Training for the oral English exam
3EN1/HE
Theme: From Shakespeare with Love
Text: William Shakespeare: “Sonnet 18” (1609)
Task: You must analyse and interpret “Sonnet 18” by William Shakespeare and
make a presentation (roughly 8 minutes) of the text and relate it to the theme. You
must record your presentation as a screencast.
Apart from your own points, you must include the following points in your
presentation:
- the composition
and
- the use of imagery
Bedømmelseskriterier
Ved den mundtlige prøve lægges der vægt på, at eksaminanden
̶ behersker et flydende og nuanceret engelsk med høj grad af grammatisk korrekthed og evne til
selvkorrektion
̶ giver en velstruktureret præsentation
̶ analyserer, fortolker og perspektiverer prøvematerialet med anvendelse af fagets analytiske begreber
og metoder
̶ anvender den viden, der er opnået i arbejdet med det studerede emne.
Der lægges i bedømmelsen vægt på, at eksaminanden kan indgå i uddybende samtale om præsentationen.
Der gives én karakter ud fra en helhedsvurdering af den samlede præstation.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Sonnet 18
1 Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
2 Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
3 Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
4 And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
5 Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
6 And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
7 And every fair from fair sometime declines,
8 By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
9 But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
10 Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest,
11 Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
12 When in eternal lines to time thou growest;
13 So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
14 So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
(ca. 1609)
GET HELP! (scroll down a page)
Requirements:
 Do NOT read aloud from a manuscript. However, you are not to completely free-style either which
is why you must produce a PowerPoint (with keywords, key sentences and quotations).
 Speak loud and clear and put some energy into it.
 Use ‘analytical terms’ (= tekstanalytiske begreber) – use “Toolbox” (How to read a poem) and Hanne’s
ppt about ‘The Shakespearean Sonnet Form’ (Edulife/Google Drive).
 Use minimum 5 quotations and remember to comment fully on each one.
It is perfectly okay if you say eh and ehm, or if you start a sentence over again. This is how spoken language
works in real life .
Structure your presentation:
1) Introduction: present the text (title, author, year and genre). Make an ultra-short summary
(when? where? who? what?). (No more than 1 min.)
Sonnet 18, by Shakespeare, roughly 16th century, Love and immortality
The poem adresses the problem that Shakespeare compares the fair youth to the sun however
sometimes the sun dims but the fair youths beauty doesn’t and so that comparison is inssuficient
and then shakespeare ends the poem saying that as long as people read the poem the fair youth
will be immortal.
2) Body: analyse the text. Make sure to cover the two obligatory points.
You must also add points of your own. There are many aspects you can look into – for help, see
“Toolbox” (How to read a poem). Also, use your knowledge about the ‘Shakespearean Sonnet Form’
(see Hanne’s ppt).
Composition:
Follows the structure of shakespearean sonnet form. It has 14 lines, one stanza. It consists of 3
quatrains and 1 couplet, the first 12 lines debates whether the fair youth can be compared to a
summer’s day and then the last 2 is the conclusion where shakespeare concludes that as long as
people read the poem the fair youth will be immortal.
The poem follows the rhyme scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GG
The first 12 lines are cross rhymes and the last 2 lines are ends rhymes.
It also follows the iambic pentameter which is the rhythm that you read the poem in. iamb is a unit of
2 syllabes 1 unstressed and 1 stressed. Penta is greek for five which means that each line has 5 iambs
in it. So the poem sounds like this.
Use of imagery:
Shakespeare uses personification several times in the sonnet to make inanimate objects come alive.
For example
Personification: (l. 6) (l. 11)
Metaphors to describe elements of summer: (l. 4) (l. 5) (l. 9)
Poetic language:
Uses a lot of adjectives
Uses old pronouns: thee, thou, thy and indicates an intimate relationship between the two since those
pronouns were used back in the day to express intimacy between two people while you was formal.
Therefore the use of thou tells us that shakespeare had a close relationship to this fair youth. They
may have been lovers or as historians would put it they were roommates. That was tiktok joke btw
sorry I couldn’t help myself.
Theme/message:
Youth, beauty and immortality – the entire sonnet is about praising the fair youths beauty. And
compared to a summer’s day the fair youth is more lovely and temperate (l. 1)
The poem also talks about how the fair youth’s beauty and youth will last forever and will live on in
the poem normally beauty and youth fades and eventually end with death however that is not the case
with the fair youth.
3) Relate the text to the theme (From Shakespeare with Love):
Draw parallels to another text from the topic.
Sonnet 18 can be related to sonnet 130. They both deal with the same sort of rejection towards
convetional beauty standards however it is done in different ways. In sonnet 18 the fair youth is
compared to a summer’s day but shakespeare argues that that is insufficient because the fair youth
is more lovelier. And in sonnet 130 shakespeare argues that even though the dark lady isn’t
conventionally beautiful he still finds her attractive.
4) Conclusion: round off your presentation with an interpretation. What does the author want to
communicate to his audience? (the message).
The message of the sonnet is a tribute to the fair youths beauty but the message is also about how
immorality can only be achieved through poetry.
How to make a screencast? (scroll down for help)
A screencast is a video recording of your computer screen and includes audio.
Step 1:
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Step 2:
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Step 3:
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Step 4:
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Make a PowerPoint presentation focusing on each bullet point from the box above (remember not
to overload each slide with too much text and too many illustrations).
Press the link and access the website of Screencast-o-matic.
Watch the video on how it all works (“Watch our video”).
Press the blue button “Record for free”.
Press the orange button “Launch Free Recorder”.
Open your PowerPoint presentation.
Press the red button to record. You can now start to do your voice-over while you go through
your slides of your PowerPoint. Make sure your microphone works!
(NB! A screencast cuts you short after precisely 15 min.)
Step 5:
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Press “done” and save your screencast as a video file (mp4). It is saved onto your desktop.
Step 6:
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Upload your screencast in Lectio. You are DONE ;)