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Assessment Objective i An ability to respond with understanding to texts of different types and periods.

As you go through this exploration of the six assessment criteria you will find that they compliment each other and are even a little repetitive at times. So, I'll try not to write repetitively about repeated elements in the criteria. Being able to "respond with understanding", for instance. Now this is a key issue and you'll see it dealt with in one or two other criteria. You'll find that it is SO VERY IMPORTANT that you are able to "respond". The examination board sees literature as a personal adventure. Your teachers will too. Literature is about people and what they have experienced and what they think and feel. It's about writers' responses to being alive. You will be asked to respond to this adventure and to recognise something profoundly important: the act of communication when reading a novel, play or poem can be a two-way thing. Reading your texts for the examination must not be seen as a mere exercise for school or college, but an opportunity to explore the feelings and ideas of another human being and "RESPOND" to that act of communication. More on response later, particularly to do with responding "with understanding". That's a little trick you'll have to master.

In a way, the issue of responding with understanding is the key to this particular assessment criteria. In essence you are asked here to show that you can appreciate "different types" of literature and literature from different "periods".

i) Different types of literature. Consider for a moment the different types of texts you have read. Let's call them genres - you've read some poetry, some plays and some novels for sure. You may also have read some travel writing, folk tales, seen some musicals and even read some imaginative essays and biographies. All of these are "different types" of text. They take different skills to write and are experienced in different ways. It is common to see a play in a theatre, to read poetry out loud (to hear the sounds) and to read novels privately to oneself. Folk tales have been traditionally oral in nature and musicals often involve as much singing as speaking. They all have similarities but they also are noticeably different. Of course, sometimes certain texts combine two or more of these types of text. If you've read Shakespeare's 'As You Like It' you'll recognise the musical elements (song and dance), there's folk tale (with evil villains and heroes and heroines), the text is poetry and play combined (and there's some prose as well). Many of Shakespeare's comedies and romances adopt a range of forms.

TASK 1: List three different texts you've read/heard/seen for at least five different "types" of literature.

TASK 2: Consider the differences between three types of literature (say, a poem and a story or a musical or a folk tale and a novel). What makes them different. (You might wish to consult the library and read some definitions of the word 'novel' or find out what characterises a folk tale).

Another aspect of the issue of "different types of text": you should consider categories of text like comedy; tragedy; melodrama; romance; romantic; classical.

TASK 3: find out exactly what these terms mean.

ii) Literature from different periods. As you are involved in the STUDY of literature - and may go on to study literature at university - the examination board is concerned that you read widely. This doesn't stop reading being fun, but it does mean that you will be asked throughout the course to respond to texts from different periods of time with, at times, hundreds of years separating them. Now, when you are asked to "respond' to texts from different periods of time the idea is that you show some understanding of how very different texts can be when they are written, say, by Chaucer in the 13th century ('The Canterbury Tales') and by J D Salinger ('The Catcher in the Rye') in the 1940s. Chaucer's tales are set around a religious pilgrimage; Salinger's novel is based around a boy who 'drops out' of college. Being able to respond to very different texts such as these and the worlds they are born out of is part of the pleasure of this assessment objective.

Consider 'Tess of the d'Urbervilles' for a moment. You can tell that this story is not a 20th century story. The way people live, their employment, how they speak and what happens to them all tells us that this story is from a different age from our own. If you know anything about the industrial revolution then you will also recognise that some of the events of the novel post-date the revolution. (Look at what is happening to farming, for instance). The language of the author will often seem odd. It does not seem like 'modern' English - it is also the vocabulary of a highly educated man. Now contrast this with a modern story such as 'The Catcher in the Rye'. This is from the world of big city America - New York - with its hotels and apartment life, with the pressures of life we identify with a more modern time (Holden, the main character, is expected to gain qualifications at college and 'make it'). The language of the novel is also more contemporary. It is full of the slang and colloquialisms of the 1940s and 1950s. In a way, both novels belong to an era, and to be able to respond to them sensitively you need to be able to make a substantial 'leap of the imagination'. In some ways, of course, the novels are quite similar. Both are about young people in trouble; both Tess and Holden are driven to 'make it' in the world (Tess by marrying well and Holden by living up to the aspirations of his father); both characters get into trouble because of their parents; both characters are driven by certain aspects of their characters. However, it would be to miss the special character of both novels to lump them together like this and it is the individuality of texts as well as their similarities that the examiners wish to see you recognise in this assessment objective: the sense in which every text, every author AND every age is different.

TASK 4: Compare the world 'Tess' grows up in with a character from a more modern novel you have read.

TASK 5: Choose a poem written by a 19th century Romantic writer (Wordsworth; Shelley; Keats; Byron; Coleridge, etc) and find a poem written this century that is really different, perhaps in subject, language or feelings. Your choice should emphasise the difference between one age and another.

OK! Kool! You've now done some work on Assessment Objective i! Keep going, and remember, you are taking charge of your education by doing this. You will know now what needs to be done and, as a result, not be so 'teacher dependent'. Excellent!