The WordSmith Prompts

ISBN 978-0-9756709-4-1

'These prompts are a terrific tool for generating class discussions, creating short answer exams, or longer essay assignments. I have purchased a number of them and am impressed with each one.'

From our Commendations section

SAMPLE MATERIAL: Use either the Things Fall Apart link below or the Sample Section link at the foot of the page. (They will take you to the same place.)

The Prompts are not book-length study commentaries like The WordSmith Guides. Rather, they are question-driven outline resources, consisting of a range of study tasks (predominantly short pieces of writing) designed to take students into the heart of each chapter of a novel (or each scene of a play, or each poem in a collection) as they have finished reading it. Together they help build up an overview of each of the five SCASI aspects of the whole piece of writing (Setting, Character, Action, Style and Ideas - the fundamental structure of The WordSmith Guides themselves).

They also include a range of more formal essay questions, varying in style and difficulty and easily adaptable to meet the demands of all major literature examinations (in particular The International Baccalaureate, Advanced Placement and GCE Advanced Level) for the 15-18 age range.

IB students and teachers will find that the Prompts offer an insightful approach to their selected texts, helping students to respond thoughtfully within all components of the Language A assessment process for both the Literature and the Language and Literature courses – the Paper 2 Essay; the Written Assignment (Written Task); the Individual Oral Commentary; and the Individual Oral Presentation (Further Oral Activity).

The Prompts make use of past IB examination questions, re-focused as appropriate, to ensure the usefulness of the resource for IB purposes.

Taken together, the two sets of guiding questions encourage AP students to think about texts in ways that will help them prepare for the Free-Response section of the final examination. Many of the full essay questions, in fact, are derived from past Advanced Placement Free-Response exam prompts, carefully selected (and modified as necessary) to match particular texts.

The Prompts also provide a framework within which GCE A Level students can develop a detailed understanding of texts set by their Examining Board.

Throughout, there is a focus not only on what has been written (the finished text) but also on why it has been written in that way, and how it functions as a piece of working literature.

If you would like to examine a typical set of study tasks, click on the link below:

Chinua Achebe Things Fall Apart

The price for a selection of any three Prompts is US$8.95. They can not be purchased individually (transaction costs make that non-viable). If you wish to order a second selection after adding a first to your basket, please clear your original three texts, make a fresh selection and add it, too, to the basket.

Please note that the Shakespeare Prompts are derived largely from our much fuller and more detailed resources, The WordSmith Guides (see the right-hand panel).

Please select 3 texts and press the 'Add to Basket' button to include the matching Prompts in your purchase

	Title
	1984
	A Bend in the River
	A Christmas Carol
	A Clockwork Orange
	A Doll's House
	A Farewell to Arms
	A Lesson Before Dying
	A Modest Proposal
	A Passage to India
	A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
	A Raisin in the Sun
	A Separate Peace
	A Streetcar Named Desire
	A Thousand Splendid Suns
	A View from the Bridge
	Across the River and into the Trees
	Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass
	All My Sons
	An Enemy of the People
	Angela's Ashes
	Animal Farm
	Antony and Cleopatra
	As I Lay Dying
	Atonement
	Beloved
	Chaucer's General Prologue
	Coriolanus
	Death of a Salesman
	Disgrace
	Dr. Faustus
	Dracula
	Dubliners
	Emma
	Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
	Fahrenheit 451
	Far From the Madding Crowd
	Fiela's Child
	Frankenstein
	God's Bits of Wood
	Great Expectations
	Gulliver's Travels
	Hamlet - 'To Be or Not To Be' Workshop Analysis
	Hamlet
	Hard Times
	Heart of Darkness
	Heat and Dust
	His Illegal Self
	I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
	In Cold Blood
	Invisible Man
	J.M. Synge - Plays
	Jane Eyre
	Jude the Obscure
	Julius Caesar
	King Lear
	Life & Times of Michael K
	Life of Pi
	Like Water for Chocolate
	Look Back in Anger
	Lord of the Flies
	Love in the Time of Cholera
	Macbeth
	Madame Bovary
	Master Harold and the Boys
	Metamorphosis
	Mystic River
	Native Son
	Never Let Me Go
	Northanger Abbey
	Oedipus the King
	Of Mice and Men
	On the Yankee Station
	One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
	One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
	One Hundred Years of Solitude
	Oscar and Lucinda
	Othello
	Persuasion
	Pride and Prejudice
	Remembering Babylon
	Robert Frost Selected Poems
	Robinson Crusoe
	Romeo and Juliet
	Silas Marner
	Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
	Sizwe Bansi Is Dead
	Snow Falling on Cedars
	So Long a Letter
	Some Monday for Sure
	Such a Long Journey
	Tales of Mystery and Imagination
	Tess of the d'Urbervilles
	The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
	The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
	The Awakening
	The Bean Trees - Close Textual Analysis Unit
	The Bean Trees
	The Bell Jar - Close Textual Analysis Unit
	The Bell Jar
	The Book Thief
	The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
	The Bride Price
	The Catcher in the Rye
	The Chosen
	The Color Purple
	The Crucible
	The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
	The English Patient
	The Glass Menagerie
	The Grapes of Wrath
	The Grass is Singing
	The Great Gatsby
	The Handmaid's Tale
	The Hobbit
	The House on Mango Street
	The Importance of Being Earnest
	The Jungle Books
	The Kite Runner
	The Mayor of Casterbridge
	The Merchant of Venice
	The Mosquito Coast
	The Name of the Rose
	The Narrow Road to the Deep North
	The Nun's Priest's Tale
	The Old Man and the Sea
	The Outsider
	The Picture of Dorian Gray
	The Poisonwood Bible
	The Quiet American
	The Remains of the Day
	The Return of the Native
	The Revenant
	The Road
	The Scarlet Letter
	The School for Scandal
	The Shipping News - Close Textual Analysis Unit
	The Shipping News
	The Siege of Krishnapur
	The Sun Also Rises
	The Tempest
	The Thief and the Dogs
	The Things They Carried
	The Turn of the Screw
	The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale
	Their Eyes Were Watching God
	Thérèse Raquin
	Things Fall Apart
	To Have and Have Not
	To Kill a Mockingbird
	True at First Light
	Waiting for Godot
	Water for Elephants
	We Need to Talk About Kevin
	When Rain Clouds Gather
	When We Were Orphans
	Wide Sargasso Sea
	Wilfred Owen Collected Poems
	Wuthering Heights

Price for the 3 Prompts : US$8.95 Add to Basket

n.b. When you have selected your three texts, click on the Add to Basket button.

If you wish to purchase further Prompts, for a wholly different set of three texts, return to the list, uncheck your original choices, and make your new selection, then click on the Add to Basket link once more.

When you use the Purchase link below or the Shopping Basket link at the top of the page to review your purchases, the Number column alongside the Prompts item will reflect the number of sets of Prompts you have placed in your basket, not the number of texts you have selected. Please do not change that number.

We’d be pleased to have your comments on any of the material: litworks@live.com. If you yourself have developed resources in a similar style for other texts, and would like to have them considered for inclusion under the WordSmith Prompts banner (with an authorship acknowledgment), please do get in touch. Contributors will be given free access to the whole range of Prompts.

SAMPLE MATERIAL: See below

Click on Sample Section if you wish to preview the resource.

Click on Purchase to checkout your shopping basket items.