Questioning, exploring and probing Literature

It is that time of year again. Not Christmas, but mock marking. Interestingly, this time we noticed that students were not getting under the skin of a character. For our Literature mock, we asked students to write about Tybalt and how he is presented in the story. Whilst some students were able to explore the character in detail, the rest resorted to repeating how Tybalt is a catalyst throughout an essay. They remembered the knowledge and forgot to think about the character in any detail. 

Exams want students to think about the characters or themes in the question, yet it is so easy for students to focus on their existing knowledge of a character to frame an argument. In fact, it is their default method. What can I remember about the character? What words can I remember to describe the character? For a large part of the thinking and planning process it is focused on the ‘what’ and there is very little time spent on the ‘why’. For this reason, we always get the one student who describes the plot of the story. When writing an answer, ‘what’ seems to have a greater level of priority than the ‘why’. The ‘what’ is easier because it is about knowledge and knowledge is largely concrete. The ‘why’ is fuzzier, because it is an inference. 

When writing about a text, we are inferring all the time. We make an inference about the writer’s ideas. We make an inference about how the reader reacts. We make an inference about the reasons we think a writer wrote something. As I say to students, we are making an educated guess around what the writer’s intent is, because for most of the time we will need a seance for that to happen. Over the years, I have seen verbs used to help get students to write about the writer’s intent, which like most things makes the writing sound like students are exploring the writer’s intent, but haven't actually engaged with the idea. One verb alone isn’t going to help you explore a writer's intent. Students need to have the thought processes around the intent rather than just a few throwaway verbs.

To address the writer’s intent, it is so easy to link everything to a writer’s history. Therefore, students turn into mini Freuds. This bit here reflects the writer’s troubled relationship with his mother. This bit here reflects his sad childhood. The problem with this level of thinking is it removes the writer’s present. What in the present impelled him or her to write the story in that way? Not everything is about the past. Therefore, to echo something Dickens wrote: students need to be analysing in the present and the future. We are too fixated on the past and filling in gaps when maybe there isn’t a need to fill a gap. The text should always be the source of ideas on the writer’s present and not the student. 

So how do we get students to explore the thought processes better behind a writer’s intent? Well, questioning. Getting students to question texts better. Step away from a nugget of knowledge as the formation of an idea and push towards questioning, reasoning and speculating ideas. 

The problem we have in the exam scenario is that only a slim proportion  of students do that exploratory thinking. The rest go - ‘Pants, what did miss say about Tybalt?’. Therefore, we need students to build up their thinking and we must model how to explore. This is what I did with a class when giving feedback on the Tybalt exam.   

We spent 10 minutes jotting down answers to these questions. I revealed one question at a time and then students wrote down their ideas or thoughts. Then, we feedback our answers. 

1. What is Tybalt's role in the story? ​

2. What does Tybalt teach us about Elizabethan society? ​

3. What does Tybalt teach us about men? Young people? ​

4. Does Shakespeare like or dislike this character? How do you know? ​

5. What can you find to like about the character? ​

6. Shakespeare includes numerous young male characters such Romeo, Mercutio, Benvolio, so why does Shakespeare add Tybalt to this group? ​

7. Is the character realistic? ​

8. What big idea is Shakespeare using Tybalt to show us?​

9. Tybalt is a symbol of violence and aggression, but what else is he a symbol of?  ​

10. What do you think Shakespeare is trying to do with a character like Tybalt? 

Finally, we decided what we thought about what we all thought Shakespeare wanted and why he needed the audience to feel a particular way. The stacking of questions was really important, for me, because all too often we rely on one big question and, at least, this way if students couldn’t answer a question then they had an alternative question to answer. Plus, we are modelling the questions a student should be asking when approaching a text. Maybe, in our search to get the right answers from students we have forgotten the importance of getting students to ask the right questions about a text. In our attempts to make students’ work look and sound good we have forgotten what underpins that: an exploratory, inquisitive nature towards literature. Texts don’t spark that inquisitive nature without someone to help fan the flames. 

Here is another set of questions I am going to use with ‘An Inspector Calls’. 

1. Does Sheila make the audience think or does she make the audience feel? 

2. Is Priestley telling the audience they should like Sheila more than other characters in the household? 

3. Why does Priestley make Sheila and Mrs Birling so different? 

4. Do you think Sheila is a two-dimensional character? 

5. What, in your opinion, is the reason for Priestley placing Sheila in the story, even though she has very little influence in society? 

6. Why did Priestley not use two sons rather a son and a daughter in the play? 

7. Does the form of a play limit our understanding of the character? What would we understand better if this was a novel? 

8. Is Sheila a stereotype? What is she a stereotype of?

9. Given that Priestley is a man, has he misunderstood anything about how women behave, speak and act? 

10.  Does Priestley have a different message about younger women than older women? 

A love of Literature goes hand in hand with questioning and probing ideas. If we want to seriously improve engagement and uptake in Literature, then we need to look at how we interact with the subject. The exam questions don’t engage the hearts and minds of students, yet the majority of questioning around Literature centres on the presentation of a character and a theme. Compare the following questions: 

[1] Compare how Dickens presents women in the extract. 

[2] Do you think Charles Dickens is a bit creepy in the way he presents women? 

Which one would you rather write or speak about? Engagement comes from a number of different ways. For me, emotional and cerebral engagement go together. The exam questions are the most boring questions in the world. They have to be, because they are exam questions, but that doesn’t mean that every single question we ask or set students in lessons needs to have the same level of boredom. Add opinion questions to engage students on an emotional level. Add tricky questions to engage on a cerebral level. Just don’t, whatever you do, photocopy the exam question. Flavour it. 

Questioning is where we can engage students. The texts are often engaging, but the questioning is what bridges the gap between the student and the text. Get that question right and the student connects with the text. 

Thanks for reading, 

Xris