how to revise for english lit a-level

1.

Develop your points. Can you do any further analysis before you move onto your next paragraph?

2.

Level up your vocab! Instead of evil, can you put knavish? Can you find words that describe the characters that are advanced?

3.

Ask your teacher which Assessment Objective you're missing! Do you need more historical context? Or perhaps more quotes? They will be able to direct you on improving your mark if you're willing to put in the work, you don't need to figure it out on your own.

1.

Read some Greek/Roman Tragedies. They have some really good, bare to the bones examples of quite a few common tropes, especially for Shakespeare. And there are good links to draw there. I'd recommend especially Women of Troy and Oedipus Rex.

2.

Familiarise yourself with a couple of other Shakespeare plays, too. I don't know which one you're doing, so it may depend. Macbeth is a good comparison to Othello, in terms of the characterisation of women, you could also do a similar thing regarding Othello and King Lear comparing Desdemona and Cornelia. It does, as I said, depend on the specific play you're doing. But find a couple of plays with some common themes.

3.

In terms of context, read around the eras the books/plays are both written and set in and try to see any biases in the written era. Common tropes also help here and the other ways they can be portrayed. See if there's any flower symbolism - if you do Keats, they'll be quite a bit. But this is also the case in Shakespeare. As somewhere to start, AQA has pdfs giving an intro to context and go from there. Also, are the texts the original source? If not, read the original source, too.

4.

In terms of criticality, I'd say create mind maps of what critics have said on a variety of themes within each text. Also, you may want to find quotes from historical figures at the times that show why themes are shown the way they are - sometimes this helps, Shakespeare's plays were massively influenced by the opinions of the monarchs reigning at the time.

5.

Familiarise yourself with 'tragic terminology', I guess. You want to be able to spot them and be able to discuss it, the typical stuff, but you can go more in detail. Hubris, Hammartia, Anagnorisis, Villain, tragic hero, turning of fortune, that kind of thing. It shows you understand the genre.

1.

Create a mind map of notable points of protest. What is the author saying and why? Are the characters acting as the voice of author demonising industrialisation? Is anything in how the plot is unravelling belying the author's opinion on such a matter. Basically, what criticisms is the author making and how are they doing it. Are they criticising modern or institutional religion, censorship, the power of the masses or the power of authority? Maybe they are accentuating the powerlessness of certain groups, their voicelessness. These are all things of note to point out, because the author has often shown this for a reason.

2.

For this paper a lot of context can come from, like tragedy, the era something is written in, but also, moreso in this case, the author. So focus moreso on the author's opinions and what their inspirations were in writing the text. Why they wrote it will often tell you what inspired them to do so, and what was happening wither historically or at the time that triggered it.

3.

For criticality, it is much the same as for tragedy, however there is some unseen for this paper, so you'll want some more generic criticality points and info.

4.

For others texts to compare, read around a bit. As I said, Vox is good for Handmaid's tale. I don't know what other texts you're doing. Lists of banned books, or previously banned stuff is a good place to start, or texts that are quite controversial. Anything really that is making a statement. You may also want to read something else by the same authors, that's useful, or a similar setting/theme.

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Flash cards - create flashcards for each of your Literature texts. Aim for cards which cover key characters and themes which include key quotations, relevant AO5 and AO3 that the theme or character relates to.

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Knowledge Dumps - use a plain sheet of paper, in one colour, write down everything you can remember about the character or theme. In a second colour, use your books to fill in any information that you missed out.

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Quick fire planning - past papers to plan out answers, thinking about the quotations, analysis and context that you would use and how you would structure your answer. Give yourself a time limit to test where your strengths and weaknesses are.

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Practise your analysis but annotating extracts deciding on what you would talk about within a paragraph.

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Watch revision videos on Youtube - Mr Bruff is really helpful!

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Watch Massolit videos and make notes - you can use these for AO5 critical quotations too.

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Listen to Revise English Lit podcasts from Seneca

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Complete past papers using the AQA website

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Ensure that you have AO5 for each of the texts

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Revise subject terminology - make sure you can recognise specific techniques, especially poetic techniques. Don't forget to revise structure!