AQA AS English Lit B1 Paper 1: Drama (20th May 2016) ASPECTS OF TRAGEDY

It seems to be just me here so I'll respond to this too haha
Firstly, there's quite a few things I've mentioned in a response to someone else above which you can use, but I'll label out the key things here:

-know your quotes. DOAS is closed book, so there's a leeway with the accuracy of the quotes however you need to make sure you have a good selection of quotes at the ready to support your points with. With your extract, just know the key quotes (maybe 5-10ish) which you can use to reference the play as a whole.

-I would strongly suggest you have a brief plan of what you would write if certain questions came up in the exam. There isn't too much time now, so just take each of the characters / themes / symbols and make four points (I do four points, its up to you how many you do!) of what the main argument of each paragraph is.

-what I found helped was searching DOAS critical reading, and going through what other people had written, highlighting any points that stood out and then combining them to have a bank of solid points that I can use for any essay.

-make a timeline, so you can visualise the play. It's key that you know the plot well, and this is a quick easy way to do it.

As for tips:
-when you're writing it, keep in mind that there is no right or wrong and the examiner wants to here your point of view - so to an extent it is a persuasive essay. Have a viewpoint, and stick to it throughout the essay. The essay is a question, so make sure you respond to it - link back to the question at the end of every paragraph!

-speaking of, an easy way to save time is to have some generic points at the ready for your introduction. These could be about tragedy, context of the play or miller's authorial methods.

-you won't get into the top bands without close language analysis, so make sure you have analysed your quotes as well, have at least one quote which you've torn apart word by word in every possible way.

-find a critics opinion! for DOAS, Arthur Miller actually wrote a piece called the Tragedy of the Common Man, so pick up a quote from that and integrate it into your essay. You can do this for other critics too. Just make sure that you use the critics quote as a support for a point YOUVE made, not as one of your points!

Hope this helps, good luck! Xx

Does anyone know the predictions for the exam tomorrow's exam for Great Gatsby and Keats poetry

I don't know any predictions, but I'm hoping that Keats is either to do with presentation of women or resolutions

Can anyone help me find the AQA AS ENGLISH LITERATURE A (NEW SPEC) thread???

Just did the English exam I feel it went terribly here is what I put can you help me determine a mark out of 50 please


English exam- paper 2How are villains seen as causing physical harm
-villains use physical beauty
-Isabella's brothers caused physical harm as they killed Lorenzo and they also killed Isabella by doing that
- la belle- title of the poem shows she will cause harm
-Uses of body parts to describe knight show physical harm and same with Isabella (used quotes
- Talked about rhyme scheme and how it affects poem
-Talked about extract and picked out quotes

Gatsby- how does his obsession with Daisy cause his tragic isolation
-obsession is his tragic flaw so it is going to cause his downfall in terms of tragedy
- his obsession with time and wanting daisy to be how he was 5 years ago- He risks himself for love as he thinks by doing that she will love him
-People could say that Tom or George caused his downfall but his obsession with daisy caused him to say he was driving and caused him to die
- He got into bootlegging to try and get into a better class and got punished for it as Fitzgerald shows that the American Dream is unattainable as even when you've made it you're never completely happy
Thanks so much really don't want to fail so worried I have

I said it was his hamartia but forgot to talk about him thinking he can "repeat the past" ... "why of course you can" but I did talk about the significance of the green light and all dat.
Watch me come out with a D :/

Bet you've done really well! What do you think I've got? I'm really worried about it

All your Gatsby points you listed seem pretty valid and I'm sure you'll get a decent grade but I couldn't tell you what grade exactly. I could never escape the C grade boundary in my practice exams for paper 2.

Of course I did Gatsby, but I didn't do the poetry you mentioned above (Keats?). I did Thomas Hardy poetry instead, which was pretty solid, but to be honest, and this goes for Hardy and Gatsby, I think it went as well as it possibly could have gone.

In terms of paper 1, what texts did you do?
I did Shakespeare's King Lear and Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. I think they went alright. In practice essays I managed to maintain a steady C and even managed to get the odd B grade. I think the exam went alright.

I was aiming for B grades in all my subjects but now I'm not so sure.
For us, these grades aren't final and we re-sit them next year just as long as we get an E or above - but I was aiming for slightly higher than an E or a D anyway hahahah!