English at Oxford

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TSR Wiki > University > Choosing a University > University Guides > University of Oxford > English at Oxford

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Contents 1 Introduction 2 Undergraduate courses 2.1 Admissions criteria 2.2 First year 2.2.1 Course structure 2.2.1.1 Papers taken during the first year 2.2.2 Reading lists 2.2.3 Lectures 2.2.4 Tutorials 2.2.5 Classes 2.2.6 Essay-writing tips 2.2.7 Libraries 2.2.7.1 College libraries 2.2.7.2 Faculty library 2.2.7.3 The Bodleian 2.2.8 Collections 2.2.9 Mods 2.3 Course I 2.3.1 Advantages/disadvantages 2.3.2 Course structure 2.3.3 Second year 2.3.3.1 Picking special authors 2.3.4 Third year 2.4 Course II 2.4.1 Second year 2.4.2 Third year 2.4.3 Advantages/disadvantages 2.4.4 Course structure 2.5 Joint schools 2.6 Revision tips for finals 2.7 Finals 3 Graduate and postgraduate courses 3.1 Applying 3.2 M.St 3.3 M.Phil 3.4 D.Phil

Introduction

English is one of the largest subjects at Oxford, and the English faculty is one of the largest in the UK. Because of the college system, you won't normally notice this, though. Probably the only time you'll actually see your entire year (around 250 people) will be when you're taking Finals - and chances are you'll have other things to worry about then. The size of the faculty actually means very little.

According to the faculty website, the English Faculty seeks:

• To provide challenging undergraduate courses that engage the critical intelligence, imagination and creativity of the students; that develop their independent thinking by drawing on technical skills in literary analysis; and that increase their sensitivity to the critical and linguistic issues that lie at the heart of English literature.
• To promote in all its students skills and aptitudes which are transferable to a wide range of employment contexts and life experiences.

(Which is rather woolly if you think about it.)

Undergraduate courses

Admissions criteria

For what it's worth, the faculty are quite specific about what they're looking for:

Selection criteria

• Enthusiasm for literature
• Sensitivity to the creative use of language
• Intellectual curiosity
• Conceptual clarity
• Flexibility
• Accuracy and attention to detail
• Critical engagement
• Capacity for hard work
• Articulacy

(You can find all of this information on the faculty website).

First year

The first year is mainly for you to get started, i.e. for adapting to the pace and the amount of reading, getting used to writing weekly essays, get the hang of how to use libraries most efficiently, that sort of thing. Oh, and to prepare you for Mods. You'll be having exams at the end of the year, but it's not quite as serious as it sounds: your Mods results won't count towards your actual degree, you'll only need to pass them. Having said that, though, they're a good trial run for the real thing, so it's probably a good idea to do some revision anyway - just don't get too stressed over it.

Course structure

The order in which you'll be doing the papers will vary depending on your college, but usually you'll be able to choose between options. That doesn't mean you're entirely free to do what you like, but it isn't all compulsory papers either. If you're really dying to do a particular topic that won't necessarily be covered within one of the papers, though, talk to your tutor about it. Many tutors will go out of their way to let you write on a topic you're really keen on. Not all of them, obviously, but it's definitely worth a try.

Papers taken during the first year

• ILS

Only one of the first-year papers is compulsory: Introduction to Literary Studies (ILS). According to the faculty blurb, ILS "intended to introduce you to English literature as a discipline, and to a variety of approaches to reading literary texts and literary criticism". In other words, it's a paper in which you're meant to get you grounded in the critical context, by looking at different sorts of critical approaches - like Marxism, Historicism, Structuralism, etc. - the sort of stuff you won't necessarily be using in all of your essays but which is nevertheless useful to know. ILS is one of the more theoretical papers, and people usually either love it or hate it.

For the remaining papers, the choices are:

• English literature 1832-1900 (aka "Victorian Literature")
• English literature 1900-present day (aka "Modern Literature")

Most people take both options during their first year. It's sensible to do so, and it's sort of unusual not to, but that doesn't mean it's altogether impossible to do only Victorian Literature or only Modernism. Depending on your tutor, convincing him/her may be tough, though...

Victorian literature is a good solid beginner's paper. As part of the paper, you'll be studying the obvious novels by Dickens, George Eliot, the Brontës etc., but of course there's more to it than that. For example, you can look at poetry by Rossetti, Browning, Tennyson and lots of others. Or you can study drama. Wilde is one of the most popular options here, but again, there are a lot of other options as well - like the early works of Shaw, for example. Or you can study themes like the sensation novel, social problem novel, dramatic monologue, women's writing, etc.

The "1900-present day" paper often puts a strong focus on Modernism, which is kind of useful if you did the Victorians first, because then you'll be able to see better where those writers were coming from. It needn't, though. The most common authors to pick and choose from for this paper are Woolf, Joyce, Conrad, D.H. Lawrence, Beckett and Carter, but as with all the other papers, your tutor will often encourage you to do some slightly more unusual topic you're interested in.

• English literature 700-1100 (aka "Old English")
• English literature 1350-1500 (aka "Middle English")

For these two it's usually one or the other (and the more popular option tends to be Old English). The advantages of doing Old English are that

• Old English is a challenge, and unless you choose Old English as your Paper 8 option in third year and unless you end up doing Course II, this will be your only chance of doing it. And later you might regret not having done it.
• you'll be looking pretty much all of the "great" Anglo-Saxon texts ('The Wanderer', 'The Dream of the Rood', 'The Battle of Maldon', 'The Seafarer', Aelfric - and of course Beowulf, whereas all of the "great" Middle English texts will be saved up for second year.
• nearly all of Old English literature (except Beowulf, that is), is quite short, which means you won't have massive amounts of reading to do and will be able to concentrate on getting the hang of the language.
• Middle English will be a compulsory paper during second year, so why do it twice?
• after struggling through Old English, the vast majority of Middle English texts in second year will seem like a piece of cake (notable exception: anything written by the Gawain-poet).

The advantages of choosing Middle English are

• Old English can be tough; Beowulf in particular can be a bit tricky to understand. You'll need to study the grammar before you can read texts properly. Middle English is closer to modern English, so it's easier to understand.
• you'll be able to study Middle English in real depth, because you'll be doing different texts in second year. By that time you'll already be grounded in the period.
• you'll already be familiar with some of the set texts for second year (La Morte D'Arthur, for example, and some bits of Chaucer).
• if you're sure you'll want to do Course I, you won't really need Old English, so you can focus on doing Middle English properly instead.

The final paper you'll be doing is the

• Special author/topic paper

There are a number of different options available, ranging from fairly straightforward stuff like Dickens as a special author to more unusual stuff like an option on classical Latin and Greek literature (in translation, that is). You'll also be able to pick any of the options you missed out, like for example Old English if you chose Middle English on the medieval option. This is the slot that most people use for the one out of Victorian Literature or Modern Literature that they didn't start with, although many people do take other special options instead.

Reading lists

You'll be getting your first reading list before you come up to Oxford, and chances are it'll look massive (two A4 pages are quite common) and extremely intimidating. Better get used to it straight away, because that's what all your reading lists at the beginning of a paper will look like.

Don't panic, though. Your tutor isn't seriously expecting you to have read every single text on the list at the beginning of term. It is extremely unlikely that anybody in your year will have managed to get through the entire list - and even if somebody did that won't necessarily give him/her any significant advantage, so relax. The main purpose of that reading list is to show you some of the directions you can take on the paper, so you can use it to find out which aspects of, say, Victorian literature you might like to study in more detail.

The best way to tackle a reading list like that is to pick a couple of options and to start reading around them, particularly by doing lots of primary reading. You can always brush up on your secondary reading at a later point, but you'll be expected to give your own response to texts in tutorials, and for that it helps if you've actually read them. Try to get a general sense of the main arguments if you can, but don't overdo it. There's no point in spending your entire vacation at the library, or you'll be exhausted already when the term starts. Not to mention that you'll probably be spending more than enough time in libraries once you're at Oxford.

Most tutors will also give you shorter and more specific reading lists. For those it'll probably be useful to try and get through as much as you can, but again, don't overdo it. Remember that you need to leave yourself enough time to write the essay as well.

Lectures

The only English lectures which are actually compulsory are the ILS ones. They'll normally be held in the Exam schools, because none of the lecture rooms at the faculty building is large enough to hold the entire year. Normal lectures can vary in size from 50-60 people (popular topic directly relevant to the paper/lecture and lecturer were recommended by many college tutors) to 5-10 people (obscure poetry/very specific stuff/topics that are of more relevance to graduates than undergraduates). It'll never be as packed again as during the first session, though, so even if you have to fight for a seat in 1st week, there can be plenty of empty ones in 2nd week after people realised the lecture's not as essential as they thought and/or they can't be bothered to get out of bed in time for a 9am lecture on Mondays.

Just because lectures aren't compulsory that doesn't necessarily mean they're not worth going to, of course. As a matter of fact, at your first meeting with your tutor you'll probably be going through the lecture list for useful lectures that you'll be "strongly encouraged" to attend. But it's really up to you: lectures can be very interesting and helpful, but whereas in other subjects (like Maths), where the lectures will be about the themes you cover in your tutorials, English lectures can be quite specific. And sometimes you'll just be faced with a choice between doing your reading for the tutorial and attending a lecture...

Having said that, it's a good idea to attend a few lectures which interest you, if only to get an idea of what the different lecturers are like. When you're pressed for time, though, lectures can be much more easily dispensed with than anything else.

Tutorials

Tutorials - particularly single tutorials - are probably the scariest bit about the course. The level of intimidation will vary from college to college of course; some tutors will be strongly academic while others are very relaxed and are more likely to welcome you onto their sofa with coffee and chat first. The academic part of tutorials can seem daunting, however. They're not as intimidating as they seem at first, though. If you think about it, it's great, though: you'll be sitting opposite somebody who's usually an expert on the topic you're doing, and he or she is interested in what you think and will listen to you.

Don't let yourself be intimidated by the situation. Just try to be well prepared by having written your essay and done your reading. Have an opinion on the texts you've been reading during the week and give it. You'll already know your tutor's style of speaking, questioning and responding from meeting them at interview (if, of course, your memory hasn't blocked the horror of that meeting out!) so you'll know to some extent how argumentative or relaxed they are.

Your tutor may challenge your opinions, and you may end up changing your opinion several times during the tutorial, but that's absolutely fine. No-one's expecting you to turn up with perfectly drafted theories - tutorials are about learning from each other and getting thinking processes going through having a discussion. Tutorials are neither just about showing off how much you know or have read nor about getting as much out of it for yourself as you can. Think of it as more of a give and take situation: the better prepared you are, the more you'll benefit both others and yourself - and conversely, if you don't do any work, you'll indirectly harm the entire tutorial group. Remember too- EVERYONE has god-awful tutorials sometimes that make you leave the room biting your fist and wanting the quad to open up and devour you. It's totally normal. Everyone writes something ludicrously wrong in essays at some point. Yout tutor will have seen worse, I can guarantee you.

Tutorials can generally be organised around you (though this may vary from college to college, so be sure to check how flexible your own tutors are. You'll probably be able to give a preference for morning or afternoon, and some tutors, i.e the lovely ones, will let you choose a day too so you can always opt for the later one and claim it's for extra reading (i.e the last-minute library panic the day before). You know when you work best, whether it's late-ish afternoon or early morning after an all-nighter. Speak to your tutors about this when tutes are being arranged and they should be accomodating. Be warned though; certain tutors seem to have no concept of IT'S LUNCHTIME and will happily arrange two hour tutes or classes between 11 and 1 o clock. These are torturous. Try to get out of them. But if you can't, don't argue. They won't like that.

Relying entirely on your blagging skills can be risky, as most tutors will see right through it, because they've been there too many times. If you have a tutorial partner, you can sometimes hope for him/her to get you out of a tight spot, but firstly, you can't rely on every tute partner to be willing (or able) to help you out and secondly, if your tute partner saves your neck, make sure you return the favour at a later point. It's a bad idea to alienate tutorial partners unnecessarily, because you'll see them again, and might have to depend on their help. So if you lead everyone to think you're a lazy bastard, make sure they at least think you're a nice lazy bastard.;)

Classes

Classes are focused on discussion, like tutorials, but there usually are more people in them (groups can be anything between 5 and 15 people in size) and they last longer.

For classes you often need to prepare a short presentation to introduce a topic or a text - and that means short. The presentation is only to get a discussion started, really, so ten minutes are usually more than enough.

Since topics are distributed and the group is larger, that means you might get away with not having done all the reading for a class. The downside of this is, though that everybody knows it and consequently everybody tends to prepare less well for a class than they would have for a tutorial. So in a worst-case scenarion, it might actually happen that the person giving the presentation is the only one who has in fact read the text. Which is a) embarassing and b) makes the class a bit pointless, really. It's a good idea to try and have at least a rough sense of other people's presentation topics in a class, just so you can keep a discussion going.

Perhaps the greatest advantage of classes is that you don't have to write essays for them - you'll learn to be grateful for this soon enough...

Essay-writing tips

You'll be expected to write at least one essay per week - during first year it's usually just one, but as soon as you've got used to that, you'll have to do two or three. It's not quite as bad as it sounds, though; it's mainly about time management, really, and you'll get the hang of that as you go along.

Start by having a good look at the reading list and getting hold of the books and articles that sound like they'll be most relevant to your essay topic. Taking detailed notes and writing down quotations and page numbers will save you the trouble of having to get out a book more than once (or having to make up page numbers, which is a bit of a desperate thing to do). Check the bibliographies of the texts for additional stuff that might be relevant and, if you have the time, search library catalogues and MLA (for journal articles) by keywords.

Try to organise your trips to the library efficiently, i.e. don't go to the Bod or the faculty library for a single book unless you're sure it's actually the only book you'll want to look at. Also keep in mind that while it's great to take out books because it allows you to work on your own desk at your own leisure and with a cup of tea, you could end up just leaving those books on your desk without bothering to look at them until the last minute. Reading books at a library has the advantage of forcing you to read them there and then and leaving you no time for procrastination. For journals, try to find out straight away through the database of electronic journals (on OxLIP) which articles you'll be able to access in electronic form. Electronic texts aren't everybody's cup of tea, but firstly you can just print them out, and secondly they have one definite advantage: as long as you've got internet access, you can get those texts anytime - even at 3am on a Sunday, when neither the Bodleian nor the faculty library will be open. So it's more efficient to start with the journals at the faculty library or the Bod and look at electronic journals at times when both libraries are closed, because chances are that you'll end up working outside library opening hours sooner or later.

Once you've got most of the reading done, start writing an essay plan. This doesn't have to be very detailed; something you can scribble up in ten minutes will do fine. It's just to help you get your own argument sorted out, because you need one of those if you want to write a good essay. If your original argument doesn't seem to work in an essay plan, try changing it round until it sounds convincing. Do the last bits of reading to fill in the gaps, and then start writing.

The actual writing of an essay takes up the least time, and that's the time you need to set aside at the end. Don't panic if you're already close to the deadline; one day is more than enough to write an essay and two is plenty. As long as you've done your reading and you roughly know what you want to argue, you'll be fine. Try not to leave everything to the very last minute (because at such times the college printer will refuse to work), but there's no point in finishing three days before the deadline either. Make sure the presentation is OK and your essay isn't too short (first-year essays usually have to be about 2,000 words - that's roughly four 1.5-spaced pages - while second- and third-year essays will be expected to be closer to 3,000). It can be useful to ask friends to read over your drafts and offer to read over theirs in return - particularly if you're writing on different topics.

Finally, try not to panic. Practically everyone experiences so-called essay crises at one point, but it helps if you learn to accept them as part of the creative process and don't allow yourself to be paralysed by them. The more you fear essay crises, the worse they will hit you.

IF ALL ELSE FAILS- seek help from your college parents and/or TSR people. We can't write the essay for you, but if you know people who were in your exact position only one short year ago, there's nothing wrong with asking advice. :o)

Libraries

<p>For English you'll need to work in libraries quite a bit, so it's good to know how to use them straight away. The library inductions at the beginning of your very first term will be incredibly boring and repetitive, but try to resist the temptation to skip them. A lot of people hardly set foot in the Bod during their first year, not so much because there aren't any useful books there but because they don't quite know how to use it. Which is a bit of a waste, really.

College libraries

When you're looking for a particular book, always check your college library first. College libraries offer you the best lending conditions and the best opening hours of the lot (some college libraries are even open 24 hours a day, which can be very useful for last-minute essay writing). Most college libraries have a decent English section, so take advantage of that. Primary texts, for example can often be got most easily from your own college library.

The majority of college library catalogues are incorporated into the university library catalogue OLIS, but a few, like St Hilda's [1] have their own system and don't have all books listed on OLIS. That can be a bit annoying when you're at the faculty library and have to decide which books you really need to take out and which ones you can get through the college library.

Faculty library

The English Faculty Library (EFL)[2] allows undergraduates to take out up to eight books for a week. That isn't very long, and you have to carry the books back to the faculty every time you want to renew them. So only take the ones you need in order to save yourself the trouble of lugging a book to the faculty every week to renew it, although you haven't even looked at it yet and aren't really planning to.

The EFL also has a pretty good collection of English journals (all of the most important ones are there) and two ancient and extremely noisy photocopiers of which only one seems to be working at any given time. Photocopies are cheaper here than they are at the Bod.

The Bodleian

The Bodleian is good for the more specific stuff on your reading list (or for the standard texts that have already been taken out at your college library or the EFL). The shelves of the Lower Camera hold most of the stuff relevant to English undergraduates. For everything else you'll need to place stack orders through OLIS. If you decide to order those books to the Lower Camera as well so you'll have all the books you need in one place, keep in mind that the Lower Camera tends to fill up very quickly and there are times during which you won't actually be able to find a seat. If you can be bothered to get up early, the best time to go to the Camera is just after it opens at 9am - if you're lucky, you might even be able to snatch one of the window seats at which you can get real sunlight, which is a bit scarce at the Lower Camera...

Collections

Collections are the mock exams you'll be having at the beginning of most terms. Collections take place during 0th week and will usually be on the papers you did during the previous term. They're organised by your college (i.e. not actual exams), supposed to take place under "exam conditions" and they basically don't count at all, so don't worry about them. Obviously there won't be much point in sitting them completely unprepared, but they're not worth fussing about either. Truth is, even tutors don't consider them terribly important. The purpose of collections is really just to get you used to revising papers and to having to churn out three essays within three hours.

To prepare, read over the essays you've written, maybe do a bit of extra reading on the topic to fill in gaps, and if you're really keen, take a look at one of the past papers and do a practice essay or two. But don't go overboard and don't waste your time panicking over collections - they're seriously not worth it.

Mods

Course I

Once you've passed Mods (well, before that, actually), you'll have to decide which course you want to take. Course I, the option chosen by most people, aims to give you an overview of pretty much all of English literary history.

Advantages/disadvantages

Advantages of choosing Course I

• doing Course I allows you to get a sense of English literature from the medieval period to the late 20th century (depending on which options you pick, of course)
• it still leaves you room to focus on particular interests of yours through the Paper 7 (Special Author) and Paper 8 (Special Topic) options.
• if you know you're not a full-blooded medievalist, Course I is the only available option to you, really.

Disadvantages of choosing Course I

• you'll miss out on the finer details of medieval literature.
• you may regard Course I as a little-bit-of-everything kind of option, which may not be your cup of tea.
• nearly everybody does it - choosing Course II will make you become part of a much more exclusive crowd (medievalists, that is).

Course structure

Once you have decided for Course I, that means most of the papers you'll be taking over the following two years will be fixed. The only times when you'll get to choose will be in third year for Paper 7 and 8 (and for the optional thesis if you decide to do one.

Second year

The compulsory paper for second-years is

• Paper 1 ("The English Language")

It's basically linguistics for non-linguists and is meant to get you in the habit of analysing the language as well as the contents of literary texts.

The topics include stuff like dialects, semantic change, literary language, language and gender, English as a world language, dictionaries and standardisation. Few people manage to be enthusiastic about all of those topics (and frankly, some of them are pretty dull), so unless your tutor forces you to cover more, just pick three topics you think you'll be comfortable with. Thanks to the changed examination system, three topics will be more than enough:

Paper 1 used to be taken as a written exam in third year as part of Finals, but that was changed in Trinity 06. Now you do Paper 1 at the end of your second year - the good news is that you'll have one less paper to prepare for Finals and you no longer have to learn silly stuff like dictionary definitions by heart, the bad news is you'll be having exams at the end of every year.

For the new Paper 1, you'll have to do a so-called "portfolio", which is rather a big name for two essays. The first of those is an essay on one of several set topics (this is where it pays off to prepare more than one topic, just in case the question on your favourite topic turns out to be rubbish), the second is a commentary on a passage or passages of text you select yourself. The question only tells you what your commentary should be looking at. Picking your own passages can be a little difficult, but it can also be fun because you get to write on what you like, basically. If you always wanted to compare Jilly Cooper to Shakespeare, this is your chance to do so and get away with it. Try to have a few possible commentary passages in mind before the questions come out in 6th week, to save youself a last-minute panic.

Once you have got the paper, you have approximately two weeks to finish the two essays before you hand them in at the exam schools. Two weeks sound like a lot, but you still need to plan your time carefully if you don't want to end up rushing to the exam schools at 11.55.

All other papers you take in second year are regular period papers (note: the exact order in which you take those papers varies, depending on your college; some colleges do Shakespeare in second year):

• Paper 3 (English Literature from 1509, aka "Middle English")

This paper is subdivided into an essay paper and a commentary paper (which will only be two hours in Finals). The commentaries have to be on two of the set commentary texts. At the moment, those set texts are Troilus and Criseyde (you have to write one commentary on Troilus, although you can't write two Troilus-commentaries), passages from Ancrene Wisse, Piers Plowman (difficult) or Morte D'Arthur. Alternatively, you can also write on Pearl (nice and short, but tricky language; if you really want to choose it, make sure you can understand the original, because it'll show if you don't) or Henryson's fables (Henryson's a Middle Scots poet and quite fun to read). For the essay paper you'll be studying Chaucer of course, but it's worth trying out some of the less obvious options you'll be offered, like medieval drama or the Middle English romances. Paper 3 is a good paper for surprise discoveries.

• Paper 4 (English Literatur 1509-1642, aka "Renaissance")

Did you get the point of the reference dates? It's the accession of Henry VIII and the start of the Civil War respectively - which is pretty much arbitrary, of course. Other universities use other arbitrary divisions. As a result of this awkward split, the early works of Milton are Paper 4, but his late works (all the major stuff) are Paper 5. As you might expect from a Renaissance paper, there are lots of poets (Spenser, Sidney, Donne) and dramatists (Kyd, Marlowe, Webster, Jonson) to choose from - the only author you're not allowed to write on is Shakespeare (you can refer to him, but not actually write a Shakespeare essay). Prose writers like More or Nashe or Bacon aren't as popular, but they can be a nice change from all those sonnets and revenge tragedies.

• Paper 5 (English Literature 1642-1740, aka "Restoration")

1740 is again a bit of a strange ending date (it might have something to do with the publication of Richardson's Clarissa). Apart from Milton, there's a whole range of authors and topics, Behn, Marvell, Dryden, Rochester, and of course Pope, Swift and Defoe. If you like studying drama, you'll probably find this period particularly interesting.

• Paper 6 (English Literature 1740-1832, aka "Romanticism")

Obviously this paper doesn't just cover romaticism. Apart from the "big six" of Romanticism (Blake, Byron, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley and Wordsworth), you can also study writing about the French revolution (quite fascinating), novelists like Fielding or Richardson (Clarissa in particular is great and a very useful text for the paper, but it's only recommended if you don't mind reading seriously long epistolary novels featuring a very annoying heroine) or Jane Austen, who doesn't really fit into any group.

Picking special authors

You won't actually be doing the special authors paper until third year, but you'll decide for one at the end of second year. The specific options available can change, so check the handbook to make sure you're actually looking at the right list. You choose one author or text from a list that's divided into several groups of three that try to give you a choice of a dramatist, a novelist and a poet for each period. This year's options are:

• a) (Old English): The Beowulf Poet, Alfred, The Exeter Book
• b) (Middle English): Chaucer, Langland, The N-Town Play
• c) (Renaissance): Spenser, Milton, Jonson
• d) (Restoration): Marvell, Dryden, Bunyan
• e) (Romanticism): Wordsworth, Austen, Byron
• f) (Victorianism): Tennyson, Dickens, Wilde
• g) (Modernism): Conrad, Yeats, Woolf
• h) (Postcolonial): Walcott, Roth, Friel
• i) (American): Emerson, Dickinson, Faulkner

When choosing your author, you need to keep several questions in mind: Did you already write on that author in Mods (if the answer to that one is 'yes', you'll have to pick a different one)? Are you roughly aware of how much that author has written (some of those authors were quite productive, and you may not always realise it; for example, Conrad wrote lots of letters and Milton wrote a lot of political texts)? You won't be allowed to answer questions on your special author on the period paper. So will the respective period paper become trickier for you if you can't answer any questions on that author, i.e. will you be comfortable doing the Restoration paper if you won't be able to talk about Dryden, for example? And finally, will there be an increased risk of duplicating stuff on other papers if you pick that author (that particularly goes for Chaucer)? Might it interfere with what you were planning to do for Paper 8 (for example, if you were planning to do American literature to write on transcendentalism, choosing Emerson as your special author probably isn't a very good idea

If possible, try to pick an author you like, because you'll be studying him in some detail. You may not like him anymore by the time you've finished your extended essay, but it's better if you don't develop a deep hatred of your "special" author any sooner than that...

Third year

During your third year, you'll be doing comparatively few papers, because you have to be revising for Finals, of course. So you'll have three papers spread over the first two terms and only revising left for the third.

The third year papers are:

• Shakespeare

This is basically everything you weren't allowed to write on for Paper 4. It's quite an exciting paper, because you can go into lots of different directions, since you can't possibly cover all the topics. On the downside, though, the reading lists may be a bit of a nightmare (which is probably why you start the paper in Michaelmas, so you have the long vacation to do it). Some tutors - though not all - will expect you to have read all Shakespeare plays at least well enough to refer to them in your essays. Plus a daunting amount of criticism. Pretty much the only solution is to focus on what you want to do. Pick a couple of plays and themes to study in more detail and don't expect to be able to cover the rest equally well (this applies to all papers, of course, but it can seem particularly daunting for Shakespeare). The Shakespeare paper tends to be spread over Michaelmas and Hilary.

Note: some colleges do the Shakespeare paper in second year

• Paper 7 (Special Author)

You'll be doing this paper in Michaelmas. For the first five weeks of term you'll have tutorials with someone who's an expert on the author you chose. After that, you'll receive the exam paper and from then on, you have nearly three weeks to write an extended essay on one topic ("extended" meaning it's supposed to be 5,000-6,000 words and thus slightly longer than regular tutorial essays). Tutorials for the Shakespeare paper will also stop at this point, so you can focus on your extended essay.

Special author topics usually don't ask you a straightforward question but only give you a passage by or about your author and then leave you to your own devices. The advantage of that is that you're much more free in what you can do: you can read the passages in different ways and sometimes mould them a bit to the areas you want to write on. Obviously the disadvantage is that you can feel a little lost at times and may wonder whether you aren't doing it all wrong.

Time management is quite important for this paper - it's very tempting to spend all of the first week doing nothing, because there seems to be so much time to do the essay. Try not to slack off completely, though, or you're going to regret it a few days before the deadline. Even if you don't start writing until the very end, you should get all the boring preparations done beforehand, like picking a question (you won't be able to change questions more than once, and even that will involve extra stress), making an essay plan and getting all the extra reading done you might still need. Set yourself a mental deadline, and don't make that the official deadline for handing in your paper at the exam schools, because you probably won't make your mental deadline anyway. Aim for finishing a few days earlier, so you can proofread your essay and make sure the formatting, the footnotes and the bibliography are OK before you hand it in on time. This may seem a bit silly, but you actually can get marked down for sloppy presentation - and do you really want a lower class grade just because of a few stupid footnotes?

• Optional Thesis

As the name suggests, optional theses are not compulsory. If you choose to write one, you will need to get approval for your title and submit a short synopsis towards the end of Michaelmas and hand it in at the exam schools just before the beginning of Hilary. The purpose of an optional thesis is to push you across the First/2.1 - or sometimes the 2.1/2.2 - border: the mark you get for it is substituted for your lowest mark on one of the finals papers (provided it isn't lower than a 50), but if there is no lower mark to substitute, it simply won't be counted.

Basically this means that you've got nothing to lose by writing an optional thesis, other than some of your time, and it can be reassuring to know you have a safety net in case you mess up one of the other papers. Still, it only really makes sense to write an optional thesis if you actually have something to write it on. Optional theses can be 4,000 to 6,000 words long, you choose your own title, and theoretically, you can write on just about anything, as long as your title is approved (i.e. there's someone who'll agree to mark it). So if you have a specific topic you'd like to write on in some more depth and/or won't be able to cover on the corresponding period paper - for example because it's a bit too obscure to come up - writing an optional thesis will make sense, but if you've only got a very vague notion of topics to write on and don't like the idea of extra work without knowing in advance whether it will be worth it, you may want to give the optional thesis a miss.

• Paper 8 (Special Topic)

Paper 8 essentially works like a kind of mixture between Paper 7 and the optional thesis: you choose one of several broad options including American literature, life writing, fiction, drama, prose and film (the handbook contains a full list) within which you develop your own title. Unlike the optional thesis, Paper 8 is accompanied by tutorials and your tutor is allowed to help you develop your title, point you towards useful texts, etc. until the day the title is approved.

Some popular options, like film and life writing, are taught centrally at the faculty rather than through tutorials and there are only a limited number of places for those

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Revision tips for finals

• Obviously there are lots of different strategies for revision, but there's one rule which generally applies: don't start too soon, otherwise you will begin to forget the topics you revised first, and you will wear yourself out. Take a break after the end of Hilary to recover from Paper 8 and aim for starting with your revision about two months before your first exam - usually around Easter - and aim for doing 3-5 hours of concentrated work a day (more efficient than sitting at the library for ten hours while your mind drifts off).
• Before you even start revising, make sure you know your topics. For all papers except 3b, you need to be able to write on three out of about 30 questions, so you need to prepare at least three topics per paper. Most tutors will tell you to prepare four topics per paper, so you have a spare just in case. That is good advice, but realistically you probably won't manage to revise for four whole topics for each paper, so a good compromise is to prepare three and a half: choose one half-topic you can combine with one or several of your three if necessary, to give them a different angle. Suitable half-topics are those texts, authors or themes that kept cropping up in several contexts, which means they're ideal for tying things together and making connections between topics. Don't even try to prepare more than four topics.
• When choosing your topics, pick the ones you like and feel comfortable with, although it can't hurt to look at past papers to find out which are the "sure" topics that are bound to come up. There are certain authors and topics for which there is almost always a question, for example sonnets for Paper 2, medieval drama for Paper 3a, Skelton for Paper 4, Milton for Paper 5, Richardson and Fielding for Paper 6. However, think about how you can adapt said "sure" topic, just in case the examiners play with you and don't put it on the paper (or the question is nasty). This does happen, for instance in 2009 there was no question on Shakespeare's sonnets, despite there having been one on every past paper!
• Make a revision plan. Even if it's not a very detailed plan and even if you end up not sticking to it, just having one helps to get a sense of how much work you are actually looking at (not to mention that it feels great when you can start crossng out the things you've done).
• Going over your old tutorial essays is a good starting point, but don't be tempted to try and memorise essays in order to reproduce them, because a) that rarely works as well as you though it would, even if the tutorial essay was utterly brilliant b) it's risky - unless exactly the right sort of question comes up, examiners will most likely notice signs of "downloaded information", and if you have a look at old examiners' reports, you will realise just how much they resent that and c) it means learning information in a rigid way, but it's a better strategy to remain flexible and be ready to reshuffle and restructure your points to fit the question. So instead of learning the entire essay by heart, use it to remind yourself of individual points you might use for different arguments or of examples and quotations that could come in useful at a later point.
• Don't just rehash your old stuff (i.e. essays, lecture notes, etc.). It will make your topics a bit fresher and revision a little less dull if you also add a few new things. So read a few of those books or critical essays on your reading list that you always meant to read but never did, or look into a side-topic which you neglected so far.
• Once you feel up for it, do timed practice essays and practice papers. They are a pain, but they will help you to get into the habit of writing to time, and they will also help you to train your handwriting skills and get a sense of how much you can actually write within an hour. Don't forget that during finals you will need to be able to write for 17 hours within a relatively short space, which will be much harder if you are not used to writing by hand anymore, because all your tutorial essays were word-processed.

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