Lesson Content : Tuesday 15th November : Pages 8-12

In the lesson today we bagan by looking back through the stage directions relating to Willy and Linda. You had written an analysis of these last Thursday and I gave somne feedback about your efforts.

I was generally pleased and it was encouraging to see individual students engaging with the task and providing independent critical opinions. You do, however, need to focus on the following:

• Get the basics right - spell the characters names correctly, use capital letters where needed, structure your writing in paragraphs and make use of the PEE format.
• Think carefully about the tone of your writing. This needs to be formal and any casual or informal language needs to be avoided. This will be something you need to practice every time you produce written work for me.
• Make sure you analyse language right down to word level. Ask yourself about the effect of particular word choices. I commented on the use of the word 'burden' to describe Willy's sample cases and the fact that, to me, this had a meaning far more significant than it literally referring to the heaviness of these cases. To me, the cases are symbolic of Willy's job and the word 'burden' suggests that his job is weighing him down. It seems as if he is being crushed by his own overly high expectations of what he should have achieved.

We then started to read through the first pages of the play itself - thanks to Larissa for playing the part of Linda so eloquently! After reading we discussed what we had learnt about Willy's job and his relationship with his family.

I asked you to complete notes on this and bring it to Thursday's lesson.