AQA English Lit Love Through the Ages June 2012 EXAM

66/70 is approx 76/80 UMS going on last year's boundaries. This means you need 63/120 UMS in the exam (lowish D) to get a B!

WOW! THANKYOU!!!! i have been stressing out and now i feel great. How did you find the ums for it ? just for future reference.
weird how coursework works out so you don't have to do that great in the exam...

Looking at the UMS marks above that makes me feel slightly more confident to maintain my B! Just hope I don't bugger the exam up!!

Just a quick question for some advice... Would anyone advise planning both questions in one go, or planning one, then writing it, then moving on to the second one??

Our class has literally done ONE full mock this year... I've practiced at home, but I feel like it's not the same as under pressure because I work slower as my adrenaline hasn't kicked in!

If anyone's got any advice, I'd be grateful

I would personally plan both questions first (this is what works for me) as when looking at wider reading you want to use, you might think of one for the first question which better links in with the second question or vice versa - so it prevents you from repeating wider reading.
Also, in my experience once you've finished the first question I feel like my energy levels have dropped or something and I'm not thinking as quickly as I was at the beginning. So having a plan pre-prepared with all your ideas from the beginning is easier for me.

But you should do whatever you find works best Good luck

This might be a really silly question, but its been manifesting itself at the back of my mind and raising doubt...as basically a lot of my wider reading, especially prose, is made up of foreign authors such as Ivan Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy, Marquez..ect and as they are all translated texts and are not actually "English Literature"do i have to cite the translator and is it okay to even use them as the majority of wider reading?

You've confirmed exactly what I was thinking! In the mock we did in class, I planned the first one, then wrote the essay, then planned the second one... you get what I'm saying!

By the time I was going to plan the second one I felt completely deflated!

How long do you spend planning then? On the edexcel website it recommends 30 mins per essay, but my teacher thinks this is too much?

Thanks again!

Yes, I completely understand what you're saying

In terms of planning, I have been told repeatedly by my teacher to use a maximum of 30 minutes planning BOTH questions - not 30 mins for each . Coming from a person who used to never plan, I find that for this exam you MUST spend sufficient time for planning as you really don't want to loose quality structure or forget the points you'd thought of at the beginning. I tend to spend about 20 mins reading and re-reading then writing a very brief but clear plan.

I use 'I like strawberry flavoured Cornettos' so I for interpretations, L for language, S for structure, F for form and C for context. This helps me make sure I don't forget anything.

By the way, are you AQA or edexcel? because I thought this thread was for AQA.

This might be a really silly question, but its been manifesting itself at the back of my mind and raising doubt...as basically a lot of my wider reading, especially prose, is made up of foreign authors such as Ivan Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy, Marquez..ect and as they are all translated texts and are not actually "English Literature"do i have to cite the translator and is it okay to even use them as the majority of wider reading?

I got 166/200 at AS and 61/70 in my coursework. How much do I need for an A/B?

We asked this our English teacher and he is one of the chief examiners. He said you don't have to site the translator and it's find to use them, but you might want to make the point that they are in a foreign language and develop context from it. He also said, in question one, if prose comes up you should try and use at least one piece of prose written in English first, even if it's just as a contrast. Like I your going to use Tolstoy for a comparison I'm sure you could probably use Jane eyre as a contrast

Thank you for the tips! I'm AQA Did I accidentally write edexcel? Do you feel prepared? I'm just going over context, wider reading and maybe some key things to look out for! It's such a hard exam to prepare, just got to pray it all comes back to you in the exam!

Another quick question, was Jan 2010 the first of this kind of exam?

If so, so far it has been:

Jan10:
Question 1 - poetry-poetry
Question 2 - Forbidden Love

June10:
Question 1 - Prose-prose
Question 2 - Nature of Love

Jan11:
Question 1 - poetry-poetry
Question 2 - Pains of love

June11:
Question 1 - prose-prose
Question 2 - Sexual Relationships

Jan12: ??? Not sure. Does anyone know?

Jan 12
Question 1- poetry-poetry (John Donne and I can't remember the other but they were about passion in life)
Question 2- the end of a relationship (the woodlanders (prose) trolus and Cressida (drama)

(my sixth form enters us as a mock)

Jan 12
Question 1- poetry-poetry (John Donne and I can't remember the other but they were about passion in life)
Question 2- the end of a relationship (the woodlanders (prose) trolus and Cressida (drama)

(my sixth form enters us as a mock)