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Please help me with GCSE AQA English Literature!

My school have messed up my English lit and lang exams with coursework! My exams are in May/June and my class haven't even fully covered literature yet! I'm currently working at an A* in English Language, and have received full marks in all of my controlled assessments. I really want and need an A/A* in literature, but I'm getting extremely scared that I won't be able to due to the lack of revision, even though I am looking at themes, contexts and characters by myself.

I'm studying Of Mice and Men and An Inspector Calls for the 'Exploring Modern Texts' exam, and the Character and Voice cluster for poetry.

If anyone could tell me how to answer each question in the exam to get maximum marks I would be so grateful! My school have let my year down but I'm still determined to get my A/A* in literature!
Original post by Erin Atlanta
My school have messed up my English lit and lang exams with coursework! My exams are in May/June and my class haven't even fully covered literature yet! I'm currently working at an A* in English Language, and have received full marks in all of my controlled assessments. I really want and need an A/A* in literature, but I'm getting extremely scared that I won't be able to due to the lack of revision, even though I am looking at themes, contexts and characters by myself.

I'm studying Of Mice and Men and An Inspector Calls for the 'Exploring Modern Texts' exam, and the Character and Voice cluster for poetry.

If anyone could tell me how to answer each question in the exam to get maximum marks I would be so grateful! My school have let my year down but I'm still determined to get my A/A* in literature!


You're so lucky to be studying Of Mice and Men. We had to study Mister. Pip and I s2g it was the most boring piece of **** ever.

As for the exam, it's all the standard stuff. You'll get a question and are supposed to write 4 awesome-ass paragraphs. To make those paragraphs awesome, you are going to need a lot of contextual knowledge around the time the piece was written, as well as other stuff.

Of the two you're studying, I only did An Inspector Calls, so really that's the only one I really tell you about (other than general advice). When Priestly wrote the play, it was after WWII and yet is set before WWI, (I think). So it's good to talk about this as well as his socialist views, but you have to link it to the question.

Personally, I was lucky, as I was able to (correctly) predict what the question would be. (Though this was literally in the car ride to the exam, so it didn't actually help much.) My question was about the character of Birling.

But anyway, you should try to look at past questions and practice writing a perfect answer for them with key things like contextual knowledge, why the writer has done this or that, with relevant quotes and links between paragraphs.

I know this reply is really choppy, brief in some parts and detailed in others, sorry. Just ask if you have any questions.
Hi! I got an A* in lang and an A in lit, so I may be able to help. I also studied the same texts as you.

What flyingpanda said is good. There are marks available for context. For OMAM the major theme is broken dreams. Dreams in the American depression simply could no come true for most people. All they could do is survive - but not live. The exam questions as I remember them were focused around characters. I suggest coming up with a general - but detailed - plan of what you would write in an essay about each character on the ranch. A theme of the novella should be your point. Select quotes for each point and memorise them (it will save time in the exam).

Use the same process for AIC. flyingpanda gave you some basic context for that. But if you need any theme ideas, feel free to message me.

If you want to feel more confident, your exam board website will have past questions. Try writing timed essays for that and seeing if you can get a teacher in the English Department to mark it and give feedback. The more essays you do the easier the exam will be.

A word of warning for the poetry exam: the unseen poem they give you may lack a variety of language features. In my exam (June 2014) there were no metaphors or similies. Write about simpler features and talk about the themes and messages of the poem.

Hope I helped. Good luck!
Thank you so much flyingpanda and Free_Icecream_Yo - this helped so much!

Thanks for the amazing advice on how to revise as well 😁 never been on this Student Room website before... Thank you again!!!

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