Follower and Digging by Seamus Heaney

Review of essay

Rating: 3 star(s)

Response to the question

This answer is a response to an analytical question aimed at Seamus Heaney's poems 'Digging' and 'Follower'. The candidate shows a very basic response to the question, commenting on the messages of the poems well but struggling to delve much deeper into the the connotations of the poems. Furthermore, contextual analysis is required for all candidate hoping to score higher than a low C grade, so unfortunately that is where this essay lies. What is good here is very good, but what it lacks outweighs the pros. I would recommend learning a bit more about the poet and the reasons for him writing the poems as this shows external, independent research has been carried out and this is what they examiners love to see.

Level of analysis

The Level of Analysis quite sporadic and where it is invested on little more than simple comment it becomes very superficial. The candidate quite often just talks about what Heaney is describing in his poems, without relating back to the question about the main theme or why it is the main theme. There is very little effective comparison between the poems but what is evident suggests that the candidate, if given more time to flesh out their ideas, could provide a much better answer. I would advise that more time is taken to ensure this candidate has commented less on what the poems are about, but how the use of poetic devices like structure (e.g. - sonnet form, enjambment, stanza length) and language (e.g. - Personal Address, specialist language, narrative form).

Quality of writing

The Quality of Written Communication here is good. There is a clear, well-informed use of the English language and the candidate maintains all standards expected of a GCSE level candidate. A number of challenging terminological lexes are spelt correctly and the candidate demonstrate a sound knowledge of grammar and punctuation. It would improve the answer though, to see more of a variety of punctuation (colons, semi-colons) because this shows that there is a confident writer behind this essay with the use of more complex punctuation.