OCR A-level Latin Paper 3 (H443/03) - 12th June 2023 [Exam Chat]

Hey what set texts are people doing? We're doing Cicero's Pro Cluentio for AS and then Tacitus' Annals for the A2. I quite like the Cicero but the Tacitus is mind-numbingly boring imo, even if it does follow on from Germanicus and Piso at GCSE which is quite cute <3 I'm mostly worrying about learning all my translations in time, as it all suddenly gets busy with exams for me from the 12th-20th and I have French (2h30) the morning of the prose lit.

We're doing Cicero's Pro Cluentio for both AS and A2 -- I feel like the AS is more interesting plot-wise, but becomes more descriptive in A2. I absolutely hate learning Cicero especially since he goes off on different tangents. I also have the bulk of my exams in June (10-23) and learning the translations of the Verse lit and the Prose lit seems so exhausting. If anyone has any tips, lmk! I'd really appreciate it!

Ahh yeah I'm doing Cicero for AS and I find the translation very hard to learn because he goes round and round in circles so sometimes I muddle up different bits of translation. On the plus side he is much easier to analyse the lit crit for than any of the other texts imo as it's hard to miss some of his outlandish anaphora and things. I can't really offer many tips on learning as I'm in the same boat, except that I re-learnt my verse A2 text over Christmas so I'm going to learn that this Thurs after my last exam before half term and hopefully it will come back well enough for me to comfortably cover it in a day. As for the rest, I guess it's getting crammed... I'm just going to try and use the half term to my advantage as much as possible, although I do have the English drama paper soon after which isn't ideal as that takes a lot of revision

Hey I'm struggling with prepping for the Tacitus 20-marker as the translation our teacher has given us of our section is super wordy and quite unclear. Does anyone by any chance have a timeline/list of events for what happens in the A level text that they would be prepared to share with me? I'm assuming not, especially as it's not a very popular set text as far as I can see...

Hi, not sure if this is the kind of thing you were looking for, but I've got some notes on each chapter done as "tweets" (basically just with a character limit to keep them concise).

I've got them saved as a pdf/word doc but it's unfortunately coming up with errors when I try to upload it though...

Oh my god that would be amazing! Any chance you could try direct messaging it to me?

We're doing Cicero's Pro Cluentio for both AS and A2 -- I feel like the AS is more interesting plot-wise, but becomes more descriptive in A2. I absolutely hate learning Cicero especially since he goes off on different tangents. I also have the bulk of my exams in June (10-23) and learning the translations of the Verse lit and the Prose lit seems so exhausting. If anyone has any tips, lmk! I'd really appreciate it!

I covered Cicero AS in a day when I did my year 12 end-of-year mock, lol. I've only glanced over it recently but I hope to cover both of the texts in 2 days? I'm going to try and do that this weekend and then focus on my Verse set texts next week. Btw, what Verse lit texts are you doing?

I find Cicero lit crit easy; I tend not to use the official commentary book or whatever - I just have a list of rhetorical devices that Cicero uses in his speeches and their definitions, and then I apply those to whatever extract comes up. It saves so much unnecessary time trying to regurgitate the commentary A lot of the Cicero stuff was in my short-term memory, so I need to relearn it but thankfully, his grammar/vocab use isn't too fiendish. I do biology A-level too, and that's a lot to memorise - am questioning some of my life choices, haha

Yeah I was trying that but I literally just made my account 5 mins ago so I could share my notes w you. Apparently your account has to be at least three days old before you can direct message

Edit: Try this link, hopefully it should work!

https://1drv.ms/w/s!AumKpwYrrIfHgUF_spGPtJOVWDUV?e=rwUsNk

Also just looked at the doc again and realising I missed out the very last chapter in English (Annals V chapter 5) but oh well

Thank you so much you are an absolute legend!! If you want any of my translation quizlets or documents just let me know

Hi beaquin! There’s some structure related lectures on Massolit re: Annals (A-level and OCR specific). I have an account and I can screen record them for you if it’ll help!

That's such a good point! It's really generous of you to offer to record them but I think I have an account through my school and my teacher has shown us a couple in the past but would def be good to recap. Those are the ones with the man who sits with his arm around an empty chair like he's recording with a ghost, aren't they?

Hahah, yes they are!! To be honest, personally, I haven't found the Massolit lectures too helpful - I'm doing Cicero for prose lit and then Aeneid + Heroides for the verse lit paper, and the some of the videos were so dull/didn't add too much. Do you have the Annals commentary book? There tends to be a summary of everything at the start of those! If you don't have it, Google Books might have it in their preview

I do actually, that's a good point. I find the Annals very boring so the Massolits may be a bit tedious but I'll def give them a shot in case I manage to take something in. It's definitely helpful to see summaries, as I find all the translations wordy to the point of incoherence

I get it - the Cicero is wordy but at least it's moderately interesting. It sucks to have a text that's boring though, like why can't teachers choose a more interesting or easier text? I recorded myself saying all my Cicero and then I just keep on playing it. Then I just write it all down by memory and fill in the gaps.

It's true the Cicero is def more interesting. And that's a good technique - I actually also recorded myself saying my Cicero but I've never consistently listened to it, which I def should do! To be honest I tend to just rote learn sentence by sentence on Quizlet until I'm completely confident but it is very tedious unfortunately

That's what I'm doing for my verse text haha and the harder bits of the Cicero. It's really tedious. Are you learning the commentary notes or analysis as well?

I'm not bothering with that particularly, as I feel I've written down the best lit crit points over the course of the last two years. I have a lit-crit copy of each text which is all highlighted and annotated and I tend to just read over that as thoroughly as I can bear to and it usually goes in ok... I would say the analysis is definitely easier to blag your way through than some of the translations, but I also definitely do not give it enough attention. I really hate the literature - latin's only my favourite A-Level for the language side and I'd happily do triple prose comp not to have to write the 15 and 20 markers!

(Speaking of 20 markers is it just me who has no idea how to get more than about 15-16/20? I feel like we barely covered technique in class and have only done a couple of practices)