PEA: Help or Hindrance?
- Admin
- Feb 1, 2019
- 5 min read
It takes so many different forms - PEA, PEE, PEEL, PETAL, CHEWITS to name just a few - but opinions on PEA appear to be becoming increasingly divided. The new exam specification only seems to be intensifying the debate; when reading the examiner report from AQA regarding this summer's exams, I couldn't help but feel that underlying negativity towards rehearsed structures and acronyms. In one literature report it even commented that such systems were 'potential damage' and that some students displayed 'over-reliance' upon them.
In true English teacher style, I can appreciate the conflicting views surrounding PEA frameworks. There are definite benefits (particularly for weaker students) having a clear structure and a knowledge of how to write their answer gives them support in an exam that is no longer tiered. It also means that they have an obvious criteria for their answer and can remember to cover the skills listed in the mark scheme. And let's not forget the importance of confidence in the exam. There is nothing more intimidating than sitting in front of a blank page and having to think of something to write. Providing students with a clear framework that they can revise and rehearse allows them to have the confidence to approach the written tasks. Having a concrete structure to revise with can provide our students comfort and security in a subject that is often exploring the abstract.
That said, I can't help but feel increasingly uneasy about the restriction that the framework places upon an student's ability to explore their own ideas. How many students are becoming so caught up in making sure that they talk about each item on the checklist that they forget to develop their own argument? And that is without even considering the number of students who replicate the phrases 'I know this because...', 'The reader's reaction is...', 'The writer did this...' or 'This links to context because...' as sentence starters in every PEA chain that they ever write. These observations were the thing that forced me to re-evaluate the way that I use PEA - in fact, even as I am writing this, my inner teacher is already listing ways that I think I need to amend it further in upcoming months.
PEA is deeply embedded in so many students I come into contact with that removing it would have been completely futile. Instead, I looked for ways to modify the approach to the 'analysis' section. It lead me to begin to structure it as a series of questions. I wanted to step away from students learning sentence stems and adding underdeveloped comments to their response. The plan was to create a list of supportive questions that the students could use as writings prompt but that would encourage them to expand their ideas. I also hoped that this would enable my groups to find their own writing style and phrase their argument in a personal but formal manner. So, I made them stick to the usual guidelines for the 'point' and 'evidence' elements of their paragraph. When they got to 'analysis' section, they were told to ask themselves these questions:
Which?
Which part of the quotation is the most important part? Which bit best demonstrates your argument? (When I deliver this, I tell students to imagine that they are holding a camera. They need to use the camera to 'zoom in' on the part of the quotation that best shows me their idea.)
What?
What is the effect of that part of the quotation? What does it make the reader/audience think or feel?
How?
How does that word/phrase have that effect? (This is where I tell them to consider meaning, tone, connotations or links to previous events in the text.)
Why?
Why would the writer wish to create that effect? Why would it help them to give their intended 'message' to their reader/audience? Why might they create that effect in this section and how does it fit in the structure of the whole text? Why might a writer from that society or time period create that effect? (I hate the phrase 'writer's message' but I think it is accessible to students. It has definitely helped some students in more room create a personal interpretation.)
I listed the questions in an order that made sense to me, but I encouraged students to be flexible in their approach to them. The bottom line was that, as long as they are all covered, the argument made sense and the students phrased their work it in a way that 'flowed' for them, I didn't really mind which order they approached them in. That is still true. I often recommend that they end with the 'how' exploration (because I think it allows them to link their analysis back to their point coherently) but the steps stay fluid even for me. For example, in recent months, I have started to pose that they discuss 'what' before 'which' and some students are trying it but others have rejected it. I don't mind as long as they know how they wish to write and their answer is thorough.
The benefits of the questions were evident after only a week of teaching the question approach. The students' responses were more detailed and they began to carve out personal writing styles. In the less able, I was particularly surprised by the sudden increase in the number of students attempting to talk about connotations and tone- these were students who had never commented on writer's methods before or had not understood what they were. In the more able, I started to see students analyse how effects contributed to an overall structure of a text, the development of a characters and the emergence of themes. The work still needed to be polished, but I was suddenly seeing variation in their approaches to extended writing tasks. I also observed that they became far more independent; the questions enabled them to prompt themselves when writing, without requiring a written writing frame.
The impact witnessed with those first groups was enough to make me commit to that system. I have used it with my groups ever since. Over time I have really enjoyed its versatility. It is easy to modify for different age groups; in my last school I worked with years 9-13 but now I am teaching it to students as young as 11. For the younger and the less able, I focus on learning those questions and how to write a basic response. When working with the more able, I focus on developing alternative interpretations in their 'how' step, selecting more than one part of the quotation and repeating the 'which' and 'what' steps. In order to provide further challenge to the very able, we explore critical material and then apply those arguments in their 'why' step.
The new system certainly seems to suit my teaching style more than the old system and I can confidently say that it is still benefiting my students. With that in mind, the only logical conclusion that I can come to about PEA is that it needs to evolve. It needs to evolve to help students to prepare for new examinations after a drastic change of specification. But (more importantly in my opinion) it needs to evolve if we are going to continue to champion creativity over marks in a data driven culture. Memorising sentence stems and checklists to write answers, inhibits a student's ability to build personal interpretations and explore their own imagination. As a teacher and an examiner, I want to see students respond creatively to a text rather than regurgitate notes that they made about their teacher's interpretation. PEA needs to evolve to encourage students to question what they read and to question the potential that lies in their individual response.
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