Edexcel English lit piety exam 22nd may 2014

Hi Edexcel doesn't seem to be very popular but is anyone else doing the poetry exam on Thursday? I'm doing the clashes and collisions section and wondered if anyone had any good last minute revision tips or pointers for the exam? I'm aiming for an A

I'm doing the same exam but it seems like hardly anyone else is... I don't really have a clue how to prepare for it.

Same!! The English department at my school hate AQA because of last year's grades or something so they chose Edexcel this year. I literally have no idea how to prepare for it so far I've gone through and memorised most of the annotations for each of the poems and made sure I know the context and themes behind them. I've done a couple of past paper questions and had a go at annotating an unseen poem. I hate comparative essays as well haha! How did you find the prose exam?

I've literally made sure I know what to analyse when in the exam, using either "SPIRIT" or "STRIVE" as a guideline. Spirit stands for Structure, Poetic Devices, Imagery, Rhythm and Rhyme, Ideas and Tone.

And I thought the first exam was alright, it's fairly hard to know how good or bad you've done in an English exam because unlike Science you can't know exactly if you got a question right or wrong, but I still want an A*!

We do SPIRIT and ISMILE at my school. And yeah I hate English exams because you never know how well you've done until you get the results! I'm aiming for an A, I got an A* and an A in my coursework so hopefully that'll boost up whatever I get in the exams.

So have you thought of any way to revise? I've just whacked out my anthology and I guess the only thing to do is look up each poem on the internet and the notes people have for them, gonna take a fair while :/

Yeah that's pretty much what I've done! I've tried condensing down my notes so when I read each line of the poem I automatically think of the annotations, then I went over the poetic devices and made sure I know what each one is and the effect it has on the reader so I can deal with the unseen poem better.

Just found a website that consolidates each poem really well. It's worth a look as I already feel like I know each poem loads better!

http://stcmgcseenglish.wordpress.com/welcome-to-the-st-cuthbert-mayne-gcse-blog/year-11/understanding-poetry/collection-b-clashes-and-collisions/

And would you be able to offer some help in terms of what poetic devices you'd be looking for? Just any general tips for the unseen poem would be appreciated