A2 Edexcel English Lit exam - 6th June 2014

ah, I'm doing those three texts too. Really worried about it, the best essay I've done is 51/60 :/ :/

ah, I'm doing those three texts too. Really worried about it, the best essay I've done is 51/60 :/ :/

There is nothing to worry about. I have attached two documents which has loads of information on them . What are you most worried about?

I have a few contextual quotes for the poetry as well:
Jean Moorcroft Wilson on Isaac Rosenberg " Isaac Rosenberg was one of the finest and most distinctive poets of the First World War."
Robert Graves describes Charles Hamilton Sorley as "One of the three poets of importance killed during the First World War. The others being Rosenberg and Owen."
Sassoon has said that the reason behind his anti-war feelings was due to the death of his best friend David Cuthbert Thomas.

Also don't forget that before the First World War, people were used to romantic poems and the topic of romance so the effects of war and the horrors were made worse because nothing like this had really been seen before. It was made worse by the fact that this was happening to the children of those reading the poems, who had children fighting. This was the first step of de-humanising the reader. Now as a modern reader we have grown used to these horrors, but at the same time the topic and war in Kite Runner is made worse because of how relevant it is.

Hope this kind of helps. If you need more help I will try . Best of luck

I too am doing Spies, Kite Runner and 101 Poem Against War. I have loads of quotes and analysis on all three texts as well as context for them which I know is an important part of the exam. If someone is doing the same texts and needs some help I can give it to you. With the unseen section of the exam I also have some tips that might help if people would like these too

Pick passages in the texts that show conflict and talk about how they're interesting. Or find bits that don't show conflict and show that they can still be interesting (like Tess + Angel at the end of the novel, their relationship isn't in conflict because they're together). Find some critical quotations of people saying that the conflict makes it interesting, or that the conflicts are too simple and plainly cut so they're not interesting :P


I think that I'm okay at the unseen although I'm really bad at writing quickly. Read it several times, identify the subject matter and themes. Go line-by-line, not having to include everything if you run out of time but definitely look at the ending. With every technique talk about how it represents the meaning of the passage or ties into those themes, and the effect that the technique has on the reader.

Talk about the following: narrative voice (+perspective), imagery, overall form/structure, sentence structure (+punctuation), sounds (+rhyme), rhythm/metre, tense, word choice and placement (juxtaposition/contrast/antithesis), maybe character and setting.