AQA A-level English Literature & Language Paper 1 (7707/1) - 24 May 2023 [Exam Chat]

How's everyone feeling for tomorrow? I'm most nervous for Paris but overall I think it should be a good exam

Btw, does anyone know what the questions
on Carol Ann Duffy were last year?

I’m defo nervous as I’ve had to self teach most of paper 1 — my teacher didn’t really teach us most of Paris and I learned our novel (Lovely Bones) basically entirely independently, but I think I’ve done alright considering!

Im doing The Handmaids Tale for the novel! Definitely most stressed about Paris tho as it’s so different to everything else in the course

I love Handmaids! I wish we'd studied it, it's one of my faves! Paris is definitely very different as the essay is such a different approach to everything else we learn about and it's so unpredictable considering how many diff texts there are! Honestly I'm not doing much Paris-specific revision, more just going over the key terms + concepts I might need for it

Anyone know how we are given the Paris anthology and poems in the exams? Are they in a seperate booklet?

I know that someone from 2024 will be looking for what came up on this paper to aid their revision, so here is what came up. Note: I did The Lovely Bones and Carol Ann Duffy poetry.

Section A: Paris.
Compare how Text A (Foreign Correspondent - Peter Lennon) and Text B (Visiting Paris - Mike and Sophia) present their first experiences of Paris.
A's extract went from line 143 - line 183, and B's extract went from "Sophia: yeah (.) Oh no (.) do you (.) what kind of tourists did you see there" to "Mike: yeah (.) that's what I felt anyway when I was in Paris".

Section B: The Lovely Bones.
The significance of Ruana Singh
(Extract went from chapter 6's "When my father knocked on the door of Ray Singh's house, he was struck dumb by Ray's mother, Ruana." to ""Dr. Singh is a professor?" my father asked, though he knew this already, knew more than he was comfortable with about this beautiful woman and her sparsley furnished home.")
or
Journeys
(Extract went from Snapshots's "In the fall of 1976, when she reached California, she drove direcrly to the beach and stopped her car." to (I'm fairly certain) "As my mother laughed and I watched her face light up, I also saw it fall into strange lines.")

Section C: Carol Ann Duffy.
Views on love in Valentine
or
Confusion in The Cliché Kid

Hope this helps someone. They were pretty grim steers in my (and my classmate's opinion), but I did the best I could. Hoping that future exams are a lot less harsh

I know that someone from 2024 will be looking for what came up on this paper to aid their revision, so here is what came up. Note: I did The Lovely Bones and Carol Ann Duffy poetry.

Section A: Paris.
Compare how Text A (Foreign Correspondent - Peter Lennon) and Text B (Visiting Paris - Mike and Sophia) present their first experiences of Paris.
A's extract went from line 143 - line 183, and B's extract went from "Sophia: yeah (.) Oh no (.) do you (.) what kind of tourists did you see there" to "Mike: yeah (.) that's what I felt anyway when I was in Paris".

Section B: The Lovely Bones.
The significance of Ruana Singh
(Extract went from chapter 6's "When my father knocked on the door of Ray Singh's house, he was struck dumb by Ray's mother, Ruana." to ""Dr. Singh is a professor?" my father asked, though he knew this already, knew more than he was comfortable with about this beautiful woman and her sparsley furnished home.")
or
Journeys
(Extract went from Snapshots's "In the fall of 1976, when she reached California, she drove direcrly to the beach and stopped her car." to (I'm fairly certain) "As my mother laughed and I watched her face light up, I also saw it fall into strange lines.")

Section C: Carol Ann Duffy.
Views on love in Valentine
or
Confusion in The Cliché Kid

Hope this helps someone. They were pretty grim steers in my (and my classmate's opinion), but I did the best I could. Hoping that future exams are a lot less harsh!

the question for othello was a statement comparing his bond with iago to his relationship with desdemona, and a statement asking how shakespeare presents his relationship with iago. the gatsby questions were either compatibility with lovers, and the second question was conflict with lovers

and i found the unseen poems so hard, they were based on the idea of separation

definitely a really difficult exam, i did the same book & poems so not much to contribute in the way of questions but everyone i know really struggled, including myself :/ hopefully paper 2 comes a bit easier to all of us!

God bless you! Which steers did you choose? I did Ruana Singh (feel like I jinxed it because I'd joked that she was so irrelevant she'd never come up), and Valentine + Close for the poetry. I felt like the question for Paris was a little weird and the extracts were not what I'd hoped for (even though I didn't hate the texts!). I've just had a big bonfire and burned all my paper 1 stuff - let's hope paper 2 is nicer! (If the Kite Runner question is on a completely irrelevant character too I will cry! )

God bless you! Which steers did you choose? I did Ruana Singh (feel like I jinxed it because I'd joked that she was so irrelevant she'd never come up), and Valentine + Close for the poetry. I felt like the question for Paris was a little weird and the extracts were not what I'd hoped for (even though I didn't hate the texts!). I've just had a big bonfire and burned all my paper 1 stuff - let's hope paper 2 is nicer! (If the Kite Runner question is on a completely irrelevant character too I will cry! )