This exam tips covers 💡 Exam Tips for Checking Out Me History within Checking Out Me History (Agard) for GCSE English Literature. Revise Checking Out Me History (Agard) in Power and Conflict Poetry for GCSE English Literature with 10 exam-style questions and 15 flashcards. This is a high-frequency topic, so it is worth revising until the explanation feels precise and repeatable. It is section 18 of 19 in this topic. Treat this as a marking guide for what examiners are looking for, not just a fact list.
💡 Exam Tips for Checking Out Me History
🎯 How to move from Level 3 to Level 5:
- Level 3: “Agard uses dialect to make the poem feel personal and real to the speaker’s background.”
- Level 5: “Agard’s use of Guyanese Creole dialect throughout the stanzas of imposed history is not a stylistic choice but a political argument: the voice that colonial education was designed to replace is the very voice performing the reclamation. Form and content become inseparable — the poem’s argument is enacted by the dialect it is written in.”
- The difference: Level 5 explains WHY the technique makes the specific argument it does, not just WHAT the technique is.
📋 Quick Comparison Poems to Pair:
- London — both poems attack systems that control through what they permit people to say and know
- Ozymandias — both explore whose history gets preserved and whose is erased; Agard reclaims; Shelley exposes
- The Prelude — both poems present identity as shaped by a powerful force; in Wordsworth, nature; in Agard, history and education
- My Last Duchess — contrast: the Duke controls by erasing a woman’s voice; Agard refuses to be silenced
⚠️ Three Things Examiners Mark Down:
- Writing about “the speaker’s feelings” without explaining what Agard constructs through his choices (Sin 4 — treating the speaker as a real person)
- Noticing the dialect and calling it “authentic” or “interesting” without explaining its political function (Sin 3 — technique-spotting)
- Listing the historical figures (Toussaint, Nanny, Seacole) without analysing what Agard achieves by including them — their presence is an argument, not a history lesson
Practice questions for Checking Out Me History (Agard)
In 'Checking Out Me History', Agard writes 'Dem tell me' rather than 'They told me'. What does this choice of language represent?
How does Agard use the poem's alternating structure to challenge colonial education? [2 marks]