AQA English Literature A - Love Through the Ages June 2011 Exam :D
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Original post by carnationlilyrose
Original post by carnationlilyrose
The same was true last year as well. It's a brute of an exam.
really! do you know what the grade boundary was, last year, for an A*? (in the exam?)
Wyatt used to have many relationships with women, but no longer. Women aren't prepared to take the risk of sexual relationships with him any longer. He once had a special sexual relationship with one particualr woman, but she has also left him. He is wondering how to deal with this situation, now she has found a new lover, for reasons he cannot fathom.
Original post by Eggs and Ham
Did you feel the same way about the June 2010 paper? I was looking at the past paper and mark scheme and honestly, I thought it was much harder than this one. But I didn't have to do an exam on it, I only read what was written in the mark scheme and they expected a lot out of candidates.
By the way, my teacher also thinks many of skills need in this exam were the kind he developed at degree level
. What do you think?
By the way, my teacher also thinks many of skills need in this exam were the kind he developed at degree level
. What do you think?We were horrified when we saw the paper last year and thought we had failed the students. I quite agree with your teacher about the degree level skills. In the end, my class got 6 A*s, 5 As and 1 B, which got re-marked up to an A as well, so we must have done something right, but it did convince us that a) the board had got the level wrong and b) the grade boudaries were very generous.
Original post by purplestarfish
really! do you know what the grade boundary was, last year, for an A*? (in the exam?)
Can't remember - left my mark scheme at work, but it'll be on the AQA website.
Original post by carnationlilyrose
Original post by carnationlilyrose
Can't remember - left my mark scheme at work, but it'll be on the AQA website.
thanks! will check it outtt
i am soooo glad we did the B spec.
Original post by carnationlilyrose
Original post by carnationlilyrose
Can't remember - left my mark scheme at work, but it'll be on the AQA website.
thanks! will check it outtt
Original post by Alison1992
i am soooo glad we did the B spec.
It's interesting how we get loyal to what we are used to. My partner teaches the B spec and I think I'd rather poke my eyes out with a sharp stick, but he loves it.
How important is a line of atgument in the exam? I made points which I feel were relevant, but certainly in the second question I don't think I really had a line of argument!
Original post by purplestarfish
aww! i completely agree about the poem! i literally had nothing to say, other than the fact he appeard arrogant/objectified women/missed the attention he got! it was really really tough.
oh, you've studied the rover! do you think it's a fair assumption to say Angellica felt betrayed/that her love was unrequited given Willmore's (was that his name?) return to Helenna? and that the stage directions in which she was 'aside' reflected his thoughts for her - how he pushes her aside and chooses Helenna?
i think that the grade boundaries will reflect the difficulty though!
what grade do you need for university?
oh, you've studied the rover! do you think it's a fair assumption to say Angellica felt betrayed/that her love was unrequited given Willmore's (was that his name?) return to Helenna? and that the stage directions in which she was 'aside' reflected his thoughts for her - how he pushes her aside and chooses Helenna?
i think that the grade boundaries will reflect the difficulty though!
what grade do you need for university?
I talked about Aphra Behn being a Royalist (to Charles II) and her drama reflects the Libertinist tradition of the period, particularly since her plays were made for the Royal Court. Restoration Comedy is characterised by witty repartee, exclusive code of manners in high society and complex intrigue of the marriage-market. I used examples from the extract. There are two types of sexual love presented in the extract, one was the soft, melting sexual love epitomised by Angellica Bianca and the other was the inconstancy of love presented by Wilmore (and Hellena, perhaps- only in this extract though- in the play Hellena also years for constant love, despite feigning indifference in the extract. In fact Wilmore tries to rape her in the play but she still married him!). I wrote about Hellena's reference to time and fate and compared it to 'To His Coy Mistress' by Andrew Marvell. The dramatic irony, feminist perspectives, the setting of a carnival, paradoxical feelings of love. Bear in mind, I've studied it before so I doubt most people would have gone into as depth.
(edited 12 years ago)
Found the exam pretty tough: can't quite tell whether I wrote bull**** or not.
Question 1: Discussed the contrast between haste and hesitance (A/B). Brought in Sense and Sensibility and compared Marianne's philosophy on love to David's: lack of governance. Also compared how in both texts intellectualism precludes love (wtf) and contrasted it with some bit in I, Claudius .
Question 2: Compared the value placed on sexual relationships by Wyatt/Helenna/Angellica(?) - referenced Medea and how betrayal post-sex can be seen as a more poignant violation. Then spouted some piffle about manipulation and referenced To His Coy Mistress.
Was pretty weak on contexual factors and missed out loads of basic literary terms that seem to tick the boxes. Do you think it'll have a massive impact?
Thanks
Question 1: Discussed the contrast between haste and hesitance (A/B). Brought in Sense and Sensibility and compared Marianne's philosophy on love to David's: lack of governance. Also compared how in both texts intellectualism precludes love (wtf) and contrasted it with some bit in I, Claudius .
Question 2: Compared the value placed on sexual relationships by Wyatt/Helenna/Angellica(?) - referenced Medea and how betrayal post-sex can be seen as a more poignant violation. Then spouted some piffle about manipulation and referenced To His Coy Mistress.
Was pretty weak on contexual factors and missed out loads of basic literary terms that seem to tick the boxes. Do you think it'll have a massive impact?
Thanks
Original post by TylerA
Found the exam pretty tough: can't quite tell whether I wrote bull**** or not.
Question 1: Discussed the contrast between haste and hesitance (A/B). Brought in Sense and Sensibility and compared Marianne's philosophy on love to David's: lack of governance. Also compared how in both texts intellectualism precludes love (wtf) and contrasted it with some bit in I, Claudius .
Question 2: Compared the value placed on sexual relationships by Wyatt/Helenna/Angellica(?) - referenced Medea and how betrayal post-sex can be seen as a more poignant violation. Then spouted some piffle about manipulation and referenced To His Coy Mistress.
Was pretty weak on contexual factors and missed out loads of basic literary terms that seem to tick the boxes. Do you think it'll have a massive impact?
Thanks
Question 1: Discussed the contrast between haste and hesitance (A/B). Brought in Sense and Sensibility and compared Marianne's philosophy on love to David's: lack of governance. Also compared how in both texts intellectualism precludes love (wtf) and contrasted it with some bit in I, Claudius .
Question 2: Compared the value placed on sexual relationships by Wyatt/Helenna/Angellica(?) - referenced Medea and how betrayal post-sex can be seen as a more poignant violation. Then spouted some piffle about manipulation and referenced To His Coy Mistress.
Was pretty weak on contexual factors and missed out loads of basic literary terms that seem to tick the boxes. Do you think it'll have a massive impact?
Thanks
Massive thumbs up for I, Claudius! One of my favourite books and one I'd never thought of suggesting. Trotting out a list of technical terms isn't necessary. It's nice if you label what you find with the appropriate term, but the important thing is finding it and discussing it, not labelling it. Weaker students tend to approach analysis like Pokemon - gotta catch 'em all. Far better to compare, discuss, evaluate than label.
(edited 12 years ago)
I hopefully the examiner responds similarly! I was running worryingly low on prose and had to look through the books I had read privately - came across a brilliant part where Claudius meets Camilla. Thanks, that's reassuring - hopefully they like enjoy the few points I did make.
(edited 12 years ago)
Original post by carnationlilyrose
We were horrified when we saw the paper last year and thought we had failed the students. I quite agree with your teacher about the degree level skills. In the end, my class got 6 A*s, 5 As and 1 B, which got re-marked up to an A as well, so we must have done something right, but it did convince us that a) the board had got the level wrong and b) the grade boudaries were very generous.
Wow, that's amazing. You must have been really proud! Now I'm starting to feel optimistic... apparently there's been incidences of AQA giving out wrong exam results. Someone on here said they were marked a U in their A2 exam but a re-mark lifted it up to a C. I'd be horrified if that happened to me. When you say the grade boundaries were generous, are you saying the boundaries were changed that year? I thought it was always pretty much 80 per cent for an A, 70 for a B etc. Hope the grade boundaries are very generous this year...
By the way, what wider reading texts did people use? I used "Pride and Prejudice" (Austen) for question 1 and "Othello" (Shakespeare), "Sonnet 18" (also Shakespeare) and "The Eve of St. Agnes" (Keats) for q. 2. Would have liked to include more but ran out of time. I elaborated quite a bit on my links though so hopefully they will be ok.
Question one: I had already read Disgrace, but I also used Tess of the D, Great Gatsby and Lolita!!
Second question was a nightmare but: To his Coy Mistress, Importance of being Earnest and Much Ado about nothing - BUT I feel so worried about this question
practically the only good thing I said was about the Blazon!!
Second question was a nightmare but: To his Coy Mistress, Importance of being Earnest and Much Ado about nothing - BUT I feel so worried about this question
practically the only good thing I said was about the Blazon!!Original post by Sarahtea
In question two I said that wyatt is seen ad being the person who is hurt out of the relationship and appears to be the weaker sex, whereas in the drama extract, Hellena was in control and appeared stronger. Anyone else do that ? And in the first question I said that males tend to rely on physical aspects of relationships rather than emotions
I did this too! i said how in extract c women are portrayed as being more emotionally attached to sexual encounters by men, which is shown through hellena's anger and domination of the speech in the second half of the extract, and rhetorical questions as she demads why willmoore (or whatever his name is) had hurt her. and in the second one i contrasted it by saying how men where presented as the ones who were emotionally attached to sexual encounters and hurt by sexual betrayal and women were the ones acting all willy nilly.
i obviously sounded a bit more precise than that though! ( i hope)
i didnt think the exam was too bad, but saying that i can never tell how something has gone! the first question was fair, i compared it to Jane Eyre.
and the second question was definatly ALOT harder. i was a bit rushed for time so didnt write tooo much about the poem cos i didnt really get it to be honest! buttttt i rambled and hopefully didnt do disasterously!
but im just glad all my exams are over now! wooo!
Oops accidentally posted without writing the rest of the post haha!
Seems to me that the general feeling of the paper is that everybody found the first question great but the poem of the second question threw people off a little bit.
No worries everybody, people in my class found it exactly the same, so I think our sentiments may be nationwide!
Hopefully this will bring the grade boundaries a little lower.
However, I think, in comparison to the past papers, this paper would probably be seen as gold.
For one thing, we didn't get drama for the first question yay!
Secondly, it seems that everybody generally found it ok.
So I don't think the grade boundaries will be lowered to the extent of last year's paper.
A quick rundown of what I wrote:
For the first question I related the extracts to sexual love/seduction (Seems that was the general theme of the whole paper, I hadn't even read the second question to know that that was about sexual relationships). I generally argued that the extracts were similar to each other, except one could argue that both extracts have other possible interpretations, e.g. extract A could have been seen as forbidden love, due to it being between a teacher and a student, and extract B could have been seen as inter-class love, or love between people of different statuses, since Jude is obviously an educated guy and the girl seems to be a common worker. I said in both extracts there was a dominant voice, extract A was David, extract B, contrastingly, was the female character. I linked this to Lady Chatterly's Lover, as Constance initiates the sexual affair with the gamekeeper, Oliver, the story was about her realisation that she needs to be alive physically too not just in the mind etc etc. Uhh structure I said stuff about how each extract showed development in seduction...lead by the dominant character...however they both end differently, e.g. in extract A Melanie seems to reject his offer to spend the night, and in extract B the ending is ambiguous. I linked this to Pip and Estella's relationship at the end of Great Expectations. Language...I can't remember everything but I remember writing about symbolism, how the pig's penis perhaps is symbolic of the sexual theme as out of all the organs that the girls were throwing out, it was a penis which hit Jude. I said in extract A the serpent was symbolic of sin, the sin being the relationship between D and M. I also used this to reinforce my alternative interpretation of forbidden love.
Question 2...I too was a bit 0.o with the poem. Overall, I'm much more confident with my first essay. My second essay...Well, I generally argued that the drama conveyed a comical attitude towards sexual relationships in that Hellena mocks and ridicules Willmore after finding out that he had an affair. The poem I said conveyed a more romantic attitude towards sexual love??? For form I said that Hellena was the dominant voice, and the poem was a dramatic monologue...the first stanza might suggest that the narrator is dominant however the third stanza (which I didn't entirely get...) perhaps shows him to be vulnerable as it would appear that he is trying to avoid getting hurt from the lady? Structure I said because Hellena has more lines reinforces she's dominant, uhh content of her lines also shows how she is challenging him etc etc, second half of the extract I spoke about how it would seem that both H and W have equal lines speak one after the other perhaps reflects their unity and equality in love, however content of dialogue would contradict this idea. Related this to Romeo and Juliet, Act 3:5 where R and J are trying to convince each other opposite desires - Juliet wants Romeo to stay, Romeo trying to convince her that he needs to leave for Mantua etc. For the poem I said something about iambic pentameter, makes it more lyrical like a ballad...more romantic etc. I spent an extra 15 mins on the first essay so I only had an hour to write the second essay, so I didn't get to write my conc. I managed to get 7 minutes to write about language hehe. I didn't get to include everything I had analysed so I made it easier for myself by making a point about how, because the extracts are conveying two completely different attitudes towards sexual relationships, linguistic devices were generally dissimilar. I wrote about sibilance and word ordering in the poem to make it more sensual and romantic, and for the drama I wrote about the use of punctuation and stage directions etc to show how male dominance was subverted making it comical.
That's sort of the basics of what I wrote for each essay...I hope I can get at least an A!!! I only need a B to get into uni, but I was kinda aiming for A*, just to see if I could do it (:
I hope everybody feels a bit better No more tears! It's over now, I'm sure the examiners will be lenient. I know this is completely unrelated, but for history last year, I wrote 7 pages for one of my essays on events that occurred out of the stated time period in the title....yet I got an A haha :P So if you feel you didn't do as well as you could have done, you always have hope! Miracles can happen.
Seems to me that the general feeling of the paper is that everybody found the first question great but the poem of the second question threw people off a little bit.
No worries everybody, people in my class found it exactly the same, so I think our sentiments may be nationwide!
Hopefully this will bring the grade boundaries a little lower.
However, I think, in comparison to the past papers, this paper would probably be seen as gold.
For one thing, we didn't get drama for the first question yay!
Secondly, it seems that everybody generally found it ok.
So I don't think the grade boundaries will be lowered to the extent of last year's paper.
A quick rundown of what I wrote:
For the first question I related the extracts to sexual love/seduction (Seems that was the general theme of the whole paper, I hadn't even read the second question to know that that was about sexual relationships). I generally argued that the extracts were similar to each other, except one could argue that both extracts have other possible interpretations, e.g. extract A could have been seen as forbidden love, due to it being between a teacher and a student, and extract B could have been seen as inter-class love, or love between people of different statuses, since Jude is obviously an educated guy and the girl seems to be a common worker. I said in both extracts there was a dominant voice, extract A was David, extract B, contrastingly, was the female character. I linked this to Lady Chatterly's Lover, as Constance initiates the sexual affair with the gamekeeper, Oliver, the story was about her realisation that she needs to be alive physically too not just in the mind etc etc. Uhh structure I said stuff about how each extract showed development in seduction...lead by the dominant character...however they both end differently, e.g. in extract A Melanie seems to reject his offer to spend the night, and in extract B the ending is ambiguous. I linked this to Pip and Estella's relationship at the end of Great Expectations. Language...I can't remember everything but I remember writing about symbolism, how the pig's penis perhaps is symbolic of the sexual theme as out of all the organs that the girls were throwing out, it was a penis which hit Jude. I said in extract A the serpent was symbolic of sin, the sin being the relationship between D and M. I also used this to reinforce my alternative interpretation of forbidden love.
Question 2...I too was a bit 0.o with the poem. Overall, I'm much more confident with my first essay. My second essay...Well, I generally argued that the drama conveyed a comical attitude towards sexual relationships in that Hellena mocks and ridicules Willmore after finding out that he had an affair. The poem I said conveyed a more romantic attitude towards sexual love??? For form I said that Hellena was the dominant voice, and the poem was a dramatic monologue...the first stanza might suggest that the narrator is dominant however the third stanza (which I didn't entirely get...) perhaps shows him to be vulnerable as it would appear that he is trying to avoid getting hurt from the lady? Structure I said because Hellena has more lines reinforces she's dominant, uhh content of her lines also shows how she is challenging him etc etc, second half of the extract I spoke about how it would seem that both H and W have equal lines speak one after the other perhaps reflects their unity and equality in love, however content of dialogue would contradict this idea. Related this to Romeo and Juliet, Act 3:5 where R and J are trying to convince each other opposite desires - Juliet wants Romeo to stay, Romeo trying to convince her that he needs to leave for Mantua etc. For the poem I said something about iambic pentameter, makes it more lyrical like a ballad...more romantic etc. I spent an extra 15 mins on the first essay so I only had an hour to write the second essay, so I didn't get to write my conc. I managed to get 7 minutes to write about language hehe. I didn't get to include everything I had analysed so I made it easier for myself by making a point about how, because the extracts are conveying two completely different attitudes towards sexual relationships, linguistic devices were generally dissimilar. I wrote about sibilance and word ordering in the poem to make it more sensual and romantic, and for the drama I wrote about the use of punctuation and stage directions etc to show how male dominance was subverted making it comical.
That's sort of the basics of what I wrote for each essay...I hope I can get at least an A!!! I only need a B to get into uni, but I was kinda aiming for A*, just to see if I could do it (:
I hope everybody feels a bit better
No more tears! It's over now, I'm sure the examiners will be lenient. I know this is completely unrelated, but for history last year, I wrote 7 pages for one of my essays on events that occurred out of the stated time period in the title....yet I got an A haha :P So if you feel you didn't do as well as you could have done, you always have hope! Miracles can happen.Original post by Eggs and Ham
Wow, that's amazing. You must have been really proud! Now I'm starting to feel optimistic... apparently there's been incidences of AQA giving out wrong exam results. Someone on here said they were marked a U in their A2 exam but a re-mark lifted it up to a C. I'd be horrified if that happened to me. When you say the grade boundaries were generous, are you saying the boundaries were changed that year? I thought it was always pretty much 80 per cent for an A, 70 for a B etc. Hope the grade boundaries are very generous this year...
Well, they were great kids and deserved to do well.
You won't have to ask around much to find examples of mistakes on results. Think of how many individual entries there are each year. It's amazing there aren't more. The people who deal with them are only human. Every exam board makes mistakes, every year and probably always have done. If your school thinks there's something wrong, they can send for the script first, to look at whether it looks fishy, then they can put in for a remark. If the remark changes the grade, there's a refund of the charge; if not, not. If there's a significant number of discrepancies in one centre, the board will call for the whole cohort to be remarked for free. It's a very difficult decision, though, sometimes, because it used to be the case that if a grade went up, it went up, but if the grade went down, nothing changed and you could keep the higher grade. No longer. If it goes down, that's what you get.
The grade boundaries would have been set for the first exam of the new syllabus last year, but they would have been tweaked in secret by the chief examiners in the light of the standard of the scripts they got in once it'd been sat. They are very cagey about the whole process. You'd need to know an examiner to find out the actual process and they are pretty much sworn to secrecy.
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