How can i get an A or A* in English gcse?

What are you currently at?
I'd personally annotate the crap out of your set texts, and make sure you know the themes very, very well.
Also, familiarise yourself with context but don't overdo it. In my essays I always introduced the context in the Intro and then only mentioned it once or twice throughout the body of my essay. It got me the Grades at GCSE and is working for me at AS too.
For each text make sure you know every bloody page of the book 😭 Because for mice and men I got the page which I never studied or annotated. Our teacher skipped it every time saying 'there's nothing on this page' 😩 That was my worst mark in GCSE, I got full marks in every essay besides that one essay where I got a B, so overall it pulled me down from full UMS to a very high A which really p*ssd me off. Don't let that happen to you.

What are you doing for poetry? Is it unseen, or are you studying specific poems? We did unseen

For poetry we are studying the relationship cluster and for part b it is an unseen poem. Also i am currently at an A but in my recent mock i dropped down to a B because i misinterpreted the extract.
Thanks

I am doing Of mice and men and inspector calls for English literature

for unseen, get a poetry anthology with short poems (no longer than a side of a4 each- it's not necessary) and practice annotating them. E.g- try 'Symptoms' by (I forgot her name but either her first name or second name was Hannah. Just google Symptoms by Hannah AQA poem or something- it should come up) or 'The Incubator', these two are really nice short poems for annotation. Also, stopping by woods on a snowy evening by Robert frost, and just some random classics like daffodils, etc. The more you annotate unseen poems, the more confident you will feel. I'm guessing this will help you with your other poetry too. Remember to make subtle points about structure, I.e is it in iambic pentameter? Trochaic? What's the rhyming scheme like? Such subtleties will really push you into the A* bands, because these are the types of things you'd be expected to mention in A level.

for inspector calls you could talk about Gerald's hubris, and how that also contributes to his breakdown in relationship with Sheila (Provided you get that extract). Also you could talk about whether or not there's catharsis at the end of the play, I.e- do you feel emotionally relieved by the ending or not? (I'm talking about The tragedy of Eva Smith- do you think the ending is conclusive enough?)
These are A level terms which you don't necessarily have to use, but if you do you will stand out. I spoke about George's anagnorisis in late chapter 5 after his conversation with Slim- his moment of realisation that Lennie will never have the capacity to lead a normal life due to the extent of his crime, therefore George must kill him in order to prevent a humiliating publicised death. (Curley wanted to 'shoot him in the gut' - you could talk about aggression &a violence as a stimulant) etc
It all depends on the extract you get tbh

Hi! I've moved this into the correct forum for you have a look around at the other threads here as they may help.

You might also want to have a look at TSR's revision tools (which you can find here) or our English Text Directory Thread (which you can find here).

Good luck!

Just wing it.

For each text make sure you know every bloody page of the book 😭 Because for mice and men I got the page which I never studied or annotated. Our teacher skipped it every time saying 'there's nothing on this page' 😩 That was my worst mark in GCSE, I got full marks in every essay besides that one essay where I got a B, so overall it pulled me down from full UMS to a very high A which really p*ssd me off.

Honestly, for English you can just wing it. Watch Mr Bruff's videos on YouTube the day before the exam, and you will be set. I had been achieving constant B/Cs prior to the exam, and somehow achieved an A (2 marks from an A*) in the exam.