IAB Poems Exam Preparation Strategies

Hello and welcome to another Try Tutors video. In today's video I wanted to go through some questions and model answers for two of the IAB poems this year. I constructed this sort of exercise sort of to mimic how it will be asked in your final exam with 15 marks based on two poems with an intertextual question at the end so obviously I have no idea what poems are going to come up in your exam. I've just chosen two of them and I thought we could work through them together so that you can understand exactly what markers are looking for in these styles of questioning and so that you know what to give in your answers and how to break down the questions. So we're going to go through the questions first and then I'll encourage you to pause the video to try write your answers yourself and then resume the video when you're ready to mark it through. So the first three questions are based on a tenant. The tenant. There is no room for you in my heart. The only tenant who ever lived there left some luggage behind. I didn't evict her. She simply left without a word. I keep hoping she will come back and collect the luggage, or at least arrange for disposal, clean out the place, throw out old memories. I could possibly live with the marks on the wall. Some are completely indelible. Some I even like. But you see, I am afraid, if it all goes. What will I do with all that empty space? So as you can see, the first step to answering poetry questions is to reread the poem. Obviously, you've seen this poem before, you've studied this poem, but have a quick read through it to make sure you are all caught up in all the themes and all the figures of speech and all the poetic devices, because obviously you've studied 16 poems at this point. So you need to make sure that you just refresh your memory to read through the poem again, whether it's in your reading time or before you start answering your poetry questions. The next step would be to read through the questions and as you read through the questions you should be taking a highlighter or a pen or a pencil and circling the keywords of the question and specifically you should be circling where your marks are coming from. So it's quite similar to what I spoke about in my comprehension video in terms of how you need to be approaching the question. You need to sort of step into the marker's shoes and try and figure out where's the marker allocating these marks, how am I going to ensure that I've given enough information so that I can get the maximum amount of marks. So question number one, starting off really strong with a four marker, refer to the title of the poem. Evaluate whether the title enhances or distracts from the tone and theme of the poem. So as you can see there's a lot going on in that question. So instead of being overwhelmed by it, what we need to do is we need to go ahead and circle where our marks are coming from. So immediately I can see I'm going to need to refer to the title. So I'm going to have to explain the title and refer me to the title. quote as well so I'm going to have to make close reference, quote the title, explain the title for one mark so I would circle title. The next thing I see I need to do is I need to explain the tone of the poem and then I'm also going to have to explain the theme of the poem so already I've racked up three out of the four marks and lastly I'm going to have to give a logical reason as to why the title enhances or distracts from this tone and theme. So I've got there four different things to focus on and I can already see I can have a nice long answer. full sentences, four full sentences, going through each of those points that I've discussed to make it a complete answer. Number two, refer to line one, explain the effectiveness of the choice of pronoun. Two marks. So what I need to do over here is I first need to state what the pronoun is. I need to quote it and say what type of pronoun it is, and then I'd circle the word effectiveness, and I need to talk about why that choice of pronoun is effective. And number three, refer to stanza four. Explain what the speaker means when it is related that some are completely indelible. So honestly, this is one of the simpler questions that you could be asked because it's purely about meaning. So what I would do over here is I would make sure to underline the quote and make sure I explain that quote on a sort of literal, very basic level. And then I would highlight what the speaker means. And I would explain this quote in terms of the message of the poem, what the speaker might mean by this line. So I'd encourage you to pause and to try write your answers out for these three questions. Now that you're back, let's move to the second half, Strangers Forever. Each of us is a passenger seated in one huge compartment, going we do not know where. All strangers, thrown together by chance, who travel without arriving. Who can read the whispers of your mind when they are hidden even from you? Though you open a window in the chambers of your heart, though you strive to say what you feel, and in striving reach a state of understanding, there is still one part, one small part, that remains your own, one part that neither I nor anyone else will ever penetrate. Forever strangers. So refer to the poem Strangers Forever. Question four is referring just to this poem. Who can read the whispers of your mind when they are hidden even from you? Explain the meaning of these lines in the context of the poem. Three marks. So do you see over here I'm going to have to explain the meaning of the lines and then I'm going to have to explain the context of the poem. Now that only adds up to two things. So I'm going to have to make sure that for either the meaning or the context, I explain it very thoroughly, that I give a quote, and that I really explain myself so that I can get that maximum three marks, and preferably explain two different aspects of the meaning, or two different aspects of the context, to get to those three marks. And then question five is our intertextual question, where we need to refer to both The Tenant and Strangers Forever. Refer to the poems The Tenant and Strangers Forever. the poems utilize similar structures, critically compare the poet's decisions to present their poems in this way. So with an intertextual question you can either have one where it's just discussing the two different poems and their utilization of a certain technique, like this one. Sometimes it could be which one does this thing in a better way, and other times it could be does this poem support another one. For any of those styles of questions we have to follow the same techniques as for our other poetry questions. And even the same techniques that we would follow in a comprehension. We circle those key words. We circle where our marks are coming from. We explain each poem thoroughly. And then at the end, we sort of come to a logical conclusion. And we explain our reasoning. Why the one is better than the other. Why they support each other. Or in this case, we are just having a discussion as to how they use structure effectively. So take a pause and complete these last two questions. So I hope that you've given them a go. What we're going to do now is get on to some of the muddle answers. Now remember this is English so no one's going to have the exact same answers as each other. So I've just written out a couple answers which I think would work. If you have different interpretations of the poem that is perfectly fine, that is the beauty of poetry. It's about though what I really want you to focus on as I go through my answers is focus on how they're structured and how much information is given for the marker location that was given. So that's what you really need to be focusing on is the answering techniques. how I use the words of the question to guide the answer, how I've integrated quotes or utilized quotes as proof but also explain the quotes, and also how much is written per mark allocation. So let's take a look and mark along as we go. So question one was refer to the title of the poem, evaluate whether the title enhances or distracts from the tone and theme of the poem. So I've written over here. I've tried to keep these answers as simple as possible, really showcasing where the marks are coming from. The title of the tenant indicates a person who rents a space for a temporary amount of time. The title serves as an extended metaphor as the tenant represents the ex-lover who has left memories behind for the landlord who is the speaker. The tone of the poem is reflective and melancholic as the speaker reflects on the ex-lover will come back and collect the luggage. The theme of heartbreak and the ending of a relationship is seen when the speaker proclaims to a prospective lover that there is no room for you in my heart. Ultimately, the title enhances the tone and the mood as it emphasizes the speaker's melancholy of how the relationship did not last forever like a tenant who is only there for a short amount of time. So as you can see over here, it actually lands up being five sentences, but the first two sentences are just for one mark. It's really explained that title thoroughly. The next sentence you can see is the tone of the poem. So it's very clear what that sentence is intended to do and what mark I'm intending to get for that sentence. Then I've moved on to the theme. And then lastly, I've ended off with ultimately where I've given my final answer, which is that it enhances. I see there I wrote tone and mood. It should have been tone and theme based on the question. So my apologies for that. And then I've used a keyword over here, which is emphasizes. So I've said that this title enhances because it emphasizes. and then I've explained what it is emphasizing and how it relates to the title. So just like in a maths question where you have to show all your working of how you get to a certain answer, the same thing applies for English. You have to walk me through your lines of reasoning and all the proof that you have in order to get to a conclusion and to make a statement. Remember as well is that you need to include quotes especially if it's three marks or more. So make sure you include quotes and that you explain your quotes. Question two. Refer to line 1. Explain the effectiveness of the choice of pronoun. The first line uses the second person pronoun of you. That's already one mark, quoting the pronoun and saying what type of pronoun it is. Now, the second mark actually explaining its effectiveness. The choice of pronoun emphasises the authenticity of the poem, as the speaker is talking directly to a new potential lover and claiming that he is not yet over his previous relationship. like i said you can use your own words with this you don't have to obviously you can't have used exact same words as i have but that sort of idea needs to come across and it needs to be well explained question three refer to stands of fall explain what the speaker means when it is related that some are completely indelible this line shows how some marks left on the wall by the tenant cannot be altered or removed the speaker uses this imagery to emphasize how the memories of the former beloved cannot be undone and that some memories will stay with him forever. Moving on to question four. Who can read the whispers of your mind when they are hidden even from you? Explain the meaning of these lines in the context of the poem. These lines refer to the theme of the poem, which is how we cannot know others. They remain strangers to us forever. The speaker says that we are strangers forever because we do not even know ourselves. So how can we be expected to know anyone else? The context of this poem is about a train full of passengers. The speaker uses this context to emphasize his message that just a bunch of strangers on the train don't know each other. So too, we don't know ourselves. So here you can see I've given one mark for the meaning, one mark for the context, and one mark linking them together. And question five, our intertextual question. refer to the poems The Tenant and Strangers Forever. The poems utilize similar structures, critically compare the poet's decisions to present their poems in this way. And just a little bit of a hint with any of your poems, when you're ever struggling with something to say, or you feel like you're not using enough sort of poetic terminology, I would always reach for words like tone, theme, mood. They are usually going to help you quite a bit when you are answering your questions. So you can even see in question four I brought in the theme because I felt like I needed some sort of poetic device or poetic terminology. And you're going to see in question five, because we are talking about structure, that when we're asked why the poets are presenting their poems in this way, it's going to be effective to link it to the theme or the message in some way. The structure of the tenet is filled with enjambment and sigira, whilst having no fixed rhyme scheme or stance of regularity. This is used to emphasize how the speaker is talking from his heart, in an authentic way, and is not worrying with conventional structural elements of the poem. Lines two to four, the only tenant who ever lived there, left some luggage behind, uses enjambment to reinforce the continued heartbreak the speaker feels. The structure of Strangers Forever is one long stanza written in free verse with much enjambment. Lines such as each of us is a passenger are spread over many lines to emphasize the directionless nature of life. which is unstructured and the continuation of the train journey which is life. Ultimately, the structures of both poems emphasize their respective themes. They both use enjambment and a lack of structure, but the tenant uses it to show heartbreak while Strangers Forever uses it to express a sentiment about life. Thank you so much for watching. I hope that you found this video helpful. Please remember to like and subscribe. Good luck for your exams. I hope that you found going through those questions in that way to be of assistance. As I said earlier, I don't know what the poems are going to be, but hopefully if you follow the structure of reasoning and structure of answering, then you will feel confident in the exam. So good luck.

So we're going to go through the questions first and then I'll encourage you to pause the video to try write your answers yourself and then resume the video when you're ready to mark it through. So the first three questions are based on a tenant. The tenant.

There is no room for you in my heart. The only tenant who ever lived there left some luggage behind. I didn't evict her. She simply left without a word. I keep hoping she will come back and collect the luggage, or at least arrange for disposal, clean out the place, throw out old memories.

I could possibly live with the marks on the wall. Some are completely indelible. Some I even like. But you see, I am afraid, if it all goes. What will I do with all that empty space?

So as you can see, the first step to answering poetry questions is to reread the poem. Obviously, you've seen this poem before, you've studied this poem, but have a quick read through it to make sure you are all caught up in all the themes and all the figures of speech and all the poetic devices, because obviously you've studied 16 poems at this point. So you need to make sure that you just refresh your memory to read through the poem again, whether it's in your reading time or before you start answering your poetry questions.

The next step would be to read through the questions and as you read through the questions you should be taking a highlighter or a pen or a pencil and circling the keywords of the question and specifically you should be circling where your marks are coming from. So it's quite similar to what I spoke about in my comprehension video in terms of how you need to be approaching the question. You need to sort of step into the marker's shoes and try and figure out where's the marker allocating these marks, how am I going to ensure that I've given enough information so that I can get the maximum amount of marks.

So question number one, starting off really strong with a four marker, refer to the title of the poem. Evaluate whether the title enhances or distracts from the tone and theme of the poem. So as you can see there's a lot going on in that question.

So instead of being overwhelmed by it, what we need to do is we need to go ahead and circle where our marks are coming from. So immediately I can see I'm going to need to refer to the title. So I'm going to have to explain the title and refer me to the title.

quote as well so I'm going to have to make close reference, quote the title, explain the title for one mark so I would circle title. The next thing I see I need to do is I need to explain the tone of the poem and then I'm also going to have to explain the theme of the poem so already I've racked up three out of the four marks and lastly I'm going to have to give a logical reason as to why the title enhances or distracts from this tone and theme. So I've got there four different things to focus on and I can already see I can have a nice long answer.

full sentences, four full sentences, going through each of those points that I've discussed to make it a complete answer. Number two, refer to line one, explain the effectiveness of the choice of pronoun. Two marks.

So what I need to do over here is I first need to state what the pronoun is. I need to quote it and say what type of pronoun it is, and then I'd circle the word effectiveness, and I need to talk about why that choice of pronoun is effective. And number three, refer to stanza four. Explain what the speaker means when it is related that some are completely indelible.

So honestly, this is one of the simpler questions that you could be asked because it's purely about meaning. So what I would do over here is I would make sure to underline the quote and make sure I explain that quote on a sort of literal, very basic level. And then I would highlight what the speaker means. And I would explain this quote in terms of the message of the poem, what the speaker might mean by this line.

So I'd encourage you to pause and to try write your answers out for these three questions. Now that you're back, let's move to the second half, Strangers Forever. Each of us is a passenger seated in one huge compartment, going we do not know where.

All strangers, thrown together by chance, who travel without arriving. Who can read the whispers of your mind when they are hidden even from you? Though you open a window in the chambers of your heart, though you strive to say what you feel, and in striving reach a state of understanding, there is still one part, one small part, that remains your own, one part that neither I nor anyone else will ever penetrate. Forever strangers.

So refer to the poem Strangers Forever. Question four is referring just to this poem. Who can read the whispers of your mind when they are hidden even from you?

Explain the meaning of these lines in the context of the poem. Three marks. So do you see over here I'm going to have to explain the meaning of the lines and then I'm going to have to explain the context of the poem. Now that only adds up to two things.

So I'm going to have to make sure that for either the meaning or the context, I explain it very thoroughly, that I give a quote, and that I really explain myself so that I can get that maximum three marks, and preferably explain two different aspects of the meaning, or two different aspects of the context, to get to those three marks. And then question five is our intertextual question, where we need to refer to both The Tenant and Strangers Forever. Refer to the poems The Tenant and Strangers Forever.

the poems utilize similar structures, critically compare the poet's decisions to present their poems in this way. So with an intertextual question you can either have one where it's just discussing the two different poems and their utilization of a certain technique, like this one. Sometimes it could be which one does this thing in a better way, and other times it could be does this poem support another one. For any of those styles of questions we have to follow the same techniques as for our other poetry questions.

And even the same techniques that we would follow in a comprehension. We circle those key words. We circle where our marks are coming from.

We explain each poem thoroughly. And then at the end, we sort of come to a logical conclusion. And we explain our reasoning.

Why the one is better than the other. Why they support each other. Or in this case, we are just having a discussion as to how they use structure effectively.

So take a pause and complete these last two questions. So I hope that you've given them a go. What we're going to do now is get on to some of the muddle answers.

Now remember this is English so no one's going to have the exact same answers as each other. So I've just written out a couple answers which I think would work. If you have different interpretations of the poem that is perfectly fine, that is the beauty of poetry.

It's about though what I really want you to focus on as I go through my answers is focus on how they're structured and how much information is given for the marker location that was given. So that's what you really need to be focusing on is the answering techniques. how I use the words of the question to guide the answer, how I've integrated quotes or utilized quotes as proof but also explain the quotes, and also how much is written per mark allocation. So let's take a look and mark along as we go.

So question one was refer to the title of the poem, evaluate whether the title enhances or distracts from the tone and theme of the poem. So I've written over here. I've tried to keep these answers as simple as possible, really showcasing where the marks are coming from. The title of the tenant indicates a person who rents a space for a temporary amount of time.

The title serves as an extended metaphor as the tenant represents the ex-lover who has left memories behind for the landlord who is the speaker. The tone of the poem is reflective and melancholic as the speaker reflects on the ex-lover will come back and collect the luggage. The theme of heartbreak and the ending of a relationship is seen when the speaker proclaims to a prospective lover that there is no room for you in my heart. Ultimately, the title enhances the tone and the mood as it emphasizes the speaker's melancholy of how the relationship did not last forever like a tenant who is only there for a short amount of time.

So as you can see over here, it actually lands up being five sentences, but the first two sentences are just for one mark. It's really explained that title thoroughly. The next sentence you can see is the tone of the poem.

So it's very clear what that sentence is intended to do and what mark I'm intending to get for that sentence. Then I've moved on to the theme. And then lastly, I've ended off with ultimately where I've given my final answer, which is that it enhances.

I see there I wrote tone and mood. It should have been tone and theme based on the question. So my apologies for that.

And then I've used a keyword over here, which is emphasizes. So I've said that this title enhances because it emphasizes. and then I've explained what it is emphasizing and how it relates to the title.

So just like in a maths question where you have to show all your working of how you get to a certain answer, the same thing applies for English. You have to walk me through your lines of reasoning and all the proof that you have in order to get to a conclusion and to make a statement. Remember as well is that you need to include quotes especially if it's three marks or more.

So make sure you include quotes and that you explain your quotes. Question two. Refer to line 1. Explain the effectiveness of the choice of pronoun. The first line uses the second person pronoun of you. That's already one mark, quoting the pronoun and saying what type of pronoun it is.

Now, the second mark actually explaining its effectiveness. The choice of pronoun emphasises the authenticity of the poem, as the speaker is talking directly to a new potential lover and claiming that he is not yet over his previous relationship. like i said you can use your own words with this you don't have to obviously you can't have used exact same words as i have but that sort of idea needs to come across and it needs to be well explained question three refer to stands of fall explain what the speaker means when it is related that some are completely indelible this line shows how some marks left on the wall by the tenant cannot be altered or removed the speaker uses this imagery to emphasize how the memories of the former beloved cannot be undone and that some memories will stay with him forever.

Moving on to question four. Who can read the whispers of your mind when they are hidden even from you? Explain the meaning of these lines in the context of the poem. These lines refer to the theme of the poem, which is how we cannot know others. They remain strangers to us forever.

The speaker says that we are strangers forever because we do not even know ourselves. So how can we be expected to know anyone else? The context of this poem is about a train full of passengers.

The speaker uses this context to emphasize his message that just a bunch of strangers on the train don't know each other. So too, we don't know ourselves. So here you can see I've given one mark for the meaning, one mark for the context, and one mark linking them together.

And question five, our intertextual question. refer to the poems The Tenant and Strangers Forever. The poems utilize similar structures, critically compare the poet's decisions to present their poems in this way. And just a little bit of a hint with any of your poems, when you're ever struggling with something to say, or you feel like you're not using enough sort of poetic terminology, I would always reach for words like tone, theme, mood. They are usually going to help you quite a bit when you are answering your questions.

So you can even see in question four I brought in the theme because I felt like I needed some sort of poetic device or poetic terminology. And you're going to see in question five, because we are talking about structure, that when we're asked why the poets are presenting their poems in this way, it's going to be effective to link it to the theme or the message in some way. The structure of the tenet is filled with enjambment and sigira, whilst having no fixed rhyme scheme or stance of regularity.

This is used to emphasize how the speaker is talking from his heart, in an authentic way, and is not worrying with conventional structural elements of the poem. Lines two to four, the only tenant who ever lived there, left some luggage behind, uses enjambment to reinforce the continued heartbreak the speaker feels. The structure of Strangers Forever is one long stanza written in free verse with much enjambment. Lines such as each of us is a passenger are spread over many lines to emphasize the directionless nature of life. which is unstructured and the continuation of the train journey which is life.

Ultimately, the structures of both poems emphasize their respective themes. They both use enjambment and a lack of structure, but the tenant uses it to show heartbreak while Strangers Forever uses it to express a sentiment about life. Thank you so much for watching.

I hope that you found this video helpful. Please remember to like and subscribe. Good luck for your exams.

I hope that you found going through those questions in that way to be of assistance. As I said earlier, I don't know what the poems are going to be, but hopefully if you follow the structure of reasoning and structure of answering, then you will feel confident in the exam. So good luck.

Transcript for:IAB Poems Exam Preparation Strategies

Transcript for:
IAB Poems Exam Preparation Strategies