OCR A2 English Literature 2013

Hi,

I'm doing King Lear, then Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience with The White Devil.
I'm finding it tricky revising as well, but have generally found that(For the comparison between two texts) if you can learn critics quotes and language analysis quotes that are pretty general then you can mold them to suit whatever question you get- in theory. And seen as those ao's (AO3 and AO2) are worth more, then your already in a better position than if you try to remember specific quotes and arguments on every single theme and character.

Finding King Lear slightly harder to revise for, any hints for themes would be appreciated!

OMG Hiii
I've been searching for an OCR A2 English lit thread for so long (and I have no idea how to start a thread)

I'm also struggling I'm not sure how to set out my revision notes. I want to make posters, but I'm not sure how to divide them e.g. AO's, character, themes or all?

I'm doing King Lear as well, and then The Wife of Bath and The Rivals.

Are you actually?! I'm doing exactly the same texts as you and I've been searching TSR for ages trying to find someone haha. How are you revising for it? Thank god I found you xD

OMG Hii!

So far, I've gathered all my quotes from the texts and written them either in my note book or on a revision poster. I'm gonna put the most important ones on individual sticky notes- including AO3 quotes.

The themes I can think of
King Lear: Nature, Order/ Justice, Sight, false appearances, madness, animals, family and love, wealth, nothing

TR and WOB: love, marriage, power, money

I just emailed my old teacher and this was her advice:

"coloured pens!
- Draw spider diagrams/mind maps of ideas and themes and write quotes onto them: teach the map to somebody else and then make sure you display it somewhere.
- If you have closed book exams which you have to be able to quote as part of, then finding a song you know the tune to reallly well and changing the lyrics to be different quotations from the text is really helpful. then you learn the song with the quotations and are more likely to remember it in the exam too.
- plan essays to as many questions as you can: you don't have to have written the essay, but the act of planning it out is really important and will mean that you are better prepared in the exam room.
- if you use sparknotes etc, make sure that you take notes from them and write key points on flashcards or draw little pictures with key things associated with them.

The most important thing with revision, is that it has to be active. The more time you spend just reading your notes, the less productive it will be. Condensing your notes, drawing them, mapping them etc will all make the information stick better. "

I hope it helps,

Good luck

I'm still in awe that we're doing the same texts!!!

Haha, hi there!

Thanks so much for that info, I'll definitely be using some of it! I think, from last year, thoroughly but concisely covering the main themes is the most effective, foolproof way of revising because you can be certain one of them will come up.

I'm so worried about this exam because there have been so many problems in my school's English dept this year, changing teachers around, some of them leaving etc. - I think we've had 5 teachers just for exam prep! D:

Sparknotes/Shmoop always saves me haha. The only thing is is that the teacher we're getting for 3 weeks before study leave has set us a ton of work which consists mainly of selecting 10 extracts from both WoB and The Rivals and finding quotes for them to cover the AOs. I much prefer the thematic way of revising, but I'll probably do that on study leave anyway :P.

Again, thank you so much for your reply, it has helped . The best of luck to you too! What grade are you aiming for and how did your coursework go?

Have you finished all texts. We still need to do The Wife of Bath's tale, which worries me.

I really need an A to meet my offer. But I feel that English is not my strongest subject. I really enjoy it, I just have trouble with my written expression and AO1. I'm really worried because last year I got a very low B first time around and then retook in January and got an A, but this time I need to get it right the first time around.

Another worry I have is the whole old English thing, especially since I'm only learning quotes now.

I hope that the changes in your English department don't impact you too much, perhaps it may be helpful to hav learnt a range of different approaches and techniques and then you can just select which you find most useful.

Coursework is going/ went ok, it's not due until next week. I did The Gothic. How about you? It did feel a bit dissertation like, A2 is definitely a step up! Is your school really strict about coursework, at mine they give minimal/ hardly any guidance. I guess they just want to follow the rules, but it is quite annoying, especially when other exam boards allowing marking and detailed feedback from teachers.

What other subjects do you do, and how confident do you feel about them?
How many exams do you have in total?
What do you hope to do next year? e.g. uni course, gap year etc.

Sorry for bombarding you with questions^

I've finished The Rivals and WoB albeit not in detail. We've only really just read it and looked for contextual stuff - I'm really not prepared for it. Just under halfway through King Lear but we'll finish that off before study leave comfortably. That's the only text we haven't really been affected by in terms of teaching changes. My main concern for the comparative section is AO3/4 really. Ah, at least you got back up to an A though, which is good . I got an A last year - got moderated down a B in the coursework but I did pretty well in the exam so that compensated. And yeah I know exactly what you mean, that's why I'm so stressed! This year is a LOT harder than last year, which I underestimated.

Yep, when I first read Chaucer I got a headache because I had no grasp of the Old English. As you read it though, just look it up on the internet and just read it sort of as a whole as opposed to word by word (if you know what I mean?) because it helps with understanding.

The changes have been terrible for us ;(. Especially having so many teachers with different interpretations etc. We've not covered the texts in anywhere near enough detail. I hope the teacher we get after Easter will get us back up to speed.

I gave my coursework in about 3/4 weeks ago - I did mine on the mental effects of war, comparing Regeneration, All Quiet on the Western Front and Wilfred Owen's poetry. This also got affected by the teacher situation but I've been told I did quite well in it. I just hope it doesn't get moderated down like last time because I really need it to fall back on ¬_¬.

Regarding CW guidelines, before we handed in our first draft, my teacher was quite helpful, giving advice here and there which was helpful. After we handed our draft in and it got marked and returned to us, she wasn't allowed to write anything on our essay and only verbally told us (very vaguely) what we need to do. She was just sticking to the rules I guess. Between our draft and final version submission (about 1 month gap), we could show her bits we've written to see if it's ok, but still the feedback was vague. And yeah I know what you mean! Some people last year went from a B and got moderated to Ds, and I'm hearing other people got all As because their teaches were so lenient.

In addition, I do economics and psychology. I'd really like to get an A* in English but I'm not sure how much UMS I need - it really confuses me haha, but hopefully I can still get an A at least. Economics is meh, don't really like it but hoping I can get a B minimum. Unit 4 is so hard though. Psychology I'm not retaking any but I only need 65 UMS for a B (I can't get any higher without retaking but I'm satisfied with a B :P). I've got 5 exams in total (English, psychology and 3 economics ones). And I've received offers for law from Leicester (firm) and Sussex (insurance). Sussex want AAB/A*BB so the A* in English would make a huge difference for me.

Haha no worries, it feels like I've just written an essay! :P. What about you, exams, confidence, uni etc?

Do you know how you've done in your cw this year?

A* is such a great target! You'll definitely have to help me out

I do Psychology and Sociology as well. I have 4 exams in total. English, Unit 4 psychology and 2 units for Sociology.

I need to get A*AA to study Education and English at Cambridge.

I'm quite confident with Psychology. I want to get A* and it's my last exam, so I have time,.I just need 70 ums to maintain it (if A* is overall 90%). I'd like to get an A* also in Sociology. But as long as I meet the grade requirements I'm not too bothered.

I'm worried about trying to remember quotes and critical quotes. Also I worry that I'll regret the question I choose to answer later on.

Well on my draft I got band 5 for AO1/2 and band 4 for AO3/4 and in my final I got 2 band 5s which is, assuming I don't get moderated down, a B grade minimum because you need 31/40 for a B, 36 for an A and the bottom of band 5 totals 32/40. I'm praying it doesn't get downgraded haha.

I wish! I'm so unprepared for this - I'd be elated if I managed an A*!

Ah nice, that's not too bad then. I screwed up the unit 3 exam - just gave up revising so I got a C in that :P. 70 UMS in unit 4 should be comfortable because it seems like a much easier exam, I'm sure you'll get it. 4 exams overall isn't bad either. And yeah, as long as you get your uni place it doesn't really matter.

And wow, well done on your offer! Do you plan on going into teaching after?

Well for quotes, last year for Dorian Gray my friend and I just memorised 8 quotes which covered all of the themes we studied and that helped us a lot. We both did pretty well in that exam but I understand this exam is a lot harder and obviously there's 3 pieces of literature you need to be aware of. I always find quotes, if carefully selected, massively helpful because they just help you write about everything else like context, language techniques etc. so in a way if you have a good selection of quotes, it sort of takes pressure off revising the plot and everything, if you get me :P.

Yeah unit 4 isn't as intense and essay based
What topics are you doing in psychology?

Thanks. Being really aspirational I'd like to go into policy making or something or just replace Michael Gove completely.

What do you want to do after law?
Also what made you want to do it? e.g. criminology side of psychology or something you've always been interested in

Sounds good. Can I be really cheeky and ask (whenever you've done it) what quotes, points etc. you think are most important

In psychology we're doing addiction and schizophrenia - I've made notes for them. Yourself?

Nice! Haha replacing him wouldn't be a bad idea ;D. Well I've always been interested in it, I've been reading the newspapers and generally kept up with the news for ages and I guess that's where it stemmed from. Plus I love writing essays xD. What about you with education/English?

Um, I would have right now but I haven't started yet! I'm kind of stuck with how to start but I'll definitely have some quotes for both WoB and The Rivals this weekend. I just need to familiarise myself with the texts again, but I'll definitely let you know by the weekend at the latest . Off the top of my head, the main ones will be related to marriage and contextual stuff. How about you?

And you don't happen to have Twitter or anything do you? It'd probably be easier on there xD.

I'm doing Lear, The Rivals and Wife of Bath too. I've been trying to revise them by looking at the chapter summaries and watching the TV version of Lear but it seems like a bit of a cop-out compared to my other subjects where I'm making tons of notes. Have you found anything particularly helpful?

I haven't finished my English notes either. For the Wife of Bath, I'm literally singing parts, just to tune it into my end. It's kind of embarrassing, but hey if it works its all good.


I think I'm gonna work on AO3 quotes now

Hi!

We listed some techniques above that might be useful. Re-reading isn't as helpful as active revision. Any activity where you're thinking or doing something rather than reading should work, because you're constantly creating new ideas and making links, which you'll have to do in the exam. Maybe you could plan answers to exam questions or brainstorm themes and quotes from memory.

Hope this helps

Thanks for the advice. I emailed my teacher earlier and all she could suggest was getting some quotes ready which I've already done. I think I might do some big mind-maps with themes and characters and just write down everything that comes to mind, then have a look where I'm short. I haven't got many different interpretations apart from some general ones:

Lear



I don't have much for The Rivals or The Wife of Bath but I will hopefully be finding something there in the next few days. I might make up some for the WoB and say that a feminist view could say that she is admirable in standing up for women against men and religion but then argue against that by showing how she proves men's negative stereotypes correct.

I really like WoB and The Rivals for a comparative question. With so many questions to choose from, I think there are plenty of overlapping themes, such as the role of women, love and marriage, persuasion/words.