A* Literature tips

Can someone please advise me on how to achieve an A/A* in unit 1 english literature? I am doing AQA

Can someone please advise me on how to achieve an A/A* in unit 1 english literature? I am doing AQA

Which books are you doing?

An inspector calls and OMAM

Can someone please advise me on how to achieve an A/A* in unit 1 english literature? I am doing AQA

AIC:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQovVw7yuGiLoPbnOHf5Stxx95vZ3tlo2&nohtml5=False

OMAM:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQovVw7yuGiIKnv3Q678MDfyTOApJBu1x&nohtml5=False
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqGFsWf-P-cC2JbnhAw88geP1FSkNAcb6&nohtml5=False

Example answers for OMAM:
http://cherwellenglish.typepad.com/cs110/2013/04/revision-2013-gcse-literature-model-answers.html#

Know your assessment objectives well, know quotes, have lots of ideas, have something to say about every character and every theme. Always talk about the author's intention. In general adopt a "point, evidence, explain" method. Where historical context is desired make sure it is purposeful. Where comparisons are desired make sure they are illuminating/"clever". Take care to make sure your writing is grammatically nice and flows, even if there aren't explicit marks for this examiners will be more convinced by an argument the more eloquent you sound tbh (though I don't advocate being pretentious or anything lol)

I did WJEC but I also did OMAM and An Inspector Calls (plus the coursework stuff and another book that is), getting full UMS at GCSE.

Know your assessment objectives well, know quotes, have lots of ideas, have something to say about every character and every theme. Always talk about the author's intention. In general adopt a "point, evidence, explain" method. Where historical context is desired make sure it is purposeful. Where comparisons are desired make sure they are illuminating/"clever". Take care to make sure your writing is grammatically nice and flows, even if there aren't explicit marks for this examiners will be more convinced by an argument the more eloquent you sound tbh (though I don't advocate being pretentious or anything lol)

I did WJEC but I also did OMAM and An Inspector Calls (plus the coursework stuff and another book that is), getting full UMS at GCSE.

did you do unseen poetry too? if so, did you have any specific techniques on how to analyse and compare the two unseen poems?

Yeah in one exam. Really I came out of that thinking I'd get like a B or something, I thought that portion of the exam went abysmally, so it's hard to think of what I did right. But to be honest what's always worked for me with poems, unseen or otherwise, in spite of the fact teachers say it's C grade level, is working through the poem "chronologically", though not being too obvious/rigid about it. Basically I'd get a sense of what the poem was trying to say, maybe jot down some of my ideas in bullet point form, then talk about how the opening is expressing these ideas, and then continue on through the poem to the conclusion, of course missing out anything that seems insignificant and when appropriate linking separate parts of the poem. Maybe you have to do this in a very particular way to effectively analyse and that's why it's advised against, I dunno. Embedded quotes are very useful for allowing you to express things more succinctly and allowing your writing/analysis to flow as opposed to looking like a rigid structure, even if you are technically using a rigid structure. Picking out particular words/short phrases and talking about how the language used conveys a certain idea works well, as does picking out poetic techniques and doing the same, so long as your points are nice and you aren't just saying "here is x technique!" and moving on.

In terms of the unseen element and getting to grips with the poem quickly, remember that everything is subjective and don't panic. Obviously make an effort with the poem to try and extract what the author most probably meant, rather than just jumping at the first ideas you have, but at the end of the day if you have a reasonable interpretation that's probably good enough. And remember you can always bring up contrasting interpretations and ideas about what the author is saying; in fact this makes your writing look more mature.

With comparing the poems, the important thing for big marks I think is to get them to "work together" for your argument. You will get a few from just saying "hey, this idea is featured in both poems" or, less so, "these techniques are used in both poems", but the best thing is "author A brings up this idea, and indeed from author B we see blah blah blah and therefore we could say that these poems offer a window into...". It is important to keep your essay analysis heavy, and it is probably necessary to do the superficial comparisons above but the icing on the cake so to speak is your argument/thematic considerations.