In this five part series, I’m going to show you how to ace your Cambridge IGCSE World Literature Course, taking you through everything teachers don’t show you. I promise you that IGCSE English is a course with incredibly limited scope, and it’s easy to manipulate this to your advantage and score high marks with ease. It always tackles the same themes, looks for the same things in your writings, and it’s acknowledging this will help you

In part one of this series, we looked at a broad overview of how to write essays based off of poems given to you in the unseen essays. At the end of this second post, you’ll find a number of common themes that you can apply to pretty much any poem you find in the IGCSE Songs of Ourselves or unseen papers. Using theme-specific vocabulary and analysis, or otherwise demonstrating a worldly understanding of the text will bring your grades to the next band.

How to Use This Article

In general, Cambridge will select inoffensive themes relevant to a world audience. This strikes out certain topics, such as LGBT rights, religion, or anything politically debated, while drawing particular attention to issues that transcend nationality and affect a global culture. The ones that I’ve found particularly common are the following:

• Colonialism, globalisation, and native cultures

• Racism, sexism, and minority opression

• Maturity, bildungsroman, and coming of age

• Nature, and it’s destruction

• The working class, especially those in factories or mines

Seek to integrate these contextualising words into your introductions and conclusions to add a bit more flair to your piece(see Part 1 for more details). Don’t rely on them to carry your piece-they’re shiny appendums to a greater whole, not of incredibly substance on their own.

Colonialism

Colonialism is the process by which one country acquires complete political control over another- for example, the British empire controlling India and Pakistan. Colonialism took place roughly between the 17th and 20th centuries, after the Industrial Revolution took place, leading to Europe controlling pretty much all of the world.

Some example poems from Songs of Ourselves are:

• The Flower-Fed Buffaloes by Vachel Lindsay

• Carpet Weavers, Morocco by Carol Rumens

• Monologue - Hone Tuwhare

Here are some key terms associated with colonialism:

• ideology - a system of values

• imperialism - becoming more like an emperor

• colonialism - the state in which one country acquires complete political control over another

• orientalism - the fetishising of Eastern ideas in European culture as exotic

• metanarrative - the interpretation of smaller events as manifestations of a larger, overarching narrative, ie. Manifest Destiny

• Manifest Destiny - the 19th century ideology that the Americas were destined to belong to

• Transatlantic Slave Trade - the transportation of slaves in Africa to the Americas

• decolonialisation - the rapid process by which over the course of a few decades, the major European powers withdrew their control from their previous colonies in India, southeast Asia, Africa, and the Americas

• hybridity - the emergence of a culture combining aspects of two existing cultures, ie. African American culture

If you want to look into this more, I’d recommend taking a look at post-colonial critical theory.

The Working Class

Another key theme presented in IGCSE is the “working class”, often internationally

Common terms are:

• bourgeoise - the ruling rich class. as opposed to the

• proletariat - the working class.

• capitalism - a political and economic system where industry and trade is controlled by profit

• overwork - working to the point of physical exhaustion, beyond human limits

This theme is probably the most prominent in Songs. Here:

• Song to the Men of England by Percy Bysshe Shelley(probably the only song to ourself that’s actually titled song)

• Monologue by Hone Tuwhare(my personal favourite)

• Carpet-weavers, Morocco by Carol Rumens

Maturity

A common theme that Cambridge chooses to tackle because of its relevancy to you lot. Universally, IGCSE takers are growing up, and maturing, and Cambridge knows this and picks poems that speak to this audience thematically.

Example poems:

• The Old Familiar Faces by C. Lamb

• Time by Allen Curnow

• Full Moon and Little Frieda by Ted Hughes

Common terms include:

• coming of age - becoming an adult

• bildungsroman - a story dealing with a child, especially a boy’s

• volta - a sudden character transformation

• naïve - showing a lack of experience or understanding

• suburban - an outlying residential district of a city

Racism/Sexism

I’ve grouped racism and sexism under one heading because although in nature quite different-the terminology is quite similar. Racism is the discrimination or antagonism of people based on their ethnicity, while sexism is discrimination or antagonism of people based on biological sex or gender identity.

Some example poems from Songs of Ourselves are:

• Storyteller by Liz Lochhead

• The Flower-Fed Buffaloes by Vachel Lindsay

If you want to look into this more, I’d recommend taking a look at feminist or African American critical theory.

Common terms include:

• racism - discrimination or antagonism of people based on their ethnicity

• oppression - the unjust treatment of a group

• sexism - discrimination or antagonism of people based on biological sex or gender identity

• gender essentialism - the idea that there are innate traits(essence) that belong to people of a certain gender

• patriarchy - a system in which men are in power. Most countries today can be described as being patriarchal in nature

• misogyny - prejudice against women. can be used interchangeably with sexism

• objectification - the degradation of women as objects

• ethnicity - a social group defined by a common racial or cultural identity

• active/passive racism - active racism is taking part in racist actions for the explicit purpose of racism. passive racism is not being passive in the face of active racism, and allowing mentalities and actions to be taken to oppress a racial minority

• institutional racism/sexism - racism and sexism embedded in law, or performed by the government or corporations as opposed to individuals

Nature and It’s Destruction

Nature is also a common theme that Cambridge tends to talk, often in reference to industrialisation and etc. Here are some important keyterms:

• global warming - the fact that the average temperature on Earth has been slowly increasing as a result of greenhouse gas emissions

• industrialisation - the rapid economic and technological development of a country on a wide scale

• anthropogenic climate change - the fact that the climate is warming and changing as a result of human actions

• pesticide - a chemical used for destroying “harmful” organisms such as weeds, bacteria or insects

• pollution - the introduction to harmful or poisonous substances into an environment

• water pollution - release of harmful substances into a body of water, such as a river, lake, or ocean

• air pollution - release of harmful and generally visible gases such as aerosols or carbon monoxide into the atmosphere

• urbanisation - the rapid development and growth of cities across the world

And this theme is all through Songs of Ourselves. See the following:

• Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold

• Lament by Gillian Clarke

• Report To Wordsworth by Boey Kim Cheng