How do you revise english liturature GCSE

I'm in year 10 and I want a 8/9 for English lit. I want to know how to revise it.

quotations - annotate them
themes - describe them
characters - describe their moods and attitudes throughout

what books/plays are you sudying

Reply 2

ashestostardust

Make sure you know how to answer the questions for starters. Memorise key quotes. Do character profiles. Watch the text in a different medium (e.g. film) if possible. Just develop your understanding of the text. Oh and also remember to learn about the context where possible (e.g. Victorian London for A Christmas Carol etc)

Reply 3

Mohamedjama

An Inspector Calls and Macbeth

Original post by jamesgillian123

quotations - annotate them
themes - describe them
characters - describe their moods and attitudes throughout

what books/plays are you sudying

Reply 4

jamesgillian123

Original post by Mohamedjama

An Inspector Calls and Macbeth

For macbeth make a page or two of notes for each character and their specialties
ie Macbeth is a brave warrior and is influenced by lady macbeth to kill duncan, this could show he is actually weak etc...
do that with all main characters

Then make notes on key quotes in the play
ie "milk of human kindness" - this shows milk as a mild a pure substance but is contrasted with "red of blood" which later describes Macbeth, this could show lady macbeth controls him and persuades him to be evil etc...

Make notes on many themes, how is evil shown in macbeth? How is duality shown in macbeth?
These are the kind of questions you will be expected to answer so make sure to explore many themes

Id strong recommend york notes guide for macbeth aswell as the workbook. If you learn it back to front and how to apply it in an exam you will get band 5 easily.
hope this helps!

Reply 5

Mohamedjama

Thanks alot !!

Original post by jamesgillian123

Reply 6

sambeaz6

If you're on the bus or train or in a free class and you have nothing to do, try reading your literature as it is and try to see the qualities that make it as successful as it is. By attempting to gain enjoyment from the texts instead of exclusively analysing them, you should hopefully be able to see the parts of the text that jump out at you and have the greatest impact as a media designed to enjoy, not one written to be studied. By finding out what YOU enjoy about the text, you can expand on your own thoughts as the reader instead of trying to guess what any other reader's thoughts would be.

P.s. I'm not saying just read your literature and do nothing else, this is just an additional suggestion on top of your revision

Reply 7

Eilonwy

Original post by Mohamedjama

I'm in year 10 and I want a 8/9 for English lit. I want to know how to revise it.

Hi! I'm in year 11 and currently enjoying English Lit, so here's my mini essay on how to revise ... I'm sorry.
I would say, keep re-reading the texts so that you know them pretty well (you don't have to be reading them all the time but if you've read each one more than three times by your exam, that's probably enough). Then, skim through each one a couple of times and note down quotes you come across that you think you could use- make sure you have a wide range- along with notes for analysing them, then go through them a few more times- maybe a week apart each or something- and cut out any that you can so you're left with maybe 10 at most- I got through my y10 mocks with about 4 per text and I think I only used two for one. You could probably do more with Shakespeare though, I've found Macbeth to be a lot easier to remember than either of my other two texts and I think it's just something about Shakespeare's prose that's memorable. Look over the quotes every now and again and add any notes where you think you can (analyse the living hell out of them). A bit of research into the genre and time it was written never hurt anyone either.
I imagine you're practising writing essays in class- and that's probably enough- though if you want you can practise at home using past papers or by just making up random essay questions e.g. "How does the character of Dr Jekyll appear in contrast to Mr Hyde throughout the novel" or "How does Priestley present Mr Birling in the beginning of the play?". You could ask your teacher to mark them (depends what your teacher is like) or you could just check them yourself (you can probably find some sort of a mark scheme if you look up your exam board online). Do make sure you're analysing context, language and audience/reader reaction (especially if it's a play) since those are very important points.
Then there's the poetry. I can't pretend I'd the most helpful person here, not because I'm bad at poetry as such, but because I don't enjoy analysing poems in the way that I do texts and we didn't do any poetry in our y10 mock as far as I can remember. All the same, in the exam you'll be asked to analyse two poems- one of which will be given- so I think your best bet is to do something similar to quotes but with poems. With the exam board I'm doing, we have a two part poetry anthology (one half of which we still have yet to analyse) in the first part there's a range of poems, half of which seem to be about romantic love and the other half familial love. In this case, I'd suggest you pick two of each type of poem, this way you have something to compare with for either type of poem and you'll even have something if one of the poems you chose comes up in the exam. Again, you might want to list some important quotes from each poem that you can memorise, though you'll have to read through the poems a lot more than the texts- especially near to the exam.
Anyway, I can't promise my advice will work for you- heck, I haven't done my real exam yet so I can't even be sure it'll work for me- but so far it's been doing me just fine (I mean, I get high marks and my teacher likes what I write, so...). Anyway, when I started writing this, your question had been posted 15 minutes ago and now it says "about an hour ago" so I should probably stop my mindless waffling here. I hope I've helped you to feel a bit better about your English Lit (that'd make one of us), have a nice evening!