English Lit + Lang Ellb3 revision help ? 3rd June 2013

hi I was after some help in revision for ellb3, any suggestions ? I find it really hard to revise for English I've written out a framework for answering section a and b and a key terms glossary but really cant get motivated for practice questions. I have no one available to mark them even if I did practice questions anyway. My literature piece for section a that I have been studying is the crucible. On a side note why is there not already a thread for this years exam ?

Hi I'm doing The Crucible too. What's your essay plans for both questions?


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Have you come up with an essay plan....
I'm struggling with that

No, it's so difficult! Especially with The Crucible.

For unseen, my paragraphs are split into Context, Audience, Purpose, Talk in Lang, Talk in lit, Attitudes + values.


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Unseen...? You mean transcripts.....
My teacher said Context, Lexis, Grammar and non fluency features.
Also how can transcripts have an audience....?

It's audience is each other, and take into account certain transcripts where the speakers are being interviewed for a TV show (like the poverty past paper question where the audience is the TV audience).


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Unseen...? You mean transcripts.....
My teacher said Context, Lexis, Grammar and non fluency features.
Also how can transcripts have an audience....?

yeah yeah we did that in class....
what about if its just a transcript of two people talking...
what do you say about audience?

I see you found this thread, ignore my PM comments!

And calling that question "unseen texts" is acceptable, in all fairness to the other user - it's what I call it seeing as I was taught transcript is the visual recording of spoken speech, so doesn't always apply to both texts whereas they are both unseen.

I hated the poverty paper, one of the difficult ones for me!

And for transcripts (and literature), you can have an internal audience - using the Educating Rita one, when the tutor speaks, the student is listening and therefore his/ her audience. Then for teh play, you also have an external audience of the people watching.

I personally do not tend to devote an entire paragraph to audience as it's not always relevant.

Thanks for clearing that up for me!

I also hated the poverty paper, I sincerely hope we don't get something that ridiculously difficult! (My worst grade so far was from that paper -- loved the jewellery one haha)

Also sorry for that weird structure, it wasn't completely correct. Had to check again, it's more organised into sections rather than paragraphs.

- Introduction outlining the two texts, giving an overview on how it's talk in life/talk in lit
- Comparing the two texts on their context, on their audience, and on their purpose
- Comparing the attitudes and values between the two texts and the attitudes and values between the participants in the transcript or the participants in the literature piece.

Same, ideally the talk in life will not be an excessively accurate transcript (the business negotiation vs. Death of a Salesman one springs to mind) and there will be a clear link between the two texts. The poverty one was my worst grade too, I felt there was way much to say about the play than the transcript and so my structure went to pot. Don't think I've seen the jewellery one, although it could be hiding in that huge booklet of past papers we were given!

Don't apologise for your structure, different things work for different people! I personally like to organise my points thematically and then link it back to the context/ purpose/ attitudes etc. at the end of each paragraph, but I know others like to use the question as their starting point. It's just a shame it's so vaguely worded...

Ah! I find that so difficult! Especially so with The Crucible.

I can't help wondering if some of the set texts give some students a slight advantage, but then I guess theoretically, if your teacher is good enough, you should do just fine. As far as I know, for the set text, you get given a theme in the question, so all my paragraphs stem from said theme. For example, one we did on class focused on power, so my paragraphs went a little like this:

- Power is conveyed through...
- Power affects the way others treat/ respond to you...
- Power can have negative consequences...
- Power can make you vain...
- Power can corrupt...

Oh I see! I do that too but I link every single paragraph back to the steer after every point that I make to ensure maximum marks. I just realised that you do Psychology as well haha.

Yeah, I do that for the unseen texts (make general points, give evidence, then link back to question). For the set text, I see to find it easier to work the other way round (general point related to question, evidence, dramatic effect) for some reason - maybe because the questions are different?. Conclusions are the bit that annoy me, I know they're not worth many marks but I still feel better with a neat finish!

Haha, yes, I also do Psychology, it's so weird spotting users in other forums when you're used to seeing them in a particular one!

I'm unlucky with the exam boards that I have. Not many people do this subject AQA spec B. And hardly anyone does Edexcel psychology.

Anyway, what is your text if it's not The Crucible?

Ah right, I've always been either AQA/ OCR for my exams so don't have much knowledge/ experience of the less common exam boards (I think WJEC is also one?).

Our school's set text is Shakespeare's King Lear. I'm guessing they didn't pick The Crucible because a lot of A Level students studied it for GCSE, but it seems to be a popular option amongst TSRians.

I do like Miller so I might pick it up over the summer, but the English student in me is also glad to be studying one of the "older" classics. The only problem is, I will have to make sure I remember certain Elizabethan phrases/ idioms for the exam as we don't get a glossary!

Ah my school's just weird then. We've never studied The Crucible before (we were on WJEC for English GCSE). I've enjoyed The Crucible though. How does it work, having a different text? Are there two extracts to choose from in the exam? A Crucible one and a King Lear one?