60-Minute Essay Guide
Time management, essay structure, sample question, sample introduction, and sample body paragraph for Section B.
Time Management (Section B = ~60 minutes)
5 min
Choose question, read carefully, annotate
7–10 min
Plan: thesis, 4–5 paragraph topics, key quotations
40–43 min
Write essay: intro + 4–5 body paragraphs + conclusion
5 min
Proofread, check quotations accurate
Essay Structure
Introduction (~100 words)
- Address question directly
- State your argument/thesis (comparative claim about both poets)
- Briefly contextualise (periods, collections, why they're paired)
- Indicate line of argument
Body Paragraphs (~150–180 words each; 4–5 paragraphs)
- Each paragraph = one comparative point
- Topic sentence states comparative claim
- Evidence + analysis from Heaney
- Evidence + analysis from Sheers
- Explicit comparison (similarities/differences)
- Link back to question
- Integrate all AOs within each paragraph
Conclusion (~80–100 words)
- Synthesise argument
- Final comparative insight
- Return to question
- No new evidence
Total: ~800–900 words
Sample Question
“Both Heaney and Sheers explore the relationship between landscape and memory.” In the light of this view, compare and contrast the ways in which Heaney and Sheers present landscape in their poetry.
Sample Introduction
Both Seamus Heaney's Field Work (1979) and Owen Sheers' Skirrid Hill (2005) position landscape as more than physical setting—Irish and Welsh places become active presences, repositories of history and memory. However, where Heaney's Glanmore landscape offers refuge from Troubles violence, a pastoral space where domestic love and poetry-making flourish (‘Vowels ploughed into other’), Sheers' Welsh landscape is itself wounded, fractured by traumatic history (Skirrid Hill split at crucifixion, Mametz Wood concealing war dead). While Heaney seeks consolation in place, finding continuity despite sectarian conflict, Sheers excavates violence inscribed in landscape, recovering buried memory. Both poets understand terrain as palimpsest—layered with human experience—but their relationships to place diverge: Heaney's Glanmore = sanctuary; Sheers' Wales = crime scene requiring archaeological witness.
Sample Body Paragraph (Violence + Landscape)
Topic Sentence: Both poets inscribe violence onto landscape, but where Heaney experiences militarised terrain directly, Sheers recovers historical violence buried in earth.
Heaney: In ‘The Toome Road’, Heaney encounters a British Army convoy ‘warbling along on powerful tyres’ through his childhood landscape, the verb ‘warbling’ ironically domesticating military machinery. His defiant response—‘how long were you approaching down / My road?’—claims possessive ownership, asserting indigenous belonging against colonial force.
Sheers: Conversely, Sheers' ‘Mametz Wood’ presents landscape as repository of past violence, ‘the wasted young’ emerging from soil ‘for years afterwards’, discovered ‘like broken bird's egg[s]’ by farmers. His delicate metaphors—‘china plate of a shoulder blade’—aestheticise remains tenderly.
Comparison: While both poets confront violence through landscape, Heaney writes from within conflict's geography; Sheers recovers suppressed history. Heaney's landscape is occupied; Sheers' is graveyard. Both refuse to let their respective places be unmarked by violence.
Final Exam Checklist
Content Knowledge
Skills
Exam Day
Key Reminders
AO4 (comparison) is essential
Don't write about one poet in isolation. Compare within each paragraph.
AO2 (analysis) is highest-weighted
Always explain HOW meanings are shaped through technique.
Personal response (AO1) matters
Examiners want YOUR interpretation, not just rehearsed notes.
This is open-book
You have texts with you, so use them! Find quotations, check details.