Dover Beach - Matthew Arnold - Comprehension and analysis worksheets

These two worksheets, both two pages in length, help students first to comprehend, then to analyse Arnold’s famous poem.

The first worksheet deals with comprehending the poem and includes a series of short answer questions for before reading the poem. After reading, students then complete a cloze passage and further short answer questions on more challenging aspects of the poem.

The second worksheet is an analysis worksheet with activities on each stanza of the poem. These focus on the poet’s use of language techniques and require students to closely interact with examples from the poem, using these to fill gaps in a model response and extending on sentence starters to analyse the use of particular techniques. This worksheet also comes with teacher notes providing answers to the gap-fill and matching tasks.

The two worksheets are included in Word format for easy editing and also as a pdf to avoid loss of any formatting.