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Jekyll and Hyde

What is the best way to revise for Jekyll and Hyde?
Hi, assuming you mean for GCSE English Literature? I came out with a 9 2 years ago so I thought I would share, bearing in mind it was 2021 so covid might have affected how it went a little:
Show up in class, read the book, discuss it as much as possible! IK not very helpful if you've already finished the main book study but important nonetheless. I found sharing my ideas and getting interpretations/explanations of the ideas in the text explained to me by different people very helpful. I also borrowed a copy of the book with someone in the year above's annotations in it, to see other quotes/concepts/ideas they had.
Practice questions are the best resource for what is in the test! You can look them up on your exam board's website and collect them together as an easy resource to reach for. You can do the questions straight up, or use them in different ways, for example collect the themes of the questions and try to find a few quotes for each one, answer without the book in front of you, then improve your answer with the book in a different colour of pen, answer and self-mark a question and then go back to it a few days later to improve etc.
You don't need expensive revision materials. However, it does help to have your own book copy/one you can annotate with post-its. If someone else in your class has the fancy revision guide, ask to borrow it for a minute and take pictures of things that might be helpful to you, but I never got through all the exercises for these as they were sometimes repetitive. Nicer-looking revision notes don't always mean better as long as it's easy to find and read information.
Good teachers should be enthusiastic about your work! Don't be scared to ask for feedback/go back through work they marked/ ask if they are willing to mark your practice questions.
For memorising quotes, remember they can be as short as one or two words if you need them to! Try and get quotes that actually interest you and relate to more than one theme of the text, as they're going to be way more useful than those niche ones that might make you seem smart in a specific situation. If it's the actual memorisation you have trouble with, try different methods e.g. flashcards with a theme or a sentence with gaps (progressing in difficulty as you get better), mind mapping, recording yourself saying them/building a sentence by saying one word, then 2, then 3 and so on. The look-cover-write-check method can be helpful to get started too! It's better to build over time and then have a last push before the end, as gappy, intense revision doesn't really stick in your long-term memory.
Finally, ensure you have your technique and question structuring down to a tee. For most longer answers, good features might include a paragraph that not only has a point, evidence and explanation, but zooms into a specific feature of the quote, uses terminology to describe it, links explanations back to the question every time, plus avoids repetition and has an overall forward flow into the next paragraph. This can be hard to perfect but try recognising these features in exemplar answers to help! Know what your exam paper will look like and what each question will want from you. Make sure you answer every question as fully as you can, but don't waste your time giving analysis that would be great somewhere else in the wrong question, as you can't get more marks than the question has to give!
Good luck out there, GCSE isn't easy as you have a lot of content to balance, but try to take things one step at a time and build up! Let me know if you have other questions
Reply 2
Original post by CluelessCuteness
Hi, assuming you mean for GCSE English Literature? I came out with a 9 2 years ago so I thought I would share, bearing in mind it was 2021 so covid might have affected how it went a little:
Show up in class, read the book, discuss it as much as possible! IK not very helpful if you've already finished the main book study but important nonetheless. I found sharing my ideas and getting interpretations/explanations of the ideas in the text explained to me by different people very helpful. I also borrowed a copy of the book with someone in the year above's annotations in it, to see other quotes/concepts/ideas they had.
Practice questions are the best resource for what is in the test! You can look them up on your exam board's website and collect them together as an easy resource to reach for. You can do the questions straight up, or use them in different ways, for example collect the themes of the questions and try to find a few quotes for each one, answer without the book in front of you, then improve your answer with the book in a different colour of pen, answer and self-mark a question and then go back to it a few days later to improve etc.
You don't need expensive revision materials. However, it does help to have your own book copy/one you can annotate with post-its. If someone else in your class has the fancy revision guide, ask to borrow it for a minute and take pictures of things that might be helpful to you, but I never got through all the exercises for these as they were sometimes repetitive. Nicer-looking revision notes don't always mean better as long as it's easy to find and read information.
Good teachers should be enthusiastic about your work! Don't be scared to ask for feedback/go back through work they marked/ ask if they are willing to mark your practice questions.
For memorising quotes, remember they can be as short as one or two words if you need them to! Try and get quotes that actually interest you and relate to more than one theme of the text, as they're going to be way more useful than those niche ones that might make you seem smart in a specific situation. If it's the actual memorisation you have trouble with, try different methods e.g. flashcards with a theme or a sentence with gaps (progressing in difficulty as you get better), mind mapping, recording yourself saying them/building a sentence by saying one word, then 2, then 3 and so on. The look-cover-write-check method can be helpful to get started too! It's better to build over time and then have a last push before the end, as gappy, intense revision doesn't really stick in your long-term memory.
Finally, ensure you have your technique and question structuring down to a tee. For most longer answers, good features might include a paragraph that not only has a point, evidence and explanation, but zooms into a specific feature of the quote, uses terminology to describe it, links explanations back to the question every time, plus avoids repetition and has an overall forward flow into the next paragraph. This can be hard to perfect but try recognising these features in exemplar answers to help! Know what your exam paper will look like and what each question will want from you. Make sure you answer every question as fully as you can, but don't waste your time giving analysis that would be great somewhere else in the wrong question, as you can't get more marks than the question has to give!
Good luck out there, GCSE isn't easy as you have a lot of content to balance, but try to take things one step at a time and build up! Let me know if you have other questions

Thank you so much!! This helped alot!! :smile:

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