OCR A2 English Literature, F663/01: Drama & Poetry pre-1800, 6 June 2014

Thank you! Oh no, that really sucks about Newcastle! What do you mean by one point though? Yeah, I totally agree - it'll narrow down the number of universities so much and I'll have to do all the learning of quotes etc again, which I really really want to avoid! Ah brilliant - let's hope for that then! Let me know how you do too - hopefully we'll both get an A overall
Which texts did you do? I did 'King Lear', 'The Rivals' and Wife of Bath

I can't remember the exact marks but I got 1 mark off 90% in the interview and I'm pretty sure 90% was the cutoff point, not sure how they scored it exactly but I got the mark from the feedback email. And god don't talk to me about learning quotes:'). And I did the same comparative, but "The Tempest" instead.

Ahh that's so frustrating! You must have done well in your UKCAT though - I think the high cut off was what put me off applying to Newcastle! Haha, I don't know if I can actually make myself learn all those quotes again! Good luck - let me know how you get on

Hey I'm sitting this exam in June 2015 and I have a couple of questions for this, so I hope somebody can help me out here. I'm really aiming for an A or A* as I need an A to study English at the universities I've applied to!

1. With A03, do we need to actually QUOTE critical interpretations of texts (I'm doing King Lear, Wife of Bath and the Rivals)? Like do I have to actually write out what a critic (e.g. let's say John James (made up example) has said? Or Can I summarize their argument?

2. With the Section B (So for me, Wife of Bath and The Rivals), would I need to remember critical interpretations? Or is that A03 more towards comparisons between texts?

3. How would you advise revising for these three texts? I really want to get quotes remembered until the exam, so I'm ready!

For 1. And 2. Of your questions, quoting directly is definitely advisable! Even better if you can sort of summarise their arguments and embed some quotes in there to back it up. For the comparison of the texts you want to get a good balance of both critical interpretations and general comparisons between the texts, preferably comparing use of language and literary devices to tie in a bit of AO2 as well as AO3! Don't forget about differences as well and how context/AO4 could link in to those differences, like social context etc. I didn't personally study the two texts you mentioned for section B, but I'm sure the exam board are looking for the same sort of things.

Make sure you have a wide variety of critical ideas and quotes on many different topics, just in case the exam board throw a curve ball and there aren't any questions that suit your critics' ideas.

For revision, what worked best for me was writing the title of the critical topic/question topic eg. Feminism or religion and then brainstorming quotes around it in different colours for different characters or critics. I found randomly distributing the colours rather than clumping the same colour together helped too. I don't know why but it made the quotes stand out more and become more memorable.

Sorry about the length of this! I sat the exam last year and came out with an A in it, studying King Lear, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore and William Blake Songs of Innocence and of Experience.

No the length was very helpful! Thank you very much But if you can, could you explain revising the critical quotes a bit more? I sort of get what you mean though!

What I'm doing with King Lear is having around 6-10 quotes per character which all apply to most of the themes I've identified....

Okay, so imagine a spider diagram but without the lines coming off the middle! I then prepared one of those for each of the themes I thought might come up. So like, say the theme is religion... I'd put 'Religion' big in the middle and then insert loads of quotes in text boxes around that word, all in different colours... so for example I'd put (this is a made up example) "Religion provides the characters with hope amidst the problems of the real world" - Smith.

A lot of the time it doesn't really even matter that much if the quote wasn't directed towards that particular text when the critic said it, although it does help. It could be a very general quote that you found in a book about 19th century literature, but if that fits the criteria of your book then it's likely to be suitable to use. The exam board are unlikely to check the sources of your quotes and if they are real or not - I shouldn't say this but I know people who made up fake quotes and still passed. Not advisable, however .

I'm sure already know this but you don't need to references your quotes either.

Thank you so much! :P. How many critics would you have per theme btw? Sorry to ask you so many questions !

To be honest, as many good ones as you can find! It's good to have a variety of different critics, so you're not like 'Smith said this... and he said this, and this...' because that doesn't back up your points very well and lacks diversity. I managed to fill most of the page with quotes from different people, even if during the exam you can only remember half of them... at least you have a variety! Don't stress too much about who said the quote either, if you literally can't remember during the exam just call them 'a critic' or 'critics'... I'm sure I probably got critic's names mixed up for certain quotes in my essay, but at the end of the day they aren't exactly going to trail the internet trying to find the quote when marking.

Thank you sooo much! You've really helped me out here and made me feel less stressed

For a final confidence boost/tip, don't get too down about it if you feel like exam went badly after you do it... English literature is very subjective and what you think might be the worst essay you've ever written (how I felt in my case!), might actually be pretty good in comparison to the selection of other essays that the examiner marked, or they might just like your style. Don't tell yourself you've messed up or failed until you've got proof on a piece of paper. :P

I experienced the opposite in my AS exam! I thought I wrote my best essay ever (and I got As in all my practices essays) and ended up with a D

But yeah, hopefully this time round in my AS resit and A2 exam I'll be happier

The exact same thing happened to me! Luckily mine was remarked to a C, but that didn't really make me much happier... I didn't resit in the end as I was already resitting other exams so just had to work extra hard at A2! Remember if you can do well in the resit it will help take the pressure off the A2 exam too.

Best of luck!

So happy to have found this! I'm doing The Rivals and Blake for the Exam with Antony and Cleopatra, and I've just finished my coursework on Pride and Prejudice, Atonement and Hyperion!

No the length was very helpful! Thank you very much But if you can, could you explain revising the critical quotes a bit more? I sort of get what you mean though!

What I'm doing with King Lear is having around 6-10 quotes per character which all apply to most of the themes I've identified....

Did your teacher review it beforehand? If so, did she give you a rough grade?


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Um yeah she did, she marked the second to last draft, I was like 800 words over but she said it was roughly full marks and would be if I could get it to the word count!


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