Welcome to English

Oliver Twist

How successful is Oliver Twist as a form of social protest?

• Plot (main events, overall arc)
• Character (motivations, traits, function within the story)
• Themes (poverty, social class)
• Context (The Victorian era – who was in power and how life was very different depending on what class you were in, poverty in the Victorian era)
• What a novel is and how it is different from other forms
• Key literary terminology (protagonist, antagonist, adjective, verb, contrast)

A Midsummer Night's Dream

What is Shakespeare saying about love?

• Plot (main events, overall arc)
• Character (motivations, traits, function within play)
• Themes (different types of love)
• What a play is and how it is different from other forms
• Key literary terminology (soliloquy, metaphor)
• Conventions of a Shakespearean comedy

Poetry

What can metaphors do that literal language can't?

• The difference between literal and metaphorical language
• Key literary terminology (tenor, vehicle, ground)

Sherlock Holmes

What is Doyle trying to teach us about human nature?

• Plot (main events, overall arc)
• Character (motivations, traits, function within the story)
• Context (The Victorian era, building on their knowledge from YR7 – focusing on the interest in science and the rational mind)
• Themes (justice and judgement, appearance versus reality, duality )
• Structure of Doyle’s detective stories
• Key literary terminology (foreshadowing, contrast, metaphor, descriptive verbs)

The Tempest

How should power be handled?

• Plot (main events, overall arc)
• Character (motivations, traits, function within the story)
• Themes (power)
• Elizabethan and Jacobean context (focusing on the obsession with travel, colonialism in Elizabethan era)
• Conventions of a Shakespearean comedy and tragedy and so tragicomedy
• Key literary terminology (pathos, tragicomedy, symbol)

How can fiction teach us about the world?

• Plot (main events, overall arc)
• Character (motivations, traits, function within the story) • Themes (power)
• Historical events and ideology that Orwell’s allegorical novella reflects and explores
• Key literary terminology (allegory, propaganda, authorial intent, satire)

Jane Eyre

How should one respond to injustice and hypocrisy?

• Character (motivations, traits, function within the story)
• Themes ( love and marriage, gender inequality, social status, isolation)
• Context (The Victorian era, building on their knowledge from 7 and 8, focusing on gender roles and social class system)
• Key literary terminology (juxtaposition, bildungsroman, internal monologue, allegory)

Romeo and Juliet

Why do Romeo and Juliet die?

• Character (motivations, traits, function within the story)
• Themes (love, fate, violence, patriarchy)
• Conventions of a Shakespearean tragedy
• Context (Elizabethan era with focus on patriarchy and role gender played)
• Key Literary terminology (sonnet, prologue, hyperbole, tragic flaw, foreshadowing)

Poetry

How is poetry a powerful form of storytelling?

• Epic poetry
• Key literary terminology (extended metaphor)

Macbeth

Language Paper 1

How can ambition be a dangerous thing? / How do the choices writers make affect readers?

• Plot – key events, narrative arc
• Characters – each individual construct’s development, relationship with others and role within play
• Themes and how they are explored (including guilt; ambition; appearance versus reality; supernatural; kingship and power)
• Conventions of drama and Shakespearean and classical tragedy (characteristics of tragic hero, hubris, hamartia, pathos, anagnorisis and catharsis)
• Jacobean context (social, political, cultural – in particular expectations of gender, religion, divine rule of kings, beliefs in supernatural, current events surrounding James 1)
• The deliberate language and structural choices made by Shakespeare (including dramatic irony, symbols and motifs, euphemisms, different approaches to speech to convey character)
• Role of audience

A Christmas Carol

How successful is A Christmas Carol as a form of social protest?

• Plot – key events, narrative arc
• Characters – each individual construct’s development, relationship with others and role within novella
• Themes and how they are explored (redemption, greed, charity, social inequality and justice, family, poverty, responsibility)
• Victorian context (social, political, cultural – the New Poor Law and treatment of the poor, class system, Christianity, the development of Christmas into the holiday we know now)
• The deliberate language and structural choices made by Dickens (including symbolism and motifs, similes, pathetic fallacy, sentence construction, narrative voice) and his motivations for writing the novella (Dickens’ view on the New Poor Law and treatment of the poor)
• Essay writing: unpicking the various elements needed to write a successful essay (structure, language choice, phrases, use of quotations); forming and developing a personal response to the text that shows both critical thinking and clarity of expression
• The social impact of the novella ( increased awareness of social inequality and injustice, influence on perception of Christmas)

Poetry

How can poetry educate and illustrate different perspectives?

• Core themes – power (power of nature, humans, memory, power of the individual, abuse of power) and conflict (conflict between humans and nature, war – impact and reality, inner conflict, conflict with identity)
• Time periods or events connected to study – WW1 and 2, Romantic period, Crimean War, Vietnam War, Iraq War, British colonialism (education)
• Language and Structural features include – imagery, metaphor and simile, personification, onomatopoeia, juxtaposition, oxymoron, repetition, enjambment, caesura, end stopping, assonance and consonance, tone, rhyme scheme, rhythm
• Unseen poetry – Selection of poems to practice the art of discussing a poem without any pre-teaching; using their knowledge of poetic devices and features to apply to new poems to unpick meaning and how they are designed to affect the reader
• Comparative writing –unpicking the various elements needed to write a successful comparative essay (structure, language choice, phrases, use of quotations); forming and developing a personal response to the text that shows both critical thinking and clarity of expression

An Inspector Calls

Language Paper 2

Why is responsibility a crucial lesson?

How can words stir change in a reader?

• Plot – key events, narrative arc Characters – each individual construct’s development, relationship with others and role within play
• Themes and how they are explored (social and individual responsibility, class, age, gender)
• Conventions of drama; context (social, political, cultural) of both the Edwardian era and the post war era (the impact of the war on the rigid class structure and gender dynamics of society, the shift to a welfare state)
• The deliberate language and structural choices made by Priestley (including dramatic irony, symbolism, imagery, stage directions, monologues and persuasive rhetoric)
• • Priestley’s motivations for writing the play (socialist message he wished to impart)
• The impact of the play on audiences; the socialist and capitalist ideologies in relation to the play
• Essay writing: unpicking the various elements needed to write a successful essay (structure, language choice, phrases, use of quotations); forming and developing a personal response to the text that shows both critical thinking and clarity of expression
• Looking at a range of non-fiction sources to discuss language and structural decisions made in order to influence a reader: persuasive writing features, different types of non-fiction, voice, tone

Completion of power and conflict cluster poetry alongside interleaved content of all other lit and lang

(See power and conflict YR10) Revision of all Lang and Lit content

Consolidation of all of the knowledge taught in YR10;

Continuation of essay writing skills – both the elements of a successful essay and how to construct a critical argument and communicate it successfully.

Othello by William Shakespeare

Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

To what extent is Othello a tragic hero?

Is Tess an instance of what Hardy described as "the worthy encompassed by the inevitable”?

Is Willy Loman a symbol of the post- capitalist American Nightmare?

• plot and narrative elements and structural devices which shape the characters and their relationships (particularly Othello, Cassio and Desdemon and Othello's nemesis Iago)
• dominant themes (including politics, patriarchy, hypocrisy, purity...) and tropes of masculinity, honesty, and corruption.
• the political and social context in which Shakespeare's text was composed and received
• aspects of tragedy (including the characteristics of a tragic hero, according to Aristotle; a fall; hamartia and hubris; anagnorisis; pathos; catharsis...);
• dramaturgy and stage craft including semantic and pragmatic reading of the text

Songs of Innocence and of Experience by William Blake

What constitutes 'innocence' and 'experience' for Blake?

• Students will study a wide range of Blake’s Songs in detail, applying close attention to Blake’s use of symbols and metaphor, as well as voice through the characters who inhabit the worlds of Innocence and Experience;
• dominant themes across the Songs (including radicalism, the freedom of the individual and free will, imagination, nature, the manifestation of God, the abuse of power, oppression, corruption, class, race, education...) and imagery (e.g. of constraint and binding, reflecting his antipathy towards hierarchies and power structures that seek to impose their will and ideology on the common man, especially children);
• the social and political context which shaped Blake’s writing and how he was a sympathiser to both the French and American Revolutions and how his anti-establishment ethos meant he constantly questioned and attacked the actions, motivations and legitimacy of the authorities of his day, namely the Church, government and monarchy;

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

How is the pen a tool of protest?

• plot and narrative elements and structural devices (e.g. flashback, representing the burden of Amir’s sins) which shape the characters, particularly the protagonists Amir and Hassan, and their relationships;
• dominant themes (including issues of power and ethnicity and organised religion, the power of nations, religious extremism, gender politics...) and motifs, including the significance of settings (e.g. Kabul);
• The political context and Hosseini’s political intent of humanising a region for western readers which is remote or clouded by negative media coverage – which he achieves through a narrator who is a writer himself, on a mission to tell the truth about himself and his country, highlighting the strength of the pen as a tool of protest.
• Hosseini’s commentary on gender politics, class and ethnicity by his representation of contemporary Afghan society;
• relevant features of post-modern literature e.g. relating to narratology.

How successful are the texts as forms of social protest?

• plot and narrative elements and structural devices which shape the characters and their relationships
• dominant themes
• the political and social context of the texts
• structural devices within drama/novels/extracts
• relevant genre conventions

Revision of Tragedy and Social Protest Texts

Revision of all texts and completion of NEA