Tone, Mood and the Rhyme-Scheme Trap
The poetry section's 6-mark question reads: 'How does the poet create a sense of loss in the poem?' The poem is a four-stanza elegy for a village pond: stanza 1 describes the pond 'holding the sky', stanza 2 repeats 'no one comes', stanza 3 has a long pause after 'the herons', and stanza 4 rhymes abab. Your scheme gives 2 marks for identifying two devices, 2 for quoting accurately, and 2 for explaining the effect of each device on the reader's sense of loss. Of 42 scripts, 31 name only the rhyme scheme and write 'the poem is sad'; 12 quote 'no one comes' but explain it as 'repetition makes it interesting'; 5 link the caesura to absence. The section head wants the question retained but the marking tightened.
1. Award marks to a script that says: 'The poet uses rhyme scheme abab and repetition of no one comes. This makes the poem sad and creates a sense of loss.' Justify.
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Award 3/6. Two devices are identified (rhyme scheme and repetition), so 2 marks. One device is quoted accurately ('no one comes'), so 1 of the 2 quotation marks. No effect marks, because 'makes the poem sad' restates the question rather than explaining how the repetition produces loss - it does not say what is repeated, who is absent, or what the repetition does to the reader's sense of time.
The script is not worthless: the candidate can spot devices and quote. The marking problem is that the third column - effect - has not been attempted. Feedback should point to the missing sentence: 'The repetition of "no one comes" turns the pond into a place defined by absence, so each stanza confirms the loss rather than advancing from it.'
2. Explain why naming the rhyme scheme without linking it to effect cannot earn the effect marks, and what a candidate must add.
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Naming abab shows that the candidate can scan a stanza; it does not show what the pattern does. To earn effect marks, the candidate must make a claim about function - for example, 'the abab rhyme returns to the same sound at the end of each stanza, so each stanza closes without release, matching the speaker's refusal to move on from the loss'. The addition is a causal link: device → what the reader hears or expects → how that shapes the feeling of loss. A label without that link is a fact about form, not an analysis of tone. In marking, the effect mark should be awarded only when the sentence contains a verb of effect ('makes', 'forces', 'delays', 'returns') and a named consequence for the reader.
3. Build a three-column scaffold (device / quotation / effect) with one model row, and state how you would use it in a 20-minute revision.
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| Device | Quotation | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Caesura | 'the herons -' | The pause enacts the absence of the birds; the reader waits with the speaker, so loss is felt as a gap in the line. |
Use it in three moves. First, five minutes: display the model row and ask students what makes the third column different from 'it makes it interesting' - elicit that it names a consequence. Second, ten minutes: pairs complete a second row for the repetition of 'no one comes', then a third for the abab rhyme, with the rule that the effect column must contain a verb of effect. Third, five minutes: three pairs read their rows aloud and the class votes on which effect is most fully explained. The scaffold does not supply the answer; it makes the missing column visible.