Post-2000 Poetry and Prose (YET01): Practice Questions

These are original questions written for Marlbridge, for revision and practice on this content. The questions themselves do not name a specific set poem or prose text — apply the method below to your own prescribed texts. They are not reproduced past-paper questions. Examination boards hold copyright in their own papers. Use these alongside the official past papers available free from your board, since these questions are designed to build transferable exam technique rather than to substitute for practice on genuine board material.

Related: Post-2000 Poetry and Prose revision notes

Unit 1 gives you a genuine choice of question in both Section A and Section B — the two Section A questions and two Section B questions below model the range of ways the exam can phrase its demand, so that practising against both sharpens your ability to adapt a prepared argument to whichever wording appears on the day, rather than relying on a single memorised essay shape.

Set texts (for your own revision, not needed to attempt the questions below): 21 prescribed poems from the Poems of the Decade anthology (ISBN 978-0571325405) for Section A, and one of five prose titles for Section B — Brooklyn, The Kite Runner, Life of Pi, Purple Hibiscus and The White Tiger — both named in full, with authors, in the study guide and revision notes. Both lists are revised by specification issue, not rotated by series.

The 21 prescribed poems (specification Appendix 5) — choose both of your Section A poems from this list: Eat Me (Patience Agbabi); Chainsaw Versus the Pampas Grass (Simon Armitage); Material (Ros Barber); History (John Burnside); An Easy Passage (Julia Copus); The Deliverer (Tishani Doshi); The Map Woman (Carol Ann Duffy); The Lammas Hireling (Ian Duhig); To My Nine-Year-Old Self (Helen Dunmore); A Minor Role (U A Fanthorpe); The Gun (Vicki Feaver); The Furthest Distances I’ve Travelled (Leontia Flynn); Giuseppe (Roderick Ford); Out of the Bag (Seamus Heaney); Effects (Alan Jenkins); Genetics (Sinéad Morrissey); From the Journal of a Disappointed Man (Andrew Motion); Look We Have Coming to Dover (Daljit Nagra); Please Hold (Ciaran O’Driscoll); On Her Blindness (Adam Thorpe); Ode on a Grayson Perry Urn (Tim Turnbull).

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Section A (practise using two of the 21 prescribed Poems of the Decade poems)

1. Compare how two of the prescribed poems from Poems of the Decade present a shared post-2000 concern (e.g. technology, conflict, identity, the environment). [25]

1b. (Alternative Section A question) Compare the ways two of the prescribed poems from Poems of the Decade use form and language to explore the relationship between the individual and the wider world. [25]

Section B (practise using your own post-2000 prose text)

2. Explore how your chosen post-2000 prose fiction text uses form and structure to shape the reader’s understanding of a central concern of the novel. [25]

3. (Alternative Section B question) Discuss how far your chosen post-2000 prose fiction text can be read as a response to contemporary social or cultural concerns. [25]

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Answer plans (approach — marks depend on your chosen texts)

These qualifications mark against level descriptors rather than fixed per-point figures, so the plans below describe what a top-band response does rather than splitting the marks into parts.

1. A top-band answer organises by point of comparison rather than poem-by-poem, analyses each poem’s form, structure and language closely and precisely, using the open-book text to locate accurate, well-chosen evidence, and makes explicit, developed connections between the two poems throughout — not only in an introduction or conclusion — since AO4 (connections across texts) is credited across the whole response.

1b. As with Q1, the strongest answers are structured by point of comparison, not poem-by-poem. Here the specific demand is form and language, so a top-band response engages precisely with poetic technique — structure, rhyme, meter, imagery, register — rather than discussing theme alone, and uses that technical analysis to build toward an argument about the individual-versus-world relationship the question names, rather than treating form analysis and thematic argument as separate halves of the essay.

2. A strong response identifies specific structural choices — non-linear narrative, shifting narrators, chapter/section breaks, withheld information — and explains their effect on how the reader comes to understand the novel’s central concern, integrates contemporary context relevant to the concern (e.g. social attitudes, technology, current events the novel engages with) rather than treating it separately, and sustains a clear critical argument throughout rather than a list of observations.

3. A top-band response avoids treating the novel as a simple mirror of “issues” and instead argues how the text engages with contemporary concerns — through characterisation, narrative voice, or structural choices, not just subject matter. It supports this with precise, well-chosen textual evidence (open book, so exact rather than paraphrased), and reaches a genuine critical judgement about how far the reading holds, rather than simply asserting that the novel “reflects society” without qualification.

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Where marks are usually lost

• Section A answers that discuss each poem in an isolated half rather than comparing directly.
• Section B context that reaches for historical background instead of contemporary/social context relevant to a post-2000 text.
• Forgetting AO3 does not apply to Section A — spending Section A time on context analysis that isn’t credited there.
• Under-using the open-book allowance — vague or paraphrased “quotations” when the actual text is available to check.
• On Q3-style questions, asserting a novel “reflects” or “mirrors” a social issue without analysing how, through specific textual technique, that reflection is achieved.
• On Q1b, treating “form and language” as separate from theme, producing two disconnected sections instead of one integrated argument.
• Choosing a question in the exam without first checking it actually fits the two poems or prose techniques you know best — the alternative-question structure exists precisely so you can play to your strengths.

Choosing between the Section B question styles

Questions 2 and 3 above represent the two typical styles Section B can take — one centred on form and structure, the other on context and contemporary relevance. Both are marked against the same three assessment objectives (AO1, AO2, AO3), so neither is inherently “easier,” but they reward slightly different preparation. A form-and-structure question rewards having a clear map of your novel’s structural choices (where does it shift narrator, what’s withheld and when, how are chapters or sections organised) ready to discuss regardless of the exact wording. A context-focused question rewards having specific contemporary reference points — the social attitudes, events or debates your text was written into — that you can connect precisely to moments in the novel, rather than general background knowledge. Practising both styles against your own set text, rather than assuming the exam will ask one or the other, is the safest preparation given the open choice of question within each section.