OCR A2 English Literature 2013

Well like he says you need 90% in the two A2 modules, that's 180/200 UMS. If you have the full 80 UMS for your coursework, you need to get 100/120 UMS in today's exam. The A boundary is 96, so you need a pretty low A to get an overall A*.

I'm pretty sure getting a high A at AS has no bearing on whether or not you get an A* overall.

I only mentioned 2 poems, and our teacher had told us that he had been to a conference, and the examiner had said that so long as you make good points you can get away with talking about only one poem for Marvell

I mentioned that performance too!

Talked about Julia putting herself in danger through Faulkland, Lydia because she's naive at first to Jack duping her as Ensign Beverley, the repercussions of that (danger of losing her). And for TWOB, The Wife distancing herself emotionally from the first three husbands, then rushing into it with the 4th and Jankin. She doesn't put herself in physical danger until she gets with Jankin, then she's a bit naive to the whole love bit. For the actual tale, mentioned that when the Knight rapes the girl, he's embracing danger, but only comes to embrace love as the hag turns into the beautiful woman, so a bit of role reversal almost :P plus quotations and criticisms, especially feminist ones because it would seem that women were the ones that were always embracing love, so why don't men. Context, put some arranged marriage, financial and political stuff on that. How did you feel it went?

Basically I just realised I called the critic Chernaik Warren 'Chernaik Wain' in the exam, is this going to effect me much? I have sort of scribbly writing, hoping they'll just scan it and presume I've said the right name, eek

Yes! So many people in my set wanted a question on Enobarbus, but he is much better discussed as a context to the main characters. I did the Antony question aswell, not sure about the relevance of my conclusion though :/ I said that he had undermined himself, and been undermined by others, to such an extent that the audience could not know him because he had been reduced to a 'strumpet's fool' and was fooled by Cleopatra into believing she had killed herself and a fool in not knowing where his allegiance lay, in Rome or in Egypt. I am a bit concerned that it didn't answer the question well enough, but I was so pushed for time I had to move straight on to section B without checking it first!

Correct - I just scraped an A at AS and was freaking out that I wouldn't be able to get an A*, but so long as your average over AS and A2 is 80%, and you get 90% at A2, you can get an A* - fingers crossed I did enough in the exam!!

Basically just wondering if I did the right thing and want to hear what other people wrote!

I did King Learn and Volpone + Paradise Lost question, for King Lear I did the a) question (Gloucester), and although I ran out of time (had 40 minutes, didn't even plan) I went on about Gloucester's blindess in comparison to Lear's metaphorical blindness, how in a way, Gloucester is more tragic than Lear because he is actually PHYSICALLY blinded, the theme of age and legitimacy as well as young and old. I used the "nothing" quotes, "pelican daughters", "robbes and furs hide all" <- to compare how Lear becomes unblind...I feel like my essay was shambles! I just stuffed it all in there, but hopefully there's a good line of argument in there somewhere, I was more comparing Gloucester to Lear-but I didn't even have a Gloucester quote apart from the "there was good sport in his making" ARGH. Anyway! Still, I hope I did the right thing.

For Volpone and Paradise Lost I did Question 8, power and corruption, and I basically contrasted the characters of Satan and Mosca and their quest of power leads to corruption...with Satan already being corrupted and Mosca becoming corrupt, I also focused on how Milton and Jonson essentially corrupt us with words and effectively make us 'fall' with the cast. I also spoke of how in Paradise Lost it is more through TEMPTATION that you become corrupt and in Volpone it's through power...is this right though? I don't even know myself anymore! And I know the texts off by heart haha.

I'm aiming for an A in the exam, I got an A at AS last year but my coursework brought me down to a B because the grade boundaries had gone up...I have a BBB from Edinburgh to study English Literature (I got really lucky) and overall I need a B. So, does this sound about right for a good paper? Or have I completely fluked it?

so you still need to get an A overall in AS, so a B could never be brought up by 100% in A2 to bring it to an A*?

Enobarbus was a feared topic for my set! I wanted either Antony or Cleopatra ideally in a character question so actually quite happy!

My conclusion was rather similar - the degradation of Antony due to Cleopatra's interference and how the audience would respond to the conflict in Antony's character - duty vs. pleasure. I optionally spent less time on Section A - Section B with the comparisons is more time consuming for me! My argument was on similar lines though, so reassured that I wrote something right

Good luck for results!

Ahh relieved that I wasn't the only one who made that argument - the quote was quite a difficult one to relate the question to! I found the comparisons quite time-consuming, but kind of got carried away with section A - I am reassured that I wrote enough for B though, which texts did you do? Good luck to you too!

Tis Pity and the Wife of Bath you?

The quote was difficult yet I guess it allows greater interpretation which can only be a good thing in English exams!

Tis Pity and the Wife of Bath you?

The quote was difficult yet I guess it allows greater interpretation which can only be a good thing in English exams!

i did those texts too - what section B question did you pick?

Marvell and Volpone - so relieved I never have to read that revolting play again! Yes, and there's only about 5 marks for actually answering the question correctly, so hopefully I didn't lose too many How did you find the B questions were for your texts?