splashed feathers she's wearing Jess's and the old and the man holds them for one awful long moment she's hanging head downward wings open like a turkey in a butcher shop only her head is turned right way up and she's seeing more than she has ever seen before in her whole short life her world was an Avery no larger than a living room then it was a box but now it is this and she can see everything the point-source glitter on the waves a dive in corner n't a hundred yards out pigment flakes under wax on the lines of parked cars far Hills and the Heather on them and miles and miles of sky were the Sun spreads on dust and Waterman legible things moving in it that are white scraps of girls everything starting anew stamped on her entirely astonished brain so the short sentences Chuck's are juxtaposed with the extensive listing so remember we said we have this these short sentences here and then suddenly we have this extensive list of all the things you can see in actually the short sentence is probably here to refer to if we're talking about juxtaposition so this is the simplicity of her world her world used to be no larger than a living room full stop so the shortness of that sentence reflects kind of the simplicity and the shortness and the shortness of her life but really the simplicity of what she's seen before all the limits of what she's seen before and that strict suppose then with this extensive list listing highlighting in great detail took down to like the pigment flakes under wax on the lines of park cars so the the extent of detail in this list highlights how overwhelming this experience must be through the hawk so much so that she must be completely astonished something to think about here I don't know how I feel about this bits kind of playing with this in my head and please I love when by the way I love when people comment and give their own ideas because it really helps me as well and I often share them with my students in class so please feel free to comment and tell me what you think but I wonder if this kind of overwhelming feeling of this bird who has lived this really sheltered life and has suddenly been exposed to a lot more I wonder if that in some ways in parallel to McDonald who maybe before experiencing the death of her father had never experienced anything like that and so in this moment in time she's also feeling quite around with the these new experiences I don't know if it's a bit of a stretch but something to think about anyway and I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments through all this the man was perfectly calm he gathered up the hawk in one practice movement folding her wings anchoring her broad feathered back against his chest ripping her scaled yellow legs in one hand so what we noticed here is that the man is in great it has great control over the situation we have four in contrast at the chaotic bird and the and the narrator McDonald we've got this list of active clauses so she's he's in control he gathers he folds he anchors he grips so those active verbs show that he's definitely in control of this situation and the listing as well and I haven't written this down shows this clear process this order of events that he needs to to work through to make sure and that he takes control of the hawk so everything is very careful so again he's just in great control which is a great contrast to the bird and probably McDonald at this point as well let's get that hood back on he said totally however that totally does suggest that he's a little bit concerned but maybe it's more in a sense that he's concentrating hard and he's been very careful there was concern in his face it was born of care this hawk had been hatched in an incubator had broken from a frail blueish eggshell into a human perspective and for the first few days of her life this man had fed her with scraps of meat held in a pair of tweezers waiting patiently for the lumpin fluffy chick to notice the food and eat her new neck wobbling with the effort of keeping her head in the air so what we noticed here in green is that he's been extremely nurturing and caring for for the hawk all at once I loved this man and fiercely quite melodramatic she has only just met him but I think it highlights how vulnerable she feels and how reliant she is on him at the moment for his knowledge and his great control over the situation so I think she's heavily relying on him to feel kind of safe in this situation I grabbed the hub hood from the box and turned to the hawk her beak was open her hackles raised her wild eyes were the color of Sun on white paper and they stared because the whole world had fallen into them at once so we have that juxtaposition of compassion and understanding so what would noticing here so even though we've got kind of Wild Eyes her beak was open there's something quite threatening about that however we do also see that she understands why the bird is maybe looks the way it does or behaves the way it does it's because there it's overwhelmed by everything it's singing and then the countdown here creates tension as well one two three I took to the hood over her head there was a brief intimation of a thin angular skull under her feathers of an alien brain fizzing and fusing with terror then I drew the braces closed which had the ring numbers against the form so there's a sense of otherness here the way she describes the bird with this angular skull this alien brain the alliteration here a fizzing and fusing so again I'd such argue here that McDonald feels quite fearful of the bird and its other nests and how strange it seems to her then I drew the sari moving on it was the wrong bird this was the younger one the smaller one this was not my hawk so obviously this links to the earlier part where I said the irony of him saying we don't when you're going home with the wrong bird so this is the turning point in this short X in this extract so this big bill and this kind of fear of this new bird and then it's the kind of nervous excitement is kind of all for nothing cuz it's the wrong one what's what's terrifying here is that this is the younger one this is the smaller one so we've got tension here because we anticipate now a larger and much more terrifying bird than this one already is not to mention as well I haven't put it here cuz I didn't I didn't have space but look at the short sentences again do those short sentences help create tension or also do they reflect her disappointment as well and then obviously the short paragraph and interjection Oh is an interjection a lot of people might refer to as a non I'm a matter peak word but it's not which mirrors her disappointment oh so we put her back and open the other box which was meant to hold the larger older bird and dear God it did everything about this second Hawk was different so even just her expression here dear God shows her fear and her shock and this short sentence everything about this second Hawk was different this should feel fill the reader with terror because how can it be much more different or more terrifying than what we've just heard she came out like a Victorian melodrama a sort of madwoman in the attack she was smokier and darker and much much bigger and instead of twittering she wailed great awful gouts of sound like a thing in pain and the sound was unbearable so we've got again synthetic listing again this is an overwhelming experience for MacDonald so we've got smokier and darker and and and okay so that's what I mean by synthetic look at also the colours smokier and darker those hope they have calm connotations of evil of mystery so it just seems so much more threatening because of that the repetition of much much bigger to emphasize that this is so much lower than the previous Hulk and then the contrast as well the previous hooked twittered but this one wails so that just doesn't seem to be anything appealing about this new bird it seems much more terrifying than the latter and even she says the sound was unbearable you might argue that that's a hyperbole as well but look at her kind of self address if you like this is my hawk that in a dialogue you could write that there I didn't have space in a dialogue is almost her attempt to convince herself that this is okay this is my hawk I'm in control I was telling myself and it was all I could do to breathe she too was bare headed and I grabbed the hood from the box as before but as I brought it up to her face I looked into her eyes and saw something blank and crazy in her stare sub madness from a distant country so again we've got this sense of danger and other NASA gained this blank and crazy stare this madness as if she's from a completely different world I didn't recognize her so remember before and I haven't written this here but remember previously she seemed to be able to explain what must be going through the smaller Hawkes mind and she seemed to show compassion and an understanding of how overwhelming this must be for the hawk whereas in comparison she says I didn't recognize her here so this hawk in comparison she just doesn't seem to have that connection she doesn't have that understanding this isn't my Hulk notice that contrast okay from this is my hawk to this inability to accept that she'll be able to look after this hawk the hood was on the ring numbers checked at the bird back in the box the yellow form folded the money exchanged and all I could think was but this isn't my hawk so look at the repetition again so she's starting to slowly convince herself that she cannot take this Hawk slow panic I knew what I had to say and it was a monstrous each of etiquette this is really awkward I began but I really liked the first one do you think there's any chance I could take that one instead look at the ellipses that helps create that awkwardness that tension and the hesitation as well that she would have in even asking I tailed off his eyebrows were raised I started against thanks saying stupider things I'm sure the other falconer would like the larger bird she's more beautiful than the first one isn't she I know this is out of order but I could I would it be all right do you think an arm and on a desperate crazy barrage of incoherent appeals appeals so here we've got again ellipses so this again just shows how awkward and and how she's kind of hesitating as she's saying and what she is also note which I didn't meant haven't written down noticed the list of questions as well seems to be kind of a lengthy plea here for him to give her the different bird I'm sure nothing I said persuaded him more than the look on my face as I said as I said it at all white faced woman with wind wrecked hair and exhausted eyes was pleading with him on a quayside hands held out as if she were in a seaside production of Medea looking at me he must have sense that my stuttered request wasn't a simple one that there was something behind it that was very important there was a moment of total silence so notice also her description of herself and how desperate she is and note that she says he must have realized it's more than just the bird that was something else in this and here really she's referring to her grief she's obviously gone or is going through at this point a terrible time in her life with her wrecked hair and her exhausted eyes she is emotionally an emotional wreck and very very frail at this moment and I guess she's looking for a distraction and she said okay so like I said in a previous one I know I used to write more notes for thoughts and feelings but my fear is that question for when I did these videos before the practice papers always came up with thoughts of feelings but that's not necessarily the case anymore this is still quite a new exam and so we're still learning the format thoughts and feelings might come up but something else might so just be prepared for all kinds of questions and but if thoughts of feelings did come up I'd probably divide it in two first of all this anticipation and this tension that she feels in kind of even just the bird being revealed then this overwhelming feeling as well off of when she sees the bird and how she seems to be both fearful of it but also in also there's quite an interesting contrast there she does feel compassion for the for the smaller bird she seems to understand its situation and that's why I think potentially you could through all that parallels with the bird and McDonald she I think she appreciates how overwhelming it is for the bird because she's feeling quite overwhelming overwhelmed as well with her father's death and lastly I think she feels incredibly scared but really awkward when she is requesting the other bird so that's kind of how I would divide it