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Lita3: Aqa reading for meaning - love through the ages exam 2013

After looking through some of the English exam threads I realised that there's not yet one for this exam but there is for the Gothic. I thought we could all discuss wider reading, exchange notes and talk about the exam on here so I can feel a little more confident, and a little less stressful about it all. :biggrin:

I'd love to know what you're all doing revision wise since this exam is so hard to revise for. All I've managed to do so far is make cue cards for each of the genres. I really struggle with structuring the essay and adding wider reading in the exam because I just feel like I just bolt it onto an end of a paragraph. So if anyone could help me with that part I'd be extremely grateful, because I have no idea how to introduce wider reading/how much you need to say about your wider reading. Since my impression was that we have to do a paragraph on our wider reading and try to get in quotes etc, but all of the exam exemplars I've been given literally just write a sentence or two about their wider reading.

Also, I'd love to know what wider reading texts all you guys are using this year anyway, and if they're interesting enough I might look them up.

Excuse the rant, but I hope it'll get the discussion started at least. :wink:
Best of luck for your exams!
(edited 10 years ago)

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Reply 1
Original post by tragicwords
After looking through some of the English exam threads I realised that there's not yet one for this exam but there is for the Gothic. I thought we could all discuss wider reading, exchange notes and talk about the exam on here so I can feel a little more confident, and a little less stressful about it all. :biggrin:

I'd love to know what you're all doing revision wise since this exam is so hard to revise for. All I've managed to do so far is make cue cards for each of the genres. I really struggle with structuring the essay and adding wider reading in the exam because I just feel like I just bolt it onto an end of a paragraph. So if anyone could help me with that part I'd be extremely grateful, because I have no idea how to introduce wider reading/how much you need to say about your wider reading. Since my impression was that we have to do a paragraph on our wider reading and try to get in quotes etc, but all of the exam exemplars I've been given literally just write a sentence or two about their wider reading.

Also, I'd love to know what wider reading texts all you guys are using this year anyway, and if they're interesting enough I might look them up.

Excuse the rant, but I hope it'll get the discussion started at least. :wink:
Best of luck for your exams!


For revision I'm going over all the wider reading I've done learning a few short quotes from each one and picking out all the different types of love. Then I'm learning features of each time period but I'm trying to learn them by picking out examples from the wider reading so it's easier to remember and so I have an example.

For prose I've done:
Wuthering Heights
The Magic Toyshop
Enduring Love
Then extracts from Dracula, Tom Jones, Jude the Obscure, Lorna Doone and Jane Eyre. And any extracts from past exam questions

For Drama I've done:
Othello
Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolf
Happy Days
She Stoops to Conquer
The Importance of being Earnest
A Doll's House
The Caucasian Chalk Circle
The Way of The World

For Poetry I've done Petrarch, a lot of John Donne poems, a lot in the romanticism period such as William Blake, Keats, William Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge. Then I'm using my Carol Ann Duffy from last year as postmodern poetry

I have other wider reading extracts that I've looked at but those are the ones I've gone into detail about in class and so will revise the most.

For the essay wider reading is only worth 10 marks in each question it's more important to compare the two extracts first and then introduce the wider reading. You don't really need a lot of wider reading as long as it's a strong link and you have examples of why it compares or differs. I looked at one example and he'd only used one text throughout the whole essay which is okay just as long as it's strong.

I hope any of this helps :smile: I'm struggling with the exam too I really need a B in the exam and I feel so underprepared
Reply 2
Original post by emilyleah
For revision I'm going over all the wider reading I've done learning a few short quotes from each one and picking out all the different types of love. Then I'm learning features of each time period but I'm trying to learn them by picking out examples from the wider reading so it's easier to remember and so I have an example.

For prose I've done:
Wuthering Heights
The Magic Toyshop
Enduring Love
Then extracts from Dracula, Tom Jones, Jude the Obscure, Lorna Doone and Jane Eyre. And any extracts from past exam questions

For Drama I've done:
Othello
Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolf
Happy Days
She Stoops to Conquer
The Importance of being Earnest
A Doll's House
The Caucasian Chalk Circle
The Way of The World

For Poetry I've done Petrarch, a lot of John Donne poems, a lot in the romanticism period such as William Blake, Keats, William Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge. Then I'm using my Carol Ann Duffy from last year as postmodern poetry

I have other wider reading extracts that I've looked at but those are the ones I've gone into detail about in class and so will revise the most.

For the essay wider reading is only worth 10 marks in each question it's more important to compare the two extracts first and then introduce the wider reading. You don't really need a lot of wider reading as long as it's a strong link and you have examples of why it compares or differs. I looked at one example and he'd only used one text throughout the whole essay which is okay just as long as it's strong.

I hope any of this helps :smile: I'm struggling with the exam too I really need a B in the exam and I feel so underprepared


Aw wow, lots of similar wider reading then. I just feel like last year I had loads of wider reading and I was too overwhelmed with it all so I'm just using the following this year:

PROSE - The Magic Toyshop, Great Gatsby.
POETRY - Goblin Market, Wife of Bath, stuff by Robert Browning, The Hug - Thomas Gunn. (Can you use CAD? because I did the WW last year and got told that we couldn't use it?!)
DRAMA - A Doll's House, Children's Hour, Taming of the Shrew.

But yeah I know it's mainly comparing the extract so I'm not too worried but want to know what people write about it haha. I guess if you have one wider reading that's really good you can keep referring to that one if it's a confident one. But I might add two minimum and stick to that haha.
Reply 3
Don't feel under prepared, stay strong and don't panic. Just stick with the texts you feel most passionate about I guess and could easily debate about. I need a B overall so I need a C/B for this exam too. Ugh what are we like. :frown:
Reply 4
Original post by tragicwords
Aw wow, lots of similar wider reading then. I just feel like last year I had loads of wider reading and I was too overwhelmed with it all so I'm just using the following this year:

PROSE - The Magic Toyshop, Great Gatsby.
POETRY - Goblin Market, Wife of Bath, stuff by Robert Browning, The Hug - Thomas Gunn. (Can you use CAD? because I did the WW last year and got told that we couldn't use it?!)
DRAMA - A Doll's House, Children's Hour, Taming of the Shrew.

But yeah I know it's mainly comparing the extract so I'm not too worried but want to know what people write about it haha. I guess if you have one wider reading that's really good you can keep referring to that one if it's a confident one. But I might add two minimum and stick to that haha.


I'm using Carol Ann Duffy this year, and just hoping for the best!

For Prose I have:
- Picture of Dorian Gray
- Moll Flanders
- Araby, Eveline, and A Painful Case (All from James Joyce's Dubliners collection)
- The Female Eunach
- Enduring Love
- Lolita
- The Bloody Chambers
- Oranges are not the only Fruit
- Tipping the Velvet
- Mary Barton
- Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Plays:
- Taming of the Shrew
- Othello
- Romeo and Juliet (classic! - had to be done)
- The Rover
- Streetcar named Desire
- A Doll's House
- The Admirable Crichton
- She Stoops to Conquer
- A Woman of No Importance

Poems:
- Sonnet 57
- Sonnet 116
- What thing is love?
- My Life's Delight
- I wandered lonely as cloud
- The Ecstasy
- Hour & The Darling Letters (Duffster!)
- Bloody men, Valentine (Wendy Cope)
- The Sick Rose
- La Belle Dame sans Merci
- The Love Song of Alfred. J. Prufrock

And a few others which I can't remember right now :smile:
But I don't know much about eras, so hoping to go mostly on analysis rather than context...

Good luck! :smile:
Reply 5
Hi, I'm doing this exam too and I'm so stressed about it. Any tips for revision?
Reply 6
Past papers would be my tip for revision, and get your teacher to mark them and maybe go over them with you. Personally I struggle on deciphering the extracts given and tend repeating myself throughout my essay, but by doing practice papers I have grown more confident! I really need this exam to go well for me to get into my first choice so I am completely freaking out haha, but doing papers has definitely helped! Good Luck with the exam, hope it goes well for you :smile:
Reply 7
I've done every exam paper nearly twice usually getting 30 and above. I struggle with linking it to the literary periods. It's the only exam I'm stressed about and I really needn't to go well for me too. The mark schemes are very helpful btw. I think planning the answers are key to a good essay. Really hoping timing doesn't let me down. Good luck to you too. :-)
I'm so lacking in drama wider reading :frown:
Reply 9
Original post by ChoccyWoccy
I'm so lacking in drama wider reading :frown:

I have:
Streetcar nNamed Desire - represents male dominance in a relationship, imagery of light and darkness
Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf - unconventional factors which keep a relationship going.
Othello

if you've done past papers you can always quote from them as wider reading the examiner doesn't need to know that you don't know the full play.
Reply 10
What exactly do you learn from the texts you have studied? Do you pick out important parts of structure, imagery etc and then memorise some quotes?
Reply 11
I usually do different themes of love for example betrayal, loss, unrequited love, family love etc. And to go more in depth I look at language techniques but you can also use subject matter, form and structure.
Reply 12
Original post by Najiya
I usually do different themes of love for example betrayal, loss, unrequited love, family love etc. And to go more in depth I look at language techniques but you can also use subject matter, form and structure.


Thanks :smile: Do you know your texts inside out? Does anyone here? I know that some people know them almost by heart!
Reply 13
Not really. I know some better than others
I've done quite a lot of wide reading but realistically I'd rather know a lot about a few of each type than know one quote from 20 different books. I also really don't like using the extracts as I like to be able to give an overview of the text and really understand it in full. I'm probably going to use:

Prose
The Catcher In The Rye
Franny and Zooey
The Mayor of Casterbridge
The Great Gatsby
The Handmaid's Tale

Drama
The Impotance of Being Earnest
A Doll's House
Othello
Spring Awakening

Poetry
Funeral Blues
The Voice
The Going
The Walk
Drummer Hodge
Sonnet 116
Sonnet 130
She Walks In Beauty

For each of these, I've picked out a few quotes which I can easily talk about and easily link to extracts. I've also put a note about structure, narrative voice etc.
Reply 15
What are people doing for poetry e.g. how many poems, what poems and what themes.

I am completely stuck on poetry

So far I have done
- Sonnet 130
- The Sun Rising
- The Clod and the Pebble
- Bright Star

and then Carol Ann Duffy from AS year
I'm just afraid I've not covered enough themes of love across my wider reading and there's a strong chance either prose or poetry will come up so I desperately need help in poetry
thank you
(edited 10 years ago)
Do you lot tend to mention literary time period a lot in your essays? Cause we got given a sheet on postmodernism and that is literally all we have been taught about time period. We normally get told to mention more general context stuff, like attitudes to sex.
Reply 17
Original post by emilyleah
What are people doing for poetry e.g. how many poems, what poems and what themes.

I am completely stuck on poetry

So far I have done
- Sonnet 130
- The Sun Rising
- The Clod and the Pebble
- Bright Star

and then Carol Ann Duffy from AS year
I'm just afraid I've not covered enough themes of love across my wider reading and there's a strong chance either prose or poetry will come up so I desperately need help in poetry
thank you


I don't think you really have to worry about themes of love, as long as you have covered poetry over different times. Then you look for similarities between the set poetry and the poetry you have read for wider reading.

I am doing:

The Miller's Tale, Chaucer
One day I wrote her name upon the strand, Spenser
To His Coy Mistress, Marvell
When We Two Parted- Lord Byron

And I'm not too sure about the others yet. Probably Carol Ann Duffy and Elizabeth Jennings and maybe a Keats. :smile:

I only have two days left to cram all of this into my brain...
(edited 10 years ago)
Reply 18
Original post by NinjaNerdfighter
Do you lot tend to mention literary time period a lot in your essays? Cause we got given a sheet on postmodernism and that is literally all we have been taught about time period. We normally get told to mention more general context stuff, like attitudes to sex.


I was told not to worry too much about context, unless it is really relevant.
Reply 19
Original post by spwills
I don't think you really have to worry about themes of love, as long as you have covered poetry over different times. Then you look for similarities between the set poetry and the poetry you have read for wider reading.

I am doing:

The Miller's Tale, Chaucer
One day I wrote her name upon the strand, Spenser
To His Coy Mistress, Marvell
When We Two Parted- Lord Byron

And I'm not too sure about the others yet. Probably Carol Ann Duffy and Elizabeth Jennings and maybe a Keats. :smile:

I only have two days left to cram all of this into my brain...


Thank you! We did to his coy mistress and when we two parted so I might look over them I'm just panicking something will come up and I won't be able to relate anything. Are you doing roughly about 5 texts for each prose poetry and drama?

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