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AQA English Literature A - Love Through the Ages June 2011 Exam :D

Gradually writing up my English notes, but I feel like I have a lot of poetry, an adequate number of plays but few novels. Does anybody have any recommendations for novels?

I have 'The Passion', 'Atonement', 'Handmaid's Tale', 'A Room With a View, 'Sense and Sensibility' and 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles' at the moment.

How is everybody else finding the course?
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Reply 1
anybody got a good list of wider reading? I've only read Emma. Some poetry too (Dickinson, Donne, Keats, Yaetes, some others I'm forgetting)...

really need some prose and drama. Would really appreciate it if you could quickly outline some of the major themes themes explored and some key underlying messages.

as you may be able to tell, I have no clue what I'm doing with the course... and I need an A :/
These are the texts/extracts our class has done through the year. Though I'm NOT doing all of these! The ones with smileys next to them are the ones i'm going to choose from, though I'm probably gonna pick out 5/6 of each prose/poetry/drama and work on those. Don't worry about the size of the list it gives some good ideas :smile: I desperately need some good drama extracts haha..I've hardly been concentrating on this exam at alllll :s-smilie:

Prose:

- Love Letters from Henry VIII :smile:
- Samuel Pepy’s Diary
- Pamela (Richardson)
- Shamela (Fielding)
- Tom Jones (Fielding)
- A Vindication of the Rights of women (Wollstonecraft)
- Persuasion (Austen)
- Villette (Bronte)
- Great expectations (Dickens) :smile:
- Tess of the d’Urbervilles (Hardy) :smile:
- Pride and Prejudice (Austen)
- Jane Eyre (Bronte)
- Wuthering Heights (Bronte) :smile:
- In the name of love
- To the lighthouse (Woolf)
- Sons and lovers (Lawrence) :smile:
- On Chesil beach (McEwan)
- The handmaid’s tale (Atwood)
- The bloody chamber (Carter) :smile:
- The great gatsby (Fitzgerald)
- The bell jar (Plath) :smile:
- Enduring love (McEwan) :smile:
- Oranges are not the only fruit (Winterson)

Poetry

- Plucking the rushes (Anon)
- Little red cap (Carol Ann Duffy) :smile:
- O Western wind (Anon)
- Helen of Kirconnel (anon)
- The passionate Shepherd to his love (Marlowe) :smile:
- Sonnet 18 (Shakespeare) :smile:
- Sonnet 116 (Shakespeare)
- Sonnet 130 (Shakespeare)
- To my dear and loving husband (Bradstreet)
- A valediction: forbidding mourning (Donne)
- The sun rising (Donne)
- To althea, from prison (Lovelace)
- To his coy mistress (Marvell) :smile:
- Don Juan (Byron)
- Bright star (Keats) :smile:
- The eve of st. Agnes (Keats)
- Cold is the earth (Bronte)
- The nymph’s reply to the shepherd (Raleigh)
- So, we’ll go no more a roving (Byron)
- Love’s stricken why (Dickinson)
- My life closed twice (Dickinson)
- Porphyria’s lover (Browning) :smile:
- My last duchess (Browning)
- Life in a love (Browning)
- The laboratory (Browning)
- Soliloquy of the Spanish cloister (Browning)
- Two in the Campagna (Browning)
- Now sleeps the crimson
- Meeting at night (Browning)
- The voice (Hardy)
- Stanzas for music (Byron)
- Love’s philosophy (Shelley) :smile:
- Mother, any distance (Armitage)
- Spared (Cope)
- An Arundel tomb (Larkin)
- As I walked out one evening (Auden)
- Morning song (Plath) :smile:
- To my valentine (Nash)
- From the rag rug (Hughes)
- Funeral blues (Auden) :smile:
- The shooting of Dan McGrew (Service)
- Ballad of the bread man (Causley)
- Warming her pearls (Carol Ann Duffy)
- Anne Hathaway (Carol Ann Duffy)
- One flesh (Jennings) :smile:

Drama

- Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare) :smile:
- Much ado about nothing (Shakespeare)
- Anthony and Cleopatra (Shakespeare)
- Macbeth (Shakespeare)
- Othello (Shakespeare) :smile:
- Twelfth night (Shakespeare)
- A doll’s house (Ibsen) :smile:
- A streetcar named desire (Williams) :smile:
- The way of the world (Congreve)
Reply 3
Original post by Rachel_Leah
Gradually writing up my English notes, but I feel like I have a lot of poetry, an adequate number of plays but few novels. Does anybody have any recommendations for novels?

I have 'The Passion', 'Atonement', 'Handmaid's Tale', 'A Room With a View, 'Sense and Sensibility' and 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles' at the moment.

How is everybody else finding the course?
x


To be honest, I think that you have more than enough novels already. I sat the exam in January and was told I only needed one or two texts for each text type. The wider reading only counts for about 30% of the marks so you really don't need a lot. As long as you know a few novels well then you'll be fine!
Reply 4
yeah you need to know the texts in detail even if they are a few. I took the test in january and failed even though i did my best...retaking in june :frown:
Reply 5
Original post by MBK28
To be honest, I think that you have more than enough novels already. I sat the exam in January and was told I only needed one or two texts for each text type. The wider reading only counts for about 30% of the marks so you really don't need a lot. As long as you know a few novels well then you'll be fine!


Original post by Steffzz
yeah you need to know the texts in detail even if they are a few. I took the test in january and failed even though i did my best...retaking in june :frown:


I'm just so worried if it talks about family love or something, in a drama + drama question, and I only have poetry for family love wider reading etc. It's too late for my to be reading whole novels and plays now aaaahh.
Hopefully it will be fine.

And Oh no, how comes you failed?! Was it very difficult in Jan?x
Reply 6
Original post by Rachel_Leah
Gradually writing up my English notes, but I feel like I have a lot of poetry, an adequate number of plays but few novels. Does anybody have any recommendations for novels?

I have 'The Passion', 'Atonement', 'Handmaid's Tale', 'A Room With a View, 'Sense and Sensibility' and 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles' at the moment.

How is everybody else finding the course?
x


Long time no speak, been so busy D:
The course is ok but I have concluded AQA are saying lust is real and at least you can be secure in knowing it is lust and stuff whereas love is some superficial concept that only really applies to virgins/first loves where you don't have a concept of betrayal or deceit and stuff...
This is part of my WR list which I will update when I actually find the extracts (long story!)


Prose:
- Love Letters from Henry VIII
- Great expectations (Dickens)
- Tess of the d’Urbervilles (Hardy)
- Jane Eyre (Bronte, last years coursework)
- Wuthering Heights (Bronte, this years coursework)
- Atonement (McEwan)
- Enduring love (McEwan)
-All quiet on the western front (Remarque)
-Far from the maddening crowd (Hardy)
-The collector (Fowles)
-The road (McCarthy)


Poetry

- Long distance (Harrison)
- Warming her pearls (Carol Ann Duffy)
Valentine (Duffy)
- Sonnet 18 (Shakespeare)
- Sonnet 116 (Shakespeare)
- Sonnet 130 (Shakespeare)
- The sun rising (Donne)
-The good morrow (Donne)
-The flea (Donne)
-The Relic (Donne)
-Elegy 19 (Donne)
-To his coy mistress (Marvell)
- Echo and Narcissus (Hughes)
- Remember (Rossetti)
-if you were coming in the fall (Dickenson)
- The millers tale (Chaucer)



Drama
- The way of the world (Congreve)
- The Caucasian Chalk Circle (Brecht)
- Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare)
- As you like it (Shakespeare)
- Anthony and Cleopatra (Shakespeare)
- Midsummer’s night dream (Shakespeare)
- Othello (Shakespeare)
- Twelfth night (Shakespeare)
- A Doll’s House (Ibsen, this years coursework)
- A streetcar named desire (Williams)
- Medea (Euripedes)
- Betrayal (Pinter)
- Bent (Sherman)
- Look back in Anger (Osbourne)
-Richard III (Shakespeare)
Original post by Rachel_Leah
Gradually writing up my English notes, but I feel like I have a lot of poetry, an adequate number of plays but few novels. Does anybody have any recommendations for novels?

I have 'The Passion', 'Atonement', 'Handmaid's Tale', 'A Room With a View, 'Sense and Sensibility' and 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles' at the moment.

How is everybody else finding the course?
x


Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre perhaps? How many poems are you learning for the exam? I'm finding it hard to limit my choice, I have around 20 I want to try and remember but that just seems a tad extreme!!
x
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Original post by katielou1993
Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre perhaps? How many poems are you learning for the exam? I'm finding it hard to limit my choice, I have around 20 I want to try and remember but that just seems a tad extreme!!
x
x


I'm sure 20 is a bit extreme! I think I'm gonna learn about 6 or 7, although I'm finding it quite difficult to actually revise. Like for novels do we have to know a particular scene really well and be able to analyse it in a lot of depth or do we have to have like an overview of the novel with lots of quotes??
Original post by shootingstars
I'm sure 20 is a bit extreme! I think I'm gonna learn about 6 or 7, although I'm finding it quite difficult to actually revise. Like for novels do we have to know a particular scene really well and be able to analyse it in a lot of depth or do we have to have like an overview of the novel with lots of quotes??




Yes, I thought it was! My teacher said we need to know at least 15, I think I'm going to do what you are and revise 6-7, seems a lot more achievable. Well I think for the novels we have to know really the basic outline of the story and the quotes of which are of particular importance to a theme such as marriage etc. I'm revising narrative techniques, style and language. I don't know how i'm going to incorporate those into the exam though... How are you revising for the poems? Are you remembering the poem or remembering the analysis of it?
Original post by katielou1993
Yes, I thought it was! My teacher said we need to know at least 15, I think I'm going to do what you are and revise 6-7, seems a lot more achievable. Well I think for the novels we have to know really the basic outline of the story and the quotes of which are of particular importance to a theme such as marriage etc. I'm revising narrative techniques, style and language. I don't know how i'm going to incorporate those into the exam though... How are you revising for the poems? Are you remembering the poem or remembering the analysis of it?


15?! My teacher said we only need to know two but I think that's too risky as there needs to be some kind of link to the unseen text and I don't want the links to be too contrived. Well for the narrative techniques and form and language etc. I always find that more difficult but it will probably be easier to write about those things once there is already a text in front of us as we can make comparisons and contrasts - well I hope so anyway! For the poems I'm not gonna learn the poem exactly but I think it will be helpful to read over them quite a few times as we will obviously have to use quite a lot of quotes, but I think I'm gonna mainly concentrate on the analysis tbh. How many novels and plays are you going to learn?xx
Original post by shootingstars
15?! My teacher said we only need to know two but I think that's too risky as there needs to be some kind of link to the unseen text and I don't want the links to be too contrived. Well for the narrative techniques and form and language etc. I always find that more difficult but it will probably be easier to write about those things once there is already a text in front of us as we can make comparisons and contrasts - well I hope so anyway! For the poems I'm not gonna learn the poem exactly but I think it will be helpful to read over them quite a few times as we will obviously have to use quite a lot of quotes, but I think I'm gonna mainly concentrate on the analysis tbh. How many novels and plays are you going to learn?xx




There seems so much to learn! So stressed out for this exam. Well we've been told to learn five prose and five plays, but it seems like far too much already! I'm going to try and learn three prose and three plays, that seems more reasonable. Probably for the novels Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre and then for the drama Othello, A Doll's House and Streetcar Named Desire. Yes, I'll do what you're doing then with the poetry, I hope we get poetry in the first question!! xxx
Reply 12
Original post by katielou1993
Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre perhaps? How many poems are you learning for the exam? I'm finding it hard to limit my choice, I have around 20 I want to try and remember but that just seems a tad extreme!!
x
x


I may look at Wuthering Heights and I might go back over my GCSE Jane Eyre notes and add to them. Oh I have SO many poems. A lot of Larkin, 3 poems of John Donne, one Marvell, some Shakespeare sonnets, Thomas Hardy...and a few other poems. I think it's just remembering the main quotes and messages rather than the whole poems though, so I hope I can remember it all! xx
Original post by katielou1993
There seems so much to learn! So stressed out for this exam. Well we've been told to learn five prose and five plays, but it seems like far too much already! I'm going to try and learn three prose and three plays, that seems more reasonable. Probably for the novels Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre and then for the drama Othello, A Doll's House and Streetcar Named Desire. Yes, I'll do what you're doing then with the poetry, I hope we get poetry in the first question!! xxx


Yeah I'm really stressed too, I get especially nervous for English exams! But I got my coursework back today so at least that's finally out of the way :smile:. Oh ok, I think I've got quite similar texts to you - I'm doing Enduring Love, Wuthering Heights, The Color Purple and Persuasion and for dramas I'm doing A Streetcar Named Desire, A Doll's House, and either As You Like It or Othello, I haven't decided yet. And yeah I'd definitely prefer poetry in the first question as well, the extracts are generally much shorter and I find poetry easier to analyse xx
Original post by shootingstars
Yeah I'm really stressed too, I get especially nervous for English exams! But I got my coursework back today so at least that's finally out of the way :smile:. Oh ok, I think I've got quite similar texts to you - I'm doing Enduring Love, Wuthering Heights, The Color Purple and Persuasion and for dramas I'm doing A Streetcar Named Desire, A Doll's House, and either As You Like It or Othello, I haven't decided yet. And yeah I'd definitely prefer poetry in the first question as well, the extracts are generally much shorter and I find poetry easier to analyse xx



Same, with all my other exams you kind of know what will be in there but with English you know nothing, super nervous. Oh you got it back? How did you do? My teacher said we're not allowed it back at all! You're doing Persuasion? I read the book but I couldn't find that much to say about it. What kind of things are you mentioning for the analysis of it? xxx
Original post by katielou1993
Same, with all my other exams you kind of know what will be in there but with English you know nothing, super nervous. Oh you got it back? How did you do? My teacher said we're not allowed it back at all! You're doing Persuasion? I read the book but I couldn't find that much to say about it. What kind of things are you mentioning for the analysis of it? xxx


Yeah exactly, I'm dreading an unseen text that I don't understand, that would be awful. I got 68/70 so I'm really happy with that. Really, we only got a quick look at the essay and then we had to give it back, but you are allowed to know your mark right? For Persuasion I think I'm gonna concentrate on the reunions of people in love and comments on narrative voice etc. I've written some analysis with quotes and stuff for all my texts but they are all really long and I know I'm not going to be able to replicate it in the exam! xx
A technique I have found helpful is to get a large sheet of paper, and make a grid. Along the top you can put your different themes of love (insane, obsessive, corrupted, destructive, parental, unrequited etc etc etc!) and down the side you can put your three genres (poetry prose and drama) so for example for insane and obsessive love in the prose box i have enduring love, and i will fill the box with relevant quotes and commentary on structure and language too.

This will provide you just an overview of the texts though, if youre comfortable with a lot of texts and are looking for more specific and concise analysis you can flip the paper and put all your texts dramas and poetry down the side, and across the top put your themes of love in again, except this time, take tess for example, you have to find quotes and commentary relevant to each type of love. Of course you wont be able to write something in each and every box using this method but it provides a much more indepth study into each text that you are doing.

So far I've only done the first, but soon will move on and do the more indepth grid.

Hope this helps
I found this on the AQA website,

http://www.aqa.org.uk/qualifications/a-level/english-and-media/english-literature-a.php

Which I've found quite helpful. It's an examiner's report on the exams which gives some insight into what band 4 candidates write. I have no idea if any of you have read it already, but I found it quite useful. :biggrin:
Reply 18
I'm working off two wider reading texts for Prose, poetry and drama. My prose texts are Shelley's "Frankenstein" and McEwan's "Enduring Love", my drama texts are Shakespeare's "The Winter's Tale" and Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire". My poetry consists of Duffy's "The World's Wife" anthology and... well honestly lots of other bits and bobs.

Honestly, I don't see why people are attempting to memorise vast amounts of wider reading. The markscheme for the exam states that marks are gained in 4 Assessment objectives. Wider reading is one of those objectives, worth 10 marks out of 40. It's also worth about 3 marks out of 10 in the contextual AO, so that amounts to 13 out of 40 marks, about 30% as people have said. Really, that's not an awful lot. The examiners aren't asking for people to have a perfect set of wider reading texts to bust out in the exam, just have the knowledge to comment appropriately on some wider reading. The vast majority of your marks are going to be picked up from analysing the two texts in front of you, so unless people are reading this vastly to gain a greater contextual knowledge, you may as well calm down and refine your reading. You are expected to look closely at one piece of wider reading for each genre, rather than drop in the names of 4-5 texts, briefly mentioning them, so you will pick up a lot more marks from looking at a couple of wider reading texts and being able to reference and quote from them, rather than spreading your reading so thinly that you can barely remember the individual texts.

Of course you need to use a wider reading that suits the theme of whatever the question may be, but there are really only a couple of extremes and by choosing the texts you look at with reasonable care you can pick texts that cover a wide range of themes. Remember it doesn't have to be a comparison, talking about your wider reading as a complete contrast to the themes of the question can work just as well if you can take into account the context of the texts (Not just historical context but textual context, context of writer, etc). Hypothetically if I had only studied Shelley's "Frankenstein" and the question was themed around parental love, I could quite easily quote and reference from that. However if the question was focused on passionate/sexual love, I could use Shelley's "Frankenstein" in context to show the changes in how love is viewed over the ages. One wider reading text can be bent a lot of ways and though I don't suggest using only one from each genre, going for anything above learning 3 from each genre is, in my eyes, a massive mistake.

tl;dr - Calm down, you don't need to study 300 texts, just know a few in detail.

EDIT - From what I can gather, it's a relatively new spec and the only two previous exams have grouped two poetry extracts and two prose extracts together for the first question (I can't remember what order sorry) so it's likely (but NOT a certainty) that we will get 2x drama extracts for the first question.
(edited 12 years ago)
Original post by Pthaos
I'm working off two wider reading texts for Prose, poetry and drama. My prose texts are Shelley's "Frankenstein" and McEwan's "Enduring Love", my drama texts are Shakespeare's "The Winter's Tale" and Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire". My poetry consists of Duffy's "The World's Wife" anthology and... well honestly lots of other bits and bobs.

Honestly, I don't see why people are attempting to memorise vast amounts of wider reading. The markscheme for the exam states that marks are gained in 4 Assessment objectives. Wider reading is one of those objectives, worth 10 marks out of 40. It's also worth about 3 marks out of 10 in the contextual AO, so that amounts to 13 out of 40 marks, about 30% as people have said. Really, that's not an awful lot. The examiners aren't asking for people to have a perfect set of wider reading texts to bust out in the exam, just have the knowledge to comment appropriately on some wider reading. The vast majority of your marks are going to be picked up from analysing the two texts in front of you, so unless people are reading this vastly to gain a greater contextual knowledge, you may as well calm down and refine your reading. You are expected to look closely at one piece of wider reading for each genre, rather than drop in the names of 4-5 texts, briefly mentioning them, so you will pick up a lot more marks from looking at a couple of wider reading texts and being able to reference and quote from them, rather than spreading your reading so thinly that you can barely remember the individual texts. Of course you need to use a wider reading that suits the theme of whatever the question may be, but there are really only a couple of extremes and by choosing the texts you look at with reasonable care you can pick texts that cover a wide range of themes. Remember it doesn't have to be a comparison, talking about your wider reading as a complete contrast to the themes of the question can work just as well if you can take into account the context of the texts (Not just historical context but textual context, context of writer, etc). Hypothetically if I had only studied Shelley's "Frankenstein" and the question was themed around parental love, I could quite easily quote and reference from that. However if the question was focused on passionate/sexual love, I could use Shelley's "Frankenstein" in context to show the changes in how love is viewed over the ages. One wider reading text can be bent a lot of ways and though I don't suggest using only one from each genre, going for anything above learning 3 from each genre is, in my eyes, a massive mistake.

tl;dr - Calm down, you don't need to study 300 texts, just know a few in detail.

EDIT - From what I can gather, it's a relatively new spec and the only two previous exams have grouped two poetry extracts and two prose extracts together for the first question (I can't remember what order sorry) so it's likely (but NOT a certainty) that we will get 2x drama extracts for the first question.


This!
I'm not sure how everyone expects to remember it all! My Lit teacher told me the analysis is more much more important.

Also, my suspicions are the same in that we'll get Drama for the first question.

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