AS-Level English Literature OCR Exam

If it is on Easter 1916 what will the question focus on? Disillusionment?

I'm doing Yeats and Frankenstein.
SO NERVOUS for this exam

One teacher I had (had, as she left us recently) believed 'Among School Children' was a strong contender to come up. I thought that that was a really random choice at the time, so I asked why. She said this was because A.S.C is one of Yeats' most famous poems, so it would have a good probability for coming up, as OCR change the set texts/poems every couple of years, so therefore they'd want to include this before Yeats' availability to study ran out. I'm not even going to try and attest to the reliability (or lack therefore) of that statement but there you go.

My second teacher believes 'The Stolen Child' will come up because the potential themes for that poem wildly differ to that of the two previous set poems. I see her point but, still,

I personally think 'Easter 1916' will come up, because it's one of the political poems (none of them have featured as of yet, which is in itself pretty suspicious considering the Irish revolution/s is such a huge context the previous exam poems haven't really allowed us to explore), and plus there are different themes that can be asked for that poem. As much as I love 'The Cat and the Moon', for example, the only essay-worthy theme which comes to mind is 'relationships', which I think the-higher-powers-that-be at OCR, who write the exam question, would perhaps regard as being too easy to prepare for. Plus, if I was an examiner I would not appreciate the resultant onslaught of hundreds of essays all repetitively citing Maud Gonne as the biggest influence on his poetry . Variety is the spice of life, and all that.

As well as this, considering they now can only ask one question per poet every year, as sitting January exams is no longer happening, I think they'll want to ask a question that's accessible but still challenging in its own right, and the previous poems/questions have and 'Easter 1916' could provide for this. Furthermore, I have noticed that the questions set, pretty much exclusively for us lot doing Yeats, have in fact both been referenced within the poem:

For June 2012, 'The Wild Swans at Coole' came up, and the quote referenced in the question involved 'All's changed since I, hearing at twilight...' and then proceeded to ask about Yeats consideration of 'change'. Ditto for January 2013, which had 'Broken Dreams' as the set poem (the quotation I cannot remember, sorry), with a question on the presentation of 'memories'.
Obviously that question structure is in no way prescriptive. There's no telling if it will be like that for us next week. But it's just a thought to consider when doing revision, maybe?


Really though, I hate the feeling of not knowing exactly what to revise!

Sadly, I anticipate lots of cramming in my future for the next few days

How about yourself? What have your teachers predicted/how are you feeling for the exam?

One teacher I had (had, as she left us recently) believed 'Among School Children' was a strong contender to come up. I thought that that was a really random choice at the time, so I asked why. She said this was because A.S.C is one of Yeats' most famous poems, so it would have a good probability for coming up, as OCR change the set texts/poems every couple of years, so therefore they'd want to include this before Yeats' availability to study ran out. I'm not even going to try and attest to the reliability (or lack thereof) of that statement but there you go.

My second teacher believes 'The Stolen Child' will come up because the potential themes for that poem wildly differ to that of the two previous set poems. I see her point but, still,

I personally think 'Easter 1916' will come up, because it's one of the political poems (none of them have featured as of yet, which is in itself pretty suspicious considering the Irish revolution/s is such a huge context the previous exam poems haven't really allowed us to explore), and plus there are different themes that can be asked for that poem. As much as I love 'The Cat and the Moon', for example, the only essay-worthy theme which comes to mind is 'relationships', which I think the-higher-powers-that-be at OCR, who write the exam question, would perhaps regard as being too easy to prepare for. Plus, if I was an examiner I would not appreciate the resultant onslaught of hundreds of essays all repetitively citing Maud Gonne as the biggest influence on his poetry . Variety is the spice of life, and all that.

As well as this, considering they now can only ask one question per poet every year, as sitting January exams is no longer happening, I think they'll want to ask a question that's accessible but still challenging in its own right, and the previous poems/questions have and 'Easter 1916' could provide for this. Furthermore, I have noticed that the questions set, pretty much exclusively for us lot doing Yeats, have in fact both been referenced within the poem:

For June 2012, 'The Wild Swans at Coole' came up, and the quote referenced in the question involved 'All's changed since I, hearing at twilight...' and then proceeded to ask about Yeats consideration of 'change'. Ditto for January 2013, which had 'Broken Dreams' as the set poem (the quotation I cannot remember, sorry), with a question on the presentation of 'memories'.
Obviously that question structure is in no way prescriptive. There's no telling if it will be like that for us next week. But it's just a thought to consider when doing revision, maybe?


Really though, I hate the feeling of not knowing exactly what to revise!

Sadly, I anticipate lots of cramming in my future for the next few days

How about yourself? What have your teachers predicted/how are you feeling for the exam?

Haha! I'm glad you and your teachers feel 'Among School Children' is not a possibility. I just can't make sense of it at all, to be honest.

I'm a bit surprised that you wouldn't want 'The Cat and The Moon' to come up! Although I am slightly biased. I love that poem a bit too much, to the point that I've memorised it along with some of the shorter poems . There's an elegance to 'Sailing to Byzantium' that I like as well, so a question on that, maybe in relation to Yeats presentation of art would be nice in my opinion It's funny because the more likely question on 'Easter 1916', which everybody seems to like, is something I would totally (as of now, anyway) not look forward to.

My Frankenstein revision is coming along slowly but steadily. I'm in the middle of another quick re-read and I have my mind-maps on general themes at the ready. I have a selection of quotations/critical intepretations memorised at the moment, but they're a bit haphazard, as I don't want to memorise loads of quotations for one particular aspect/theme and then be screwed over entirely if/when a completely opposing question comes up . I think that a question on the portrayal of women is likely to come up (And I would love for it to do so!), or perhaps something on the 'is the novel Romantic or Gothic?' argument...From what I've seen, of the two questions we can choose for Frankenstein, one tends to be thematic/character based, the other on narrative style/technique. For the latter, the use of settings/narrative structure has come up, which does not leave much left in that respect. Maybe we'll have one on Shelley's use of language to create certain effects? I'm hoping the thematic/character-based question is a nice one so I can just disregard the narrative technique one entirely, even though I normally like writing responses to that sort of question

Regardless of how much revision I do though, I know I'll be nervous on the day

How's your revision going? Do you feel confident? etc.

I think for The Cat and The Moon it was one of the last poems we looked at in class and we seemed to skim over it a bit, so I guess I just don't that much knowledge on it and wouldn't have that much to write about. I'm really hoping Easter 1916 comes up so I'm glad to see lots of people think it will, I'd really like if it The Second Coming or The Stolen Child came up as well as I really like them and have lots to write about them.

I think my revision's going pretty well, I re read Frankenstein a few weeks ago and have gone through the whole York Notes book on it which is really helpful and covers pretty much everything we'll need for the exam. Interestingly I really didn't like Frankenstein when I first read it and started studying it, but now we've done all this work and analysis of it I'm growing to really love it, and realise that it's a great book with great messages. The thing that worries me though is the nature of the exam, the fact that there's such a broad amount of questions that can be asked, and I'm worreid that I'll get into the exam and have two questions that I haven't even thought about, and don't have any quotes, critical quotes or context etc relevant to it. Although when you mentioned that you think a question about Women may come up lots of things that I could write about sprung to my mind which is reassuring, I think if we got that question it would be interesting to write about how Victor usurps the natural role of the women by creating the creature! I could probably write about Romantic/Gothic as well but maybe not as indepthly as women, although I think it's probably best to try and talk a little bit about the novel being Romantic/Gothic in any question we get for A02 marks, and also it can link well to context for A04. I think another poster said they think that those two questions will come up as well earlier in the thread so hopefully you're right I really need to brush up on my critical quotes though so I'll try and do them throughout the week, I'd say I'm feeling confident for the Yeats sides of things but not so much for Frankenstein, but if we do some good revision for Frankenstein over the week hopefully I can get myself to a good position regarding it But yeah I'll be a wreck before the exam as well, I don't think it would ever be possible for me not to feel nervous about an English exam

How many critics quotes have you memorised?

Oh ok I see 'The Cat and The Moon' won't come up anyway so it's fine

Same here! I didn't like Frankenstein during my first read but now I'm quite fond on it.



For each theme/character I was advised to memorise about 5 quotations, but to be quite honest I don't feel comfortable in learning just five for an hour-long essay, so I've memorised round about 10 or so.

Bear in mind that the most effective quotations are short, pithy ones which can incite a multi-faceted analysis. I also have the Yorks Notes revision guide, and a good example of a quotation to remember, for example, is on page 18 in the little AO2 box that talks about Victor's description of his upbringing through 'silken cord'. You could get a lot of analysis out of this quote. I would perhaps approach this analysis in different ways. Firstly I'd probably write specifically about the implications of these two words in relation to Victor's upbringing (as the book says, the quote shows Victor's idyllic upbringing/the restrictive nature of it), but also Shelley's presentation of upbringing in the novel (so how Victor's 'silken cord' of an upbringing contrasts to that of the creature's upbringing, and what this means in relation to what actually happens in the novel), plus a bit of context on philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau's theories of upbringing/society as being a corrupting influence would not be remiss.

Alternatively, you could discuss this quotation in a different way if the question was something on the importance of companionship in Frankenstein. You could do this by being a little sneaky and distort the use of 'companionship' in the question to talk about the companionship inherent in the dynamics of the abundant and opposing familial bonds present in the novel: of the Frankenstein family in comparison/in contrast to the DeLacey family and perhaps by extension the family consisting of Safie + her mother before she died. You could discuss how this quotation demonstrates the smothering sort of way the Frankenstein's believe a child should be raised as opposed to the way Safie's mother raised her, and which one you think Shelley believes is better--and thus to logically prove to the examiner that your belief in which one she thinks is better is actually plausible, you would in turn have to provide more textual evidence and a further analysis. Which will always be nice for our marks!

Therefore all the different assessment objectives have been hit with 2 words, if you see what I mean Thus remembering about 10 quotes isn't so daunting haha.

Hopefully the Frankenstein questions will be nice this year

About 7 so far, hoping to learn a lot more by Friday. Although I've got some by David Lodge about narrative technique which you could probably try and fit any question as you're supposed to talk about structure and form in every question so that takes the pressure off learning so many a bit

Just wondering if anyone knows if I could also talk about film adaptations for A03? I did that in my Coursework and it was fine but my teacher hasn't talked about it and she's only really said about critical quotes for A03, so hopefully it's the same for the exam.



Yeah I hope they're easy as well Although looking at the last two exams they usually ask one easy and one nice, I think in the January exam the first question was about creators and creation which is pretty easy, and then the second one was about domestic space which is an absolutely horrible question so hopefully they're at least like that, one easy and one hard! Although preferably both easy

Also to the people who think Romanticism/Gothic will come up, how certain are you about it? Thinking about it now I think there's a strong likelihood it will come up, but I don't want to waste lots of time revising for it and thinking of things to say if it doesn't come up in the end.

Does anyone know how to incorporate AO3 into the novel essay? Do you have to include critical views - only the examiner report says that this is a detriment if the quotes are not really relevant. What about looking at how a contemporary/modern reader would respond? Would this suffice?

Also, what does it mean by an argument would be enough to fulfill AO3?

And in terms of number of quotes, I'm worried... what if I learn loads of quotes but they aren't really relevant/helpful in answering the question!

Do we have to memorise critic quotes for the Frankenstein essay? I'm having trouble learning quotes from the actual novel, let alone critic ones!

And for Yeats, since everyone thinks Easter 1916 will come up, which other poems can you compare it to? Everyone seems to love that poem but I hate it.. obviously you can compare it to September 1913 and probably the Man and The Echo as well but I'm really stuck?!

You can compare it to
1. september 1913-and the irish fighters
2. Man and The Echo
3. you can compare it to an irish airman - doing a duty
4. maybe sailing to byzantium-which could be a contrast

Incorporation of AO3 means that you are able to take a quote, theory or alternative reading and weave it into your discussion without it sounding forced or out of place. Your AO3 references need to be focused and relevant.

By an argument they mean that a presentation of an alternative view or reading of the novel will count as AO3: the only problem is that it is sometimes difficult for an examiner to isolate and pick out an argument.

Unfortunately we need to just learn loads of quotes, I don't think there is any way around it

Ooooh okay, so by saying: The simile "like a trampled flower" that is used to describe Sybil Vane as she lies helpless at Dorian's feet suggests that, as a woman in the patriarchal Victorian society, she has no rights, However, it could be a subtle way for Wilde to convey the extent of Dorian's corrupting and destructive influence... blah blah blah? So looking at *alternative* ways of analysing the writer's methods is enough to fulfill AO3?

Thanks - it won't let me rep you!