WJEC English Literature GCSE 18th and 22nd May.

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I don't think my school knew either, I just read it online yesterday. I know but unfortunately, the first exam with this change was in January and the grade boundaries didn't get lowered. **** wjec -_-

that sucks, its such a bad exam board :frown:

just have to hope for a miracle

Reply 561

franm1

Original post by ArcticNeighbour

Oh okay, how did you find it? I didn't find the questions too bad, although my hand had a mind of its own afterwards.

i was near the back so i couldnt see what time it ended and i rushed, handwriting looked so bad haha! lit and re in the same day isnt the best for the hand. there was a question on apathy which we had never learnt so i got that one wrong but apart from that i found it fairly easy. what about you?

Reply 562

electrahearts

Original post by SZaman99

Yeah I know, I'm not really fussed about missing the 'idea' of prostitution because I don't think it was actually there. The poems are about natures effect on the man made world, so talking about prostitution would change what the poems are about. The descriptions they give us give us an idea about what the poems are about before we've read them. Giving that description, but having a poem that talks about something completely opposite would be a stupid thing to do!

These are exactly my thoughts! Why would they tell us it was about one thing if it was about another? I think it was a pretty bad choice of poem by wjec tbh

Reply 563

haes

Original post by georgiataylor

That's awful! How are they going to pass?

they just learnt important quotes.. idk how they'll do, i'm worried for them

Reply 564

Woodaw

For the poem I didn't really talk about nature much (despite them being about nature), and just made up some crap on how the plants were a metaphor for people ignoring what matters in life. For example, in the first poem we saw people ignore the flowers as they were too engrossed in their work. The flowers represented what they were missing in life. The difference between the 2 for me was that in the first poem the flowers continued to grow and give off a sweet smell, which meant that even if you ignore the important parts of life to concentrate on your work you can still come back to them later. However, in the second poem, the plants overrun the farm and the farm is destroyed, which conveyed a message that if you ignore the important aspects of life, they will be destroyed and disappear.

However, I think what I wrote was bull **** and not very good so...

Reply 565

electrahearts

now I'm basically thinking I wrote 3 and half pages of nonsensical ****.

Reply 566

ludo4

The poetry in today's exam was really awfully written in my opinion. I had to read it at least 6 times to even understand what was going on in the first one. Did anybody do TKAM? I thought the questions for that were really good :smile:

Reply 567

SZaman99

Original post by electrahearts

These are exactly my thoughts! Why would they tell us it was about one thing if it was about another? I think it was a pretty bad choice of poem by wjec tbh

I knw! But that's what I'm saying, the poems are about what the description told us, nature not prostitution!

Reply 568

gcses2015

Hi guys,

You know the extract question for 'Of Mice and Men', what did you talk about? I talked about when lennie said 'I..aint...gonna say a word.'' Then I talked about where george and lennie were sleeping (the idea that they have no permanent home makes the readers feel sympathy for them) and the colours of rabbits Lennie wants (that he is mentally unstable). What ideas did you guys put down? I personally didn't like the poems. :/

Reply 569

gcses2015

Original post by ludo4

Same!! I finished with my essay question at 11:10 AM. Then I spent 20 minutes reading the poem and trying to figure out what the hell it was about. lol

Reply 570

ArcticNeighbour

Original post by SZaman99

For those who wrote about prostitution for 'city lilacs', firstly how the heck did you come up with that?
The poem clearly states that the poems are about nature's effect on the man made world. Although there may have been some quotes in the poem that gave the idea of prostitution, the rest of the poem was about nature's influence on the city just like there was in the second poem. The poems that are chosen share similarities and differences, if poem 1 was about prostitution and the second about nature, they would have been completely different poems that wouldn't have shared the same analytic ideas. Is it just me who finds that completely absurd? :s

Hello Zaman, I 100% agree with you, nothing to do with nature, I think it is completely bonkers. Not spanish poems at all

Reply 571

ArcticNeighbour

Hey again everyone, so I asked my english teacher (an extremely knowledgeable woman) about the poem. She said you certainly will not get marked down or penalised if you didn't write about prostitution.
In my opinion that was a little TOO analytical for normal human beings

Reply 572

ludo4

Original post by gcses2015

Same!! I finished with my essay question at 11:10 AM. Then I spent 20 minutes reading the poem and trying to figure out what the hell it was about. lol

Literally there was a good 5 minutes in my exam when nobody was writing because we were all trying to understand the poems. I finished the prose text question really late so I started to panic. I ended up discussing that the structures of the poems were different (?).

Reply 573

electrahearts

Original post by ArcticNeighbour

oh thank god I was totally freaking out about it! Thank you :h:

Reply 574

ArcticNeighbour

Original post by electrahearts

oh thank god I was totally freaking out about it! Thank you :h:

Tell me about it, although I still have my doubts on that interpretation

Reply 575

ludo4

Original post by ArcticNeighbour

Hi, great news!
I just wanted to add that with english you can pretty much argue any idea as long as it has a tiny bit of relevancy and you can support it with points - hence why i started saying that the structure of the first poem represented a power struggle :smile:

Good luck on Friday everyone!!

Reply 576

ArcticNeighbour

Original post by ludo4

Good luck on Friday everyone!!

You definitely got that right! English is a really ambiguous subject. Thanks, you too! Which novels are you doing on Friday?

Reply 577

ludo4

Original post by ArcticNeighbour

You definitely got that right! English is a really ambiguous subject. Thanks, you too! Which novels are you doing on Friday?

No problem. An Inspector Calls and Heroes, what are you doing?

Reply 578

ArcticNeighbour

Original post by PrimeLime

I'll just give you the same advice I gave to a couple of people about poetry - I think I should start charging for this advice XD!
For poetry, I started with a small introduction, then I (sort of) tracked through the text logically, considering what the poem is about, ideas that the write may have wanted us to think about (so themes, basically), choices of vocabulary and techniques such as imagery and enjambment (fancy), structure and importantly, your personal response to the poem. The 'personal response' doesn't have to be a separate section, though. It just needs to be evident throughout your essay that you are personally and uniquely responding and reacting to the text.

I would just stick to, and practise, the technique that your teacher teaches you for poetry analysis. Make sure you're really insightful and original. Examiners LOVE originality in poetry analysis. Additional, 5% of marks in Lit. are allocated to SPAG. So there's another benefit of getting your SPAG good. (Just in case you didn't know, SPAG = Spelling, Punctuation And Grammar .)

As for number of quotes, NOPE!
I absolutely wrung out about 3 (maybe 4) quotes in the 20 mark essay. 3. And I spent a whole paragraph giving an 'insightful' discussion about Curley and his wife's names. I did about 4 paragraphs, and I don't think I lost a mark on that essay. So it's all about how good your analysis is. If you can draw it out, draw it out (not 'draw' as in draw a picture by the way LOL). There you go, that's proof that you don't need to learn even 10 quotes for every character and theme. Just think about what you'd say about them instead. :smile:

Thanks for the advice, although I didn't read those so it's a little late for me now! But obviously thanks none the less.
So you got such high marks with barely any quotes? That's amazing! We've always been drilled into learning these quotes for all of the piece of literature. Oh well, at least now I know for Friday. Thanks!