Aim: to understand and apply SMILE and develop meaning.  For people to express themselves  To share a thought  To comment on something that happened  To share pain/ wonder/ happiness  To raise awareness  To make others laugh  Etc etc etc  By emphasising ideas/themes:

 The literary techniques they use

“love” “hate” “anguish” “Violence” “happiness” ‘Peace” “long lines” “short lines” “punctuation” “stanza length” “alliteration” “onomatopoeia” “simile”  For us to show we know the theme of the poem  To appreciate the skills the writer uses  To show how 2 poems are similar or different  To analyse the words they use (and their power)  Note the use of lit. techniques  See how structure effects the poem  See if we can appreciate its importance.  Umm... There is a lot to remember but it certainly is not ‘crap’.

 The GCSE is set up to inspire and educate you. Such as raising awareness of how unequal society can be in ‘Two scavengers..” or how terrible oppression is through ‘Not my business.”  Though it might not seem ‘cool’ , anyone with a brain can see these are important issues, powerfully put. You may not like all of them, but some will definitely have relevance to you.  Yes!  But rather than sit and philosophise about it – you have to be prepared to write an essay on it all.

 Though it might seem intimidating – all you have to do for success in this part of the paper is...  See a dentist, but don’t worry for now... It’s not that kind of smile. SMILE stands for:  Structure  Meaning  Images  Language  Effect on you

Analyse all these areas and you’ve covered all the things the examiner is looking for that we mentioned in slide 4. (Now stop grinning and take a look back to that slide)  It’s the way the poem is on the page.

 How is it set out?  How many stanzas? how many lines?  How many words per line?  What kind of punctuation has been used?

 All of these effect how we read and understand the poem.  Ok. ‘Island Man’ starts with ‘morning’ it’s a short line, which gives a very sudden feel to the opening of the poem, indicating that the person in the poem has suddenly woken up. The shortness of the line represents the moment of waking.  Also the offset line ‘Groggily, groggily’ shows that he is coming out of his dream uncomfortably because it is way over on the right side of the poem whereas the rest is on the left. This shows how awkward it is for him to wake to life in London by the lines placement, as it is awkward too.  Meaning.  You have to know what the poems are about in an obvious way and a deeper way.

 So ‘Half-Caste’ is about identity and racism, but it is also about the root meaning of words (half- caste= half-made), ignorance, standing up for yourself, political correctness etc.  What the poet makes you see in the situation they put you in. Basically what they bring to life.  So in ‘Not my business’ we see someone get ‘beat’ and ‘stuffed’ into a car as well as a house being woken terrifyingly as it is ‘booted’ ‘awake’ while the whole time the guy watching is holding a ‘yam’ close to his hungry ‘savouring mouth’.

 By describing it in this way, we can imagine it a lot better. The images feed our imaginations.  You’re right.. It is a bit, but the specific words can be analysed for effect as well as the image they proved. So ‘boot’ ‘awake’ shows us the violence and shock involved.  Language also refers to the techniques used to make the lines more powerful or memorable.  Keep an eye out for – personification, alliteration, metaphor, oxymoron, hyperbole, etc etc.  You’re mixing the words together. They do:

 ‘Vultures’ – metaphor: ‘telescopic eyes’  ‘Nothing’s changed’ – alliteration: ‘mean mouth’  ‘Two scavengers...’ – oxymoron: ‘small gulf’  ‘Night of...’ – personification: ‘feeding on my mother’  ‘What were...’ – simile: ‘speech... Like a song’  Only if you want to get a D – spotting them is easy, saying why they are there is what gets you marks.

 Alliteration helps to make the line memorable by the use of consecutive letters.  Similes help us imagine things more clearly  Personification brings something to life allowing us to imagine its motives.  Not quite – it refers to the effect on you. What does the poem get you thinking about, or make you feel.  You might empathise with a character, understand their point of view and generally agree or disagree with anything mentioned in slide 1 – where we looked at why poets write poems.  You could do that- but SMILE helps you unlock the poem, ordering it properly is how to get high marks. The best way to do this is by thinking of Meaning as the most important part with all the rest contributing to your understanding / emphasizing the meaning. I S

M L

E  They support M, I have no ideas about letters falling in love. But basically M is the writer’s main message and all the other points are elements to help get that point across.

 Kind of like if M was the structure of a house – then L would be doors, S would be windows, E would be carpet and I would the furniture; or something equally cheesily metaphor based.  Like this:

 Island man is all about homesickness and the dream of yesterday.(M) The writer presents us with the waking man’s dreams of home. (I) ‘Sun surfacing defiantly’ this shows a pride in his heritage and reflects how warm life was there for him, physically and mentally, (M,I) which is reinforced by the alliteration of ‘s’ which makes the line stand out. (L) It makes us feel sorry for the man who later has to go out to work on the ‘dull’ ‘grey’ North Circular, with the thoughts of home plaguing him all day. (E) The contrast between his past situation and present situation is powerful and clear, making us wonder why he swapped countries. (E)  It may well be a first, but that’s where practive comes in. For each poem you are studying write a S.M.I.L.E. list (3 of each)  S: S: S: , M: M: M:, I: I:... Etc, etc.

 Then try writing just about one part of it and see how you get on. For example M in nothing’s changed

 M: oppression, M: Anger, M: Racism.  Nothing’s changed is a poem all about oppression, we see this from the line ‘boy again’ as this shows the writer still feels as if he lives in an oppressive time where he is less of a man that a white man. It is also about racism as the whites have a fancy ‘brash’ restaurant while the blacks have ‘a working man’s cafe. It is also about anger as he says his ‘hands burn...for a bomb’ showing he wants to change things even by violence.  True – but it is not high level writing. For that you need to, first of all, mix the analysis points. So in the last slide we used M. Now lets try M and S:  Nothing’s changed is a poem all about oppression, we see this from the line ‘boy again’ as this shows the writer still feels as if he lives in an oppressive time where he is less of a man that a white man. (M) We are also shown the idea of going back to the past as the last line of the poem and the title are the same ‘nothing's changed’ showing the reader we have not progresses at all from where we started.(S)

 So this is how we start building our paragraphs!  Nothing’s changed is a poem all about oppression, we see this from the line ‘boy again’ as this shows the writer still feels as if he lives in an oppressive time where he is less of a man that a white man. (M) We are also shown the idea of going back to the past as the last line of the poem and the title are the same ‘nothing's changed’ showing the reader we have not progresses at all from where we started.(S) The idea that the inequality and oppression have always been around is represented clearly through the line ‘it’s in the bone.’ This refers to the natural order of inequality in South Africa, and that regardless of the changes that we supposed to happen under Mandela, the status of black people is the same; they are still unequal. (I)

 Good... You’ve got it! Always try to develop your analysis points using different parts of S.M.I.L.E.  Not quite – you may know how to analyse one, now you have to compare them. But this is easy:  You just take things that are similar or different in one poem or another and play them off each other depending on the questions  E.g. If your question is on oppression: – cross reference ‘Nothing’s changed’ ‘Limbo’ or ‘What were they like.’ On village life: ‘Blessing’ and ‘NOTS’  Origins and cultural identities (where you come from) - Limbo, Nothing's Changed, Island Man, Search for My Tongue, Unrelated Incidents, This Room, Presents from My Aunts in Pakistan, and Hurricane Hits England.

 • The difficulty of belonging to two different cultures - Island Man, Search for My Tongue, Presents from My Aunts in Pakistan, and Hurricane Hits England.

 • Anger at discrimination and racial prejudice in society - Nothing 's Changed, Two Scavengers in a Truck, Two Beautiful People in a Mercedes, Unrelated incidents, Half-Caste, and Not My Business.

 • Alienation (being left out and feeling alone) Nothing’s Changed, Search for My Tongue, Presents from My Aunts in Pakistan, and Hurricane in England.

 You have to write your response comparing how the writer’s have got their ideas across – so when you mention one paragraph analysis for one poem, show how it is similar or different to another and in what way. THIS IS WHERE YOU GET MOST MARKS!!!! Comparing the poems in detail and with insight (that means showing a lot of deeper knowledge about the poem)  Same way you started writing a paragraph

 Nothing’s changed is a poem all about oppression, we see this from the line ‘boy again’ as this shows the writer still feels as if he lives in an oppressive time where he is less of a man that a white man. (M) We are also shown the idea of going back to the past as the last line of the poem and the title are the same ‘nothing's changed’ showing the reader we have not progresses at all from where we started.(S) The idea that the inequality and oppression have always been around is represented clearly through the line ‘it’s in the bone.’ This refers to the natural order of inequality in South Africa, and that regardless of the changes that we supposed to happen under Mandela, the status of black people is the same; they are still unequal.  And now use a linking word or phrase to get the comparison going E.g. :  Similarly – in the same way – we also see this in – this idea is shows again in... Etc...  On the other hand – we see a difference – conversely – but the other poem – however... Etc...  (continued from paragraph)... the status of black people is the same; they are still unequal. Similarly there is inequality evident in ‘Two scavengers...’ where we see the ‘beautiful’ people being in a far better position than the ‘scavengers’. (M) The images are also very powerful ‘like some... Gargoyle’ showing how ‘ugly’ the bin men seem to the elegant couple. (I)

 Good start!  It should do – it’s a process... Like anything if you know the process you can understand how it works and how to do it. You couls plan like this:

 Poem A Poem B  M Sim M  I Dif I  L Sim L  E Sim E  S Dif S  Basically mention something from poem A and something similar in B then mention something in A being different, then something else similar or different in B, then sim / dif in A, then something else sim / dif in B, then something else... Etc etc... And just analyse how they’ve done it and what effect it has.  Getting good at it take practice, but you’ve got the basics now. There are dozens of ways to plan – work on what makes most sense to you!!!