George Orwell's Essays: Connecting A Hanging, Shooting an Elephant, and The Spike
This page will help you consolidate your understanding of three of George Orwell's essays: ‘A Hanging’, ‘Shooting an Elephant’, and ‘The Spike’. The page includes activities that encourage you to compare and contrast aspects of the essays. Both of these things - consolidation of undertanding (revision of ideas), and comparing and contrasting, will elevate your insight and prepare you for assessment tasks to come.
For students who have studied George Orwell's essays, 'A Hanging' (see this page), 'Shooting an Elephant' (see this page), and 'The Spike' (see this page), this page presents materials that help students consolidate their understanding through three 'compare and contrast' activities. The activities are intended to be sequential, although it is not necessary that students do all of the activities.
This is a very simple initial activity. In a relatively large class, you can, for example, give one or more of the Venn diagrams (below) to a pair or small group of students who can discuss their ideas. Then, you can 'jigsaw' your class, forming new pairs or groups, to share ideas. You can, of course, conclude with a whole class discussion, or ask students to share their ideas in a different way.
This activity - a writing activity - follows on straightforwardly from Activity 1, above. Students can choose the essays they prefer to focus on as well as the aspect of comparison. Autonomy is a key principle of course design. It should be clear that Orwell's essays are a literary work, and students cannot compare and contrast two of Orwell's essays in a Paper 2 examination. Nevertheless, this activity is designed to strenghten understanding of Orwell's essays and give practice in the skill of comparing and contrasting. You may like to have students share their work on completion of the task.
This is the most challenging of the activities. It is, again, a writing activity. It asks students to compare and contrast aspects of Orwell's language. If students have worked with our earlier activities for each of the essays (available on other pages), they will be better positioned for this task. The first part of the activity concentrates on introductory paragraphs, and the second part concentrates on concluding paragraphs. The activity is designed with an awareness of criterion B in Paper 2, and area where students very frequently struggle to do well.