AS Level OCR English Literature Exam (2017 May 19th)

I did Hamlet and Rossetti hbu!

Hi, I also did these two. Which questions did you choose?

Hiya, nice! I did the revenge one for Hamlet because I had loads of quotes & critics; I was pretty okay with it if I'm honest but the Polonius one to me seemed really difficult to write an essay on? I'll be impressed with whoever managed it ngl.

The goblin market one though... I thought that was a low move from OCR in my opinion... It was a bit sucky for comparisons with other poems.

What did you pick?

Yeah i did it this afternoon after quarantine (latin lit...)

I did Hamlet and Chaucer.


I thought the Polonius was great! i knew loads to that effect and our mock was "polonius is just a doddery old fool, do you agree?" so i knew mostly what i was going to do. Was really excited to see that. Probably could have done revenge but because id done it, polonius was pretty much pre-planned for me.

Did anyone else do the Chaucer? The question was really silly - How is the garden presented?? Plus it had two things which were completely different, but the passage was nice ( i predicted it would be a garden scene).

Hope it went for everyone!

Hiya, nice! I did the revenge one for Hamlet because I had loads of quotes & critics; I was pretty okay with it if I'm honest but the Polonius one to me seemed really difficult to write an essay on? I'll be impressed with whoever managed it ngl.

The goblin market one though... I thought that was a low move from OCR in my opinion... It was a bit sucky for comparisons with other poems.

What did you pick?

I did the hamlet and Rosetti question, but I made a mistake by refrencing Maude Clare instead of soeur Louise but the quote was correct, do you think it will pull down my grade

I did the hamlet and Rosetti question, but I made a mistake by refrencing Maude Clare instead of soeur Louise but the quote was correct, do you think it will pull down my grade

Lol, i literally have done exactly the same as you! in my opinion the revenge essay was really good but Rossetti was awful.... I think if nayhting that will bring my grade down.

Oh my gosh that's really lucky! Can I ask what points you made for Polonius (if you remember) I'm just curious because even now I still can't think of more than one point that I would have written for the question !

ugh same if I'm honest.. I've always been weaker at Rossetti tbh because I really like Shakespeare so I was more motivated to revise for it oops... what book and play are you doing for next week's exam?

I learned loads of quotes, and i guessed either laertes/polonius or ophelia would come up, and i planned those, otherwise i would have done the theme question.

I said:
Yes, he is a clever politician because he gives good advice "to thine ownself be true" etc, because he flatters his way through court "and as you said -and wisely was it said" and because he can be cold and calculating, how he manipulates people, like the H K Aycliff version

No, because he is mocked throughout, reads advice off a piece of paper etc.

No, because of his interaction with ophelia. His good advice is not that great because he only applies it to laertes, showing he's sexist. Therefore he's not that clever. He blames ophelia, yet it is he who is wrong, so when he calls her a baby, maybe its he who is the baby - as hamlet calls him. Rebecca smith said "he trained his daughter to be chaste and obedient and is able to use her as a piece of bait for spying". I said this shows how he cannot spy himself, so he's not a clever politician who can manipulate courts, he relies on ophelia.... and when he does spy behind the arras, he ends up "dead as a ducat" when Hamlet "hath Polonius slain".

No because look at laertes - polonius is his "life-rendering pelican" meaning laertes is like polonius, and polonius still uses him by putting forgeries on him, then i said the word forgeries suggests that polonius forged another of himself in laertes, and i said cos laertes isn't a good politician, cannot speak well and just uses brute force,
we can thus conclude polonius isnt a clever politician, but a doddery old fool.

Wooooow, I would never have been able to come up with these points! Did you guys focus on Polonius alot?

We circulated good mock essays and because i did the other mock essay (im sad it didnt come up), i wanted to make sure i was strong at that because i thought one of those three would come up. A couple of the sub-points were from someone else's essay, but because of all the revision i did on laertes and ophelia too, i felt i could make some good points on them. So yeah, i came up with them. I had intended parenting/laertes/ophelia to all be one point, but i cut parenting and then managed to write more than expected on the other two. I felt my first paragraph wast not great as i missed out some good points and i waffled a bit, and i didnt do quite enough context overall, but i think that went better than the chaucer.

Out of interest, how much did you write for each essay and what's your handwriting size (and perhaps words to an exam line)?

We circulated good mock essays and because i did the other mock essay (im sad it didnt come up), i wanted to make sure i was strong at that because i thought one of those three would come up. A couple of the sub-points were from someone else's essay, but because of all the revision i did on laertes and ophelia too, i felt i could make some good points on them. So yeah, i came up with them. To be honest we didnt really focus on anyone, all we did in class was go through the text!

I had intended parenting/laertes/ophelia to all be one point, but i cut parenting and then managed to write more than expected on the other two. I felt my first paragraph wast not great as i missed out some good points and i waffled a bit, and i didnt do quite enough context overall, but i think that went better than the chaucer.

Out of interest, how much did you write for each essay and what's your handwriting size (and perhaps words to an exam line)?

For each essay i ended up writing 4 pages. At the start of the exam i was writing kinda small (in my opinion lol) so around 7/8 words per line but towards the end whne i started to rush and get down my last points it must have gone down to 5/6. Hby?

If i remember it was 5.5 for hamlet and 4.5 for chaucer.

My writing is erratic, but generally about 7-8 words a line, i've got small hand writing - but i make a conscious effort in my exams to keep it big.

Did anyone here do chaucer? If so, what did you think of the question? Personally, I thought it was just badly set.