When you're revising for your GCSE exams, you want to make the most of your study time.

So, we invited the experts at the AQA exam board to share their tips and advice on preparing for GCSE English Literature exams.

The article that follows has been written by an AQA curriculum expert, based on their years of experience in the assessment of their subject.  

You can find more articles in this series, covering a range of subjects at both GCSE and A-level, over on our revision section.

Also on The Student Room, you can find student discussion of 2024 GCSE exams.

We know there’s a lot to think about as you prepare for your GCSE exams. We have provided this handy top tips revision guide full of great advice and key reminders to support you in the GCSE English Literature exams. We’ve deliberately kept it short, so you can pin it up and glance at it when you’re revising.

There are two exam papers : Paper 1 ( Shakespeare and 19^th Century Novel) and Paper 2 (modern texts and poetry) To see examples of the papers visit our website. The following exam and revision tips apply to both papers – then we finish with some tips for answering the poetry questions.

Understand the plot, characters and themes inside out. If you know the text well, you’ll be able to demonstrate this knowledge and understanding in the exam. The text comes first.

Read the quesiton carefully and underline key points before you start to write. Remember the question is directing you to a particular idea or theme of the text and understanding this is the first step to writing a great response.

A few minutes thinking carefully about this should give you lots of ideas of things you could discuss in your answer.

A thesis is a brief outline of your argument or point of view. If you begin by saying briefly what you think, you can then go on to explain this in detail, giving precise examples, in the body of your answer.

If you use a direct reference, make sure it’s relevant to your answer, and that you can say something useful or interesting about it. You don’t get extra marks for more quotations, but you do get more marks for making plenty of interesting comments about the references you’ve selected.

Using the writer’s name can help you to think about the text as a conscious construct and will keep reminding you that the author deliberately put the text together.

We want you to explain how the writers have created their texts, how they have communicated their ideas to you – the reader.

This involves discussing the effect of the writer’s choices, explaining why they had made particular decisions and what this reveals about the characters or ideas in the text.

We are interested in your explanation – how detailed and precise is this, and the extent to which it shows an appreciation and understanding of the writer’s choices.

Remember that context informs, but should never dominate, your reading of the text. The text comes first and if you are answering the question, you will most likely be doing AO3!

Your focus needs to be on what the writer is doing and why they are doing it. You don’t have to reproduce lots of biographical information about the writer or the surrounding historical context of the text you are writing about.

Remember that this isn’t GCSE History, it’s English Literature.  The focus for AO3 will be in the question – just talk about that. Know the what, the how and the why.

You can get just as many marks by offering an introduction that shows your understanding of the connection between the named poem and the one you have chosen to use, then dealing with each poem separately, then perhaps drawing the two poems together at the end of your response.

• Read the question then read the unseen poem and make sure you get a sense of what it is about first.
• Read the question again and underline what it is asking you to focus on in your answer.
• Read the poem again and  select three or four key things to write about linked to the question focus.

Don’t spend too much time on the final question (Cii) as it’s worth fewer marks than elsewhere on the paper.

Remember that this final question asks you to compare methods, so make sure you focus your attention on the similarities and differences between what the two poets have done to make meaning.

View the question as an invitation for you to give your opinion on something. Explain how the text made you think the way you do. The examiner wants you to tell them what you think about the texts you have studied, and how the writer made you think this. 

Have a great exam!