Metaphor, Oracy and Real Speech in An Inspector Calls

One of the problems around plays and teaching them is that students struggle to analyse them. Give them a piece of prose and they can analyse it until their hearts explode. Yet, dialogue is always the one that stumps them. 

For years, I have seen teachers teach plays focusing on dramatic devices or the same few big quotes. The problem is that students are not experiencing analysing dialogue. Real dialogue. So, when faced with an approximation of speech, they struggle and falter. If we think of curriculums, how many feature real speech? Instead students are fed a diet of literary texts that range from school to school. All texts are chosen to be similar or prepare students for the GCSE exams. But, because no real speech is included, there is no real need for it to be covered - in some people’s eyes. 

Students really enjoy J.B. Priestley’s ‘An Inspector Calls’ and I wouldn’t say it is for the plot. It is for the accessibility of the language. It is real. It is understandable. However, their engagement isn’t reflected in their analysis. They default as usual to the plot, the character, the moments and the ideas, but not about the specifics and the choices made by the writer. If anything is remembered, it is big clunky things the teacher has said and not what they have found. The teacher told us to say it. Yes, students can tell us about the lighting change, but they can’t tell us about Mrs Brilling's use of ‘that’ in ‘a girl of that class’. 

I feel that we need to get more real dialogue into English and stop getting so hung up about literary analysis all the time. 

Take the following questions: 

• Who speaks the most? 

• Who speaks the least? 

• Who asks the most questions? 

• Who is the politest? 

• Who is the least politest? 

• Who is the most formal? 

• Who is the least formal? 

• Who copies the way another person speaks? 

• Who tries to speak differently to all the rest? 

All of these questions relate to language choices and they are a start of exploration. The next question is ‘why’. Why does the character speak the most? Why is the character speaking so informally? Surprisingly, these are very rarely written about in essays. They seem too obvious for students. Students would rather write a paragraph of guff about the Inspector saying ‘I don’t play golf’ than explore the destabilising methods the Inspector uses to unsettle Mr Birling. The limited speech. The questions. The lack of politeness. The lack of reverence. 

Now, I know Priestley has a bazillion different adverbs for stage directions and ‘coolly’ I think they are helpful, but Priestley's dialogue is so rich for analysis. Characters who shift pronouns in discussion - ‘you’ to ‘we’. Characters who use euphemism to hide their involvement in things - ‘business’. Characters who distance themselves - ‘a girl of that class’. 

One area I think is under-’mined’ is metaphors. How, in particular, Priestley uses metaphor to support ideas. Take, for example, the following ones: 

 Birling: (angrily) inspector, I've told you before, I don't like the tone nor the way you're handling this inquiry. And I don't propose to give you much rope

• Ideas about crime and punishment 

• Relates to the amount of evidence - the more rope, the stronger the case 

• Foreshadows their doom  - and death of the family 

• Presents himself as a victim 

Birling: Rubbish! If you don't come down sharply on some of these people, they'd soon be asking for the earth.

• Ludicrous statement - you cannot ask for the earth 

• Makes it seem that they want everything - ‘the earth’ - inverts the situation and says they are greedy

• With earth we associate natural things and in a way they are asking for natural things like - food, warmth, home 

• Highlights the unnaturalness of society - asking for something basic 

Birling: Have you any idea what happened to her after that? Get into trouble? Go on the streets?

• Implies that Eva became a prostitute - euphemistic metaphor 

• Says a lot about Mr Birling. He assumes that when a woman gets into trouble her only way out is prostitution. 

• Implies that poor women have less morals 

Sheila: Yes, of course it is. That's what I meant when I talked about building up a wall that's sure to be knocked flat. It makes it all harder to bear.

• Implies how the rich defend themselves - place a barrier around themselves for protection

• Walls reflect their lack of flexibility or willingness to change - indicates their arrogance and stubbornness to change  

Of course, there are loads of metaphors throughout the play, but we need to make students willing to spot and explore them more. Being language curious is the key thing here. Not to go back to the knowledge debate, but we have become obsessed with teaching the knowledge of texts rather the knowledge to explore texts. I mean that we’ve got to the point where we deskill students by teaching a text around precise knowledge and precisely formulated ideas. Students should instead be using knowledge to form their own ideas. 

Teach students that we talk in metaphor and unleash them on a text and explore it.  

If we want to take oracy seriously, then we need to look harder at the examples we use. Oracy needs to be modelled more than it needs to be taught. 

Thanks for reading, 

Xris 

A question of homework in English

Homework is one of those tricky things in school. The only people that seem to like it are pushy parents, who think every child should be doing at least four hours a night on homework. Students don’t like it, because it gets in the way of things like life, social time, time with one parent as their parents have split up, football training and so on. Teachers hate it, because it is an endless cycle of setting, checking, rechecking, chasing up, emails and so on. A five-minute task can become endless hours of work. Oh and don’t forget the remembering. 

English homework tends to be split into four categories. Reading something. Writing something. Revising something. Something creative. By something creative, I mean ‘think of Mr Birling’s musical playlist as he’s writing a letter sacking someone from his business’ for example. Things have moved on and we have to move with things. For example, any writing can be supported with AI. Therefore, Frankie who barely spells Shakespeare correctly twice in an essay magically starts sounding like an aging university academic in work produced. All written work now needs to be questioned for its authenticity. Only in the classroom can we guarantee authentic writing and work. 

I think we need to move the knowledge and revision aspect of the subject out of the classroom and put it into homework. Reading, speaking and writing all benefit from input during the process and not after it. Teachers can improve writing so much when they stop a child midwrite and make them think. If we make reading and writing about the end product, then we are teaching students to focus on the product rather than the processes. And, those processes are often the things that need to be improved if any product is going to change. From an English point of view, what if we changed homework completely? What if we made all the homework focused on revising English ideas and concepts? What if we shifted the knowledge focus to being the student’s responsibility? 

Since October, we’ve trialled doing that. Thankfully, the Carousel system helped immensely to do this with their study packs. [Follow this link for more information on Carousel.] For years, I have struggled with online platforms for English because they are largely ineffective. They are either too limiting and rigid or they are ineffective in terms of learning. The Carousel system I like because I can be in control. I can control the questions, the marking, the system and I can use it how I want to use it.   

From October 2024, we gave every student a link to all the knowledge related to the year. For English, they had a Carousel study pack which provided them with flashcards for all the key knowledge needed and the ability to quiz themselves on that knowledge. We said that they could do the quizzes when they wanted, but we would track the questions answered throughout the year. They were simply in control of their homework. They knew what they had to do, but they could control when they did it.  

Over the year, we had students answering 94,749 questions at home. Of a school of 600 students, that’s 157 questions each. Some keen students took it on themselves to answer questions in the 1000s. Each month we published a top twenty of the highest scoring students. The beauty of this system is that you are rewarding students with the amount of questions rather than the amount of correct answers. The other great thing is that you can see quite easily those that were motivated and those that lack independence. In the picture, you can see the year groups and their level of engagement. Understandably, Year 11 at the bottom of the list were our highest scorers, but Year 9 and 8 were our weakest scorers. At parents’ evening, we were able to draw attention to the lack of engagement and search for possible ways to help and support.   

The key thing for us was about getting the knowledge right for our context. How we made our study packs was important. We ditched knowledge that had a short shelflife. Knowing the colour of Macbeth’s beard is not going to help in the bigger picture. We focused on the key knowledge or ideas behind a topic. As you can see, we separated things into topics. You might be alarmed with the number of questions next to the topic. Don’t be. Questions were often reworded. They might be given a definition for a term or the opposite and tell me the term based on the given definition. Alongside the topic knowledge, were spellings, core knowledge and vocabulary learnt over lessons. As we went along, we added different areas that we felt they were weak at. For example, we spotted students were struggling with comma usage, grammar and word classes. So, we designed a bank of questions to help with those things. Finally, we included some things for the more able, such as symbolism and Greek myths in Year 7. 

Each year group had their bespoke study pack. And, here is the important thing, each pack had the previous year’s knowledge in it. Year 8 had the topics from Year 7 alongside their own. The reason behind this was gaps in learning. Sadly, absence planned or unplanned happens and students miss out. English is a very tricky subject with this. Miss two lessons and you’ve missed a massive part of the play or novel studied. Having these study packs had another advantage, they supported those missing lessons and also SEND students, who need repeated exposure to the knowledge.  

Of course, we needed something in school to join this up. Therefore, the start of lessons had a quiz based on this pack of questions. And, every so often, we’d have a test on the topic they were focusing on and, finally, we’d have an end of year knowledge test. We advertised the top scorers regularly  

For 2025 and 2026, we have adapted this slightly so we guide them on how many questions they should have done. This is so parents can be part of that process and understand the expectations. For each term, we have said students need to answer 50 questions. As you can see, they have started really well with just one term.  There are some students that haven’t engaged with it and it is my team's job now to unpick what is the issue around that. 

As a parent, I have seen how pointless homework can get. If homework focuses on knowledge and making that knowledge stick, then that’s brilliant. The problem with a lot of homework is that it is largely surplus to requirements. It isn’t going to change what is in their brain. Add to that problem, students often don’t know how to revise. These Carousel study packs narrow the focus of learning but also guide students in the process of revising. The more we can make students take control of their own learning and be independent the better. 

As I said before, if we take the knowledge part out of the English classroom, we can focus on the reading, writing, speaking and the ideas and experiences. We can work on teaching and applying that knowledge in the classroom in different contexts. 

Thanks for reading, 

Xris