CSEC English B cheat sheet

CSEC English B - Arts and Humanities: Literary Analysis, Poetry, Drama, and Prose

• Unseen prose analysis sequence: identify narrative point of view, then setting, then characterisation (direct versus indirect), then conflict, then theme; support each claim with a short embedded quotation and a comment on the writer's technique.

• Poetry sound devices and their effects: alliteration and sibilance create texture or mood; onomatopoeia dramatises action; rhyme and rhythm (metre, stress pattern) control pace; enjambment speeds reading and links ideas across lines; caesura halts and emphasises.

• Figurative language decision rules: simile uses like/as and keeps both elements distinct; metaphor fuses tenor and vehicle; personification gives human qualities to non-human things; metonymy substitutes an associated object for the thing itself; synecdoche uses part for whole or whole for part.

• Drama conventions: stage directions indicate movement, tone, and props; dramatic irony occurs when the audience knows what a character does not; soliloquy reveals private thought while the character is alone on stage; aside is spoken to the audience within earshot of others on stage.

• Characterisation evidence types: what a character says, what others say about them, what they do under pressure, how they change, and how the writer describes them physically; the strongest answers cite change across the text rather than a single moment.

• Theme versus subject: subject is the topic (e.g. migration, ambition); theme is the writer's comment on that topic, expressed as a full sentence (e.g. migration fractures family loyalty). Answers should state theme as an assertion, not a single noun.

• Structure terms for essays: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution; flashback and foreshadowing manipulate chronology; a frame narrative places one story inside another and shapes how readers judge the inner tale.

• Comparative response rule for CSEC poetry: organise by idea (theme, tone, treatment of setting) rather than poem-by-poem summary, and quote from both texts in every body paragraph to earn comparison marks.

• Context and Caribbean literary tradition: many prescribed texts engage plantation history, indentureship, migration, folk belief, and nation language; reference to these traditions is valid only when tied to textual evidence, not used as a substitute for analysis.