Hello, everyone.

My name's Ms. Keller, and welcome to today's lesson where we are going to be focusing on three poems, "Neutral Tones" by Thomas Hardy, "Winter Swans" by Owen Sheers, and "When We Two Parted" by Lord Byron, and specifically we are going to be analysing how these poets use language, form, and structure to convey a sense of heartbreak in a natural setting.

Okay, so by the end of today's lesson, we will be able to plan an analytical response comparing "When We Two Parted" with either "Winter Swans" or "Neutral Tones." Today's keywords then, we have judiciously, thesis, correlative, autobiographical, and perceptions.

So what do these words mean? Judiciously means exercising good judgement in a thoughtful and careful manner.

A thesis is a central idea or argument in a written work.

Correlative means two things that are mutually related or dependent on each other.

Autobiographical means relating to or based on one's own life experiences, so writing about your own life.

And finally, perceptions are how individuals interpret their surroundings and the other people around them.

So how is today's lesson going to look? We're going to start by comparing the writers' ideas and notice that our apostrophe is on the outside of the s there, because we are talking about more than one writer.

So we're gonna be comparing all three writers' ideas.

And then in the second part of the lesson, we are going to focus on selecting your supporting evidence.

So I'd like just to start by focusing on what the question will look like.

So our Oak students, Jun and Alex, are discussing how to approach a poetry comparison question.

And Alex has never done this before.

And he says, "How do I go about answering this question? I don't know where to begin." And Jun says, "Don't worry, Alex, I'll help you! Let's start by breaking down what the question is asking us to do." So let's have a look at this question.

Compare the ways that love is presented in "When We Two Parted" and one other poem.

And Jun's advice here is to start by considering what it means to compare two things.

So at this point I am going to throw it out to you to have a discussion: What does the word compare mean? So have a brief discussion with the people around you about this, or if you're working on your own, that's okay, just take some notes on your paper or in your exercise book.

So pause the video here and then click Play when you're ready to discuss your responses.

Okay, welcome back.

Some fantastic discussions taking place there.

And I definitely overheard some of you using two very important pieces of vocabulary that we need to consider when we are comparing.

And those words are similarities and differences.

When we compare, we consider how similar two things are and how different they are.

So Jun's next piece of advice then focuses on this question focus.

So here that is love, but it could be relationships or it could be romance, or it could be attitudes to longing.

That'll change in every different question that you get.

And Jun says, you should always first focus on the key ideas that link to this question focus, and then how the writers convey these ideas.

So what he's trying to say here is that all of our analysis writing should be led by these key ideas and inferences from the text and supported by our language analysis.

So the final piece of advice Jun has is that this question will give you one poem and it's up to you to choose another poem to compare it to.

So now they've explored what the question is like, it is time for Alex to begin comparing key ideas.

So he asked Jun, "How will I know which aspects of each poem to compare?" And Jun says, "Imagine the two poets sitting together and debating their poems. What would they agree and disagree about?" And I really like that idea of thinking about the key ideas of these poems as perhaps attitudes or maybe revealing the belief system or the opinions of our writer.

So in order to compare them, we put these two sets of opinions or beliefs up against each other and think about what they might have in common.

And when we've done that, Jun says, we then need to use comparative and correlative conjunctions to build our initial comparisons.

So let's compare "When We Two Parted" with "Winter Swans." What does Byron suggest about love in "When We Two Parted"? Alex says, "In 'When We Two Parted,' love causes the speaker sorrow and anguish." 'And now what about in 'Winter Swans'?" "Well, in 'Winter Swans' love is something the couple find exhausting and painful." "So can we use a comparative conjunction to join these two sentences together?" "In 'When We Two Parted' love causes a speaker sorrow and anguish, whereas in 'Winter Swans' it is something the couple will find exhausting and painful." And notice here we've got this comparative conjunction, whereas, which shows us that these two ideas are different.

"Great job, Alex.

Now it's time to use correlative conjunctions to add a topic sentence summarising the relationship between these ideas." And Alex says, "How do I do that?" "Well, we need to start by considering what is similar or different about the two ideas." So Alex thinks about this and he says, "Byron and Sheers discuss the effect of love in their poems. They associate it with different emotions." Now, if we have a look at Alex's response here, we can see that actually in the first sentence, the word "and" indicates that he's found a similarity, both poems do the same thing.

And then in the second sentence, we've got that word "different," which shows us that they are doing something different.

So Jun suggests rephrasing that idea, adding in "both" and "yet." This correlative conjunction, a pair of words, which we might use to show the relationship between two things.

So when he rephrases it, Alex says, "Both Byron and Sheers discuss the effects of love in their poems, yet they associate it with different emotions." So if we notice here, Alex is now using "both" to show that similarity and "yet" to show the difference.

"Fantastic," Jun says.

"Now let's put both of your ideas together." So we're going to take his idea with the comparative conjunction and his idea using the correlative conjunctions.

"Both Byron and Sheers discuss the effect of love in their poems, yet they associate it with different feelings.

In 'When We Two Parted,' love causes the speaker sorrow and anguish, whereas in 'Winter Swans,' it is something the couple find exhausting and painful." And look at the amazing difference that those comparative and correlative conjunctions are making.

It's really clear in this response now whether Alex is highlighting similarities or whether he is highlighting differences.

And we are really starting to see the relationship between these two poems. So let's pause here and check our understanding.

What are correlative conjunctions? Pause the video while you read through these three options and decide which one you think best answers this question.

Click Pause, and then when you are ready to continue, click Play and I'll reveal the answer.

Okay, welcome back.

Well done to those of you who said A, correlative conjunctions are pairs of words, which join two ideas and showed the relationship between them.

So now it is time to practise our knowledge of comparing writers' ideas.

And what we'd like you to do is to redraft the paragraph below using correlative and comparative conjunctions to show the relationship between the ideas.

So we've got the original paragraph down there on the left, and then on the right we have got a reminder of these conjunctions, both comparative and correlative.

Remember, with correlative conjunctions, we need to use both words in that pair.

So pause the video for as much time as you need to give this a really good go, read the paragraph carefully and think about where you are spotting similarities and differences between the ideas.

So pause the video here and then click Play when you're ready to continue, and we'll feed back some responses.

Okay, welcome back.

So let's have a go at redrafting this paragraph together.

And we'll start by separating it into fragments that show each individual idea.

And then from there we can reassemble it.

So looking in at these fragments below, we can use a correlative conjunction to combine these two similar ideas.

If we have a look at the ideas highlighted in purple, Byron demonstrates how love can change a person's perceptions of a partner or a relationship.

And then in "Neutral Tones" Hardy indicates that someone's perceptions of their partner can change.

So if we see there that we have got that similarity in that both of these fragments are discussing someone's perceptions of somebody else.

So let's group them together then using a correlative conjunction, both Hardy and Byron demonstrate how love can change a person's perceptions of a partner or a relationship.

So let's have a look at what we've got left.

So we've got in "When We Two Parted," Byron implies that the speaker's feelings about the elicit affair have soured over time, beginning sorrowful and broken-hearted and ending up as feelings of bitter regret and shame.

And then when we're talking about "Neutral Tones".

We view this idea from a different perspective, since the speaker is the one who falls victim into these changing perceptions.

His partner falls out of love with him and her perceptions of the relationship shift from excitement to boredom.

So are these ideas similar or different? Although we have these similar changing perceptions, they don't necessarily change in the same way because in "When We Two Parted' Byron's speaker's feelings change from feelings of sorrow to feelings of shame.

Whereas in "Neutral Tones," the speaker of the poem's perceptions don't necessarily change and they feel every bit is brokenhearted at the end of the poem as they do at the beginning of the poem.

However, he's actually the victim of someone else's changing perceptions, and his partner's perceptions of him change as she falls out of love with him.

So we do have that different step.

So let's combine these two ideas using a comparative conjunction.

In "When We Two Parted," Byron implies that the speaker's feelings about the illicit affair have soured over time, beginning sorrowful and brokenhearted and ending up as feelings of bitter regret and shame.

However, in "Neutral Tones," we view this idea from a different perspective, since it is the speaker who falls victim to these changing perceptions.

His partner falls out of love with him and her perceptions of the relationship shift from excitement to boredom.

So the word "and" appears quite a lot here and it should be used mostly for similar ideas.

So let's check our usage.

So in total then we've got five ands, but most of them are used correctly and only two of them need to be redrafted.

So in this first example, the and could change to a yet, which is a coordinating conjunction that shows progression.

So the speaker's feelings about the elicit affair have soured over time, beginning sorrowful and broken-hearted, yet ending up as feelings of bitter regret and shame.

And this second and, we could actually rephrase this final sentence using correlative conjunctions.

So not only does his partner fall out of love with him, but also her perceptions of the relationship shift from excitement to boredom.

So as you can see there, just by using these comparative and correlative conjunctions, we can add a lot of detail to our response, and we can show clearly the relationship between the two things that we are comparing.

Okay, we've reached the halfway point, so well done for your efforts so far.

So now we've mastered comparing the writer's ideas, it is time to focus on selecting our supporting evidence.

So effective analytical writing include relevant evidence throughout.

Let's return to Jun and Alex who are discussing this part of comparative writing.

So Alex says, "Now I've mastered making my initial comparison, what do I need to do next?" And Jun says, "It's time to find some evidence from the text to support your ideas.

References to the text should be precise, accurate, and judiciously chosen." So let's just focus on these three words.

I'd like you to discuss this with the people around you or some notes if you're working on your own, what do they mean, precise, accurate, and judiciously? Pause the video while you have a good think about this, and then when you're ready to discuss your answers, click Play and we'll continue.

Okay, welcome back, everyone.

Some fantastic discussions taking place there.

It was really nice to hear people using their logic skills to try to work out what these words mean.

So I overheard some people deducing that precise and accurate were both adjectives, since they would be used to describe something, and judiciously be an -ly word gave some people a clue that it might be an adverb.

So it might describe how you do something, which we can see here it does.

It's how you choose something.

So let's have a look at these words in a bit more detail and think about what advice they give us for choosing supporting evidence.

It needs to be precise.

And the way that we do that is we use only what we need to analyse.

There's no need to write two or three lines of poetry if our point only focuses on one or two words.

And ideally you should aim for no more than two full lines of poetry, and ideally, less than that if you can.

So accurate, then it's really important that we copy the quotation exactly as it's appears in the text.

So making sure that we've spelled things correctly, that we use punctuation where we see it on the original text.

And if we do need to make some modifications so that it fits the context of our analysis, we must use square brackets.

So we can either use a pair of square brackets around a word or a few letters that we wish to change, perhaps changing a verb from the present tense to the past tense, or we can use the ellipsis there in the square brackets to show that a word or a phrase or a sentence has been cut out, because we didn't need to analyse it.

And this is a great way for us to be precise, because it means that we could perhaps choose two lines from a poem that are five or six lines apart and use the square brackets there to show that gap without having to copy out the entire chunk of text.

And this last word then, judiciously.

The way to choose your quotes judiciously is not to settle for the first relevant quotation that you can find, and instead find the one which best suits your argument.

So let's return to Alex's earlier comparison of "When We Two Parted" and "Winter Swans".

He said, "Both Byron and Sheer has discussed the effects of love in their poems, yet they associate it with different feelings.

In 'When We Two Parted,' love causes the speaker sorrow and anguish.

Whereas in 'Winter Swans' it is something the couple will find exhausting and painful." So Jun says, "We need to find two quotes, one from 'When We Two Parted,' that presents love as sorrowful, and another from 'Winter Swans,' which suggests that love is exhausting." So Alex has selected these two quotes, "silence and fears" from "When We Two Parted" and "The clouds had given their all two days of rain and then a break in which we walked" from "Winter Swans." So I'd like you to have a think here.

Is Alex's evidence precise, accurate, and judicious? So have a look at what he has selected, discuss it with the people around you or make some notes if you're working on your own.

Pause the video for as long as you need to and then click Play when you are ready to feed back.

Welcome back.

So, Alex has chosen some relevant quotations, however, there are two main issues with the evidence he has chosen.

First of all, the first quote isn't accurate.

Instead of "silence and fears," it should say "silence and tears." And the second quote isn't as precise as it could be.

We've got quite a lot of text there.

So to check our understanding, what I would like you to do is to help Alex make his second quote a bit more precise.

So which part of that second quotation is most relevant to Alex's argument that the couple here are exhausted? So have a look at those three fragments, decide which bit you think best supports his argument, and then when you are ready for me to reveal the answer, click Play and we'll carry on.

Okay, welcome back.

Well done to those of you who said A, "The clouds have given their all," because if we have a look, the use of pathetic fallacy in that particular fragment shows that the clouds are exhausted, they're given their all, they'd run out of energy.

Okay, so onto the final task of the lesson, where we are going to practise selecting our own evidence.

So what I would like you to do is to complete the single paragraph outline below, and then I would like you to use it to write a comparative analytical paragraph.

So our topic sentence says, Both Byron and Hardy demonstrate how love can change a person's perceptions of a partner or a relationship.

So what you need to do is think very carefully about two pieces of supporting evidence or analysis from each poem, and a concluding sentence that summarises the analysis that you are going to do in this poem and links back to that topic sentence and the question focus.

And when it comes to writing up your comparative and analytical paragraph, don't forget to use the checklist that we've got here.

So you will need to include correlative conjunctions, comparative conjunctions, tentative language, such as suggests, may, perhaps, and precise, accurate, and judiciously chosen quotations.

So pause the video here while you give this a really good go and then click Play when you are ready to continue and we'll feed back some responses.

Okay, welcome back.

So here is what you could have chosen for your supporting detail.

So from "When We Two Parted," we could have picked up on this idea of the speaker's shame and how he shudders when he hears his ex-lovers name, both of which imply that he's ashamed of her.

And we've also got "I rue thee," which suggests that he actually regrets entering into this relationship in the first place.

And both of these quotations show how a person's perceptions of somebody can change, because they demonstrate how the speaker's feelings towards his lover changed from heartbreak at the beginning to shame and regret at the end.

And it's really important to note here that these quotations are very short, they are precise.

We have just chosen the words or the phrases that we need to make our initial point.

So having a look then at "Neutral Tones," we could have used "tedious riddles," since the adjective tedious suggests boredom.

So again, just choosing two words there, very, very precise quotation.

And then that fourth one there, "grin of bitterness," and the abstract noun bitterness implies resentment.

And then we could have put all of that together in a concluding sentence.

In "When We Two Parted," the reader is given a firsthand account of how feelings of love can sour into feelings of shame and regret, whereas in "Neutral Tones," we witnessed the heartbreak the speaker feels when his partner's perceptions of their love shift from excitement to boredom and resentment.

We've got that fantastic comparative conjunction there "whereas," showing that although both Byron and Hardy demonstrate how perceptions can change, they do this in a different way.

So let's see how that would look written up as a comparative analytical paragraph.

Both Byron and Hardy demonstrate how love can change a person's perceptions of a partner or a relationship.

In "When We Two Parted," Byron's use of both shame and shudder implies that the speaker's feelings have soured over time.

Furthermore, the sibilance created by the repeated sh sounds could emphasise the secretive, scandalous nature of the illicit affair.

The speaker also describes how they "rue thee to deeply to tell." Here, the verb rue links to deep regret, suggesting that the speaker's changing perceptions of their relationship mean that they perhaps now regret entering into the relationship in the first place.

Hardy's poem similarly draws on ideas of changing perceptions.

However, in "Neutral Tones," it is the speaker who he falls victim to his partner's changing perceptions of him.

Hardy describes how the partner looks back on the words they once exchanged and views them now as "tedious riddles," implying that what was once interesting to her is now "tedious" and repetitive.

Hardy also describes how her smile is now a "grin of bitterness," again suggesting that any joy she may once have felt in this relationship has now soured to resentment towards the speaker.

These oxymorons are effective in highlighting how the partner's changing perceptions towards the speaker affect how she now views him.

Both poets use these changing perceptions to explore the lasting effects of a love lost.

In "When We Two Parted," the reader is given a firsthand account of how love can sour into feelings of shame and regret.

Whereas in "Neutral Tones," we witnessed a heartbreak the speaker feels when his partner's perceptions of their love shift from excitement to boredom and resentment.

So now we've had a chance to have a look at that answer.

I'd like you to go back and review your own answer, thinking really carefully about whether you've included everything on that checklist.

So take a few moments to review your answer and when you're ready to continue, click Play and we'll carry on.

Okay, so we've made it to the end of today's lesson, and you should be really pleased with all the hard work that you have put in today.

Planning and writing a comparative analytical response is not an easy thing to do.

So it's a really great achievement that you've managed to do it today.

So let's just summarise what we've covered in today's lesson.

Correlative conjunctions can be used to show the relationship between two ideas.

Textual references must be precise, accurate, and judiciously chosen.

And comparative analytical responses should be led by the key ideas in both poems supported by an analysis of the writer's use of methods.

So thank you very much for joining me today, and I really hope to see you again soon.