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Help with English A-Level revision! AQA English Literature B

Hi!

When taking my AS levels last summer, I thought that English was going to be my strongest subject. However, on results day, it ended up being my worst grade with the irrelevant subjects being my best. Looking back though, I didn't really have the best revision technique and simply learning the quotes for each of the novels and poems didn't really work. Has anybody got any tips that they could give me to revise as there are so many things to remember for all the exams and I really need an A grade to take it at the university I want.

Thank you :smile:

Reply 1

amiekey

I also struggled with English Literature at AS: got a B overall and a D in my exam, which was very worrying. I managed to get an A* overall in my A-level (without any resits!) and I am now studying literature at Durham, so I feel like I can share my technique a little.

The best way to prepare for your exam is to look at all the past papers and plan answers for them. You'll find that you'll end up finding quotes that are relevant for a number of questions, as the best quotes will relate to a variety of themes. In class we made presentations where we deconstructed the questions, picked examples that related, and then analysed them.

I'm not sure if it's still the same, but my paper was about pastoral literature. I memorised the conventions of pastoral literature, and read my texts looking for key examples of those themes. The key events in the plot are bound to have some memorable, interesting quotes open to interpretation.
Read your texts early, get to grip with their themes/contexts etc., and learn the quotes over time, if possible. Try and have a range of quotes for each text (since you're not sure which you'll want to write individually about on the day).