Understanding the characters

This chapter looks at what the examination requires and suggests that activities to help students achieve. Students will, of course, need support in their progression from simply identifying character traits to being able to analyse and discuss the characters fluently in the target language. Teachers may choose to use different activities when approaching different characters and activities can be varied by the use of group or individual work, undertaken in class or at home. Students can think about the information needed to build up a picture of someone’s character, and then use this to write more sophisticated analyses. The important dimension of criticality can also be introduced as students consider how realistic they find the characters in their roles of friend, parent, teacher. Charting a character’s moods helps students to see different facets of their personality and their development over time. Sociograms are a useful tool for charting the interrelationships between characters.