The Student Room Group

A2 Edexcel English Lit exam - 6th June 2014

Anyone doing this exam on Friday?

Im doing The Kite Runner, Spies and 101 poems against war.

What books and poetry are you studying & how are you preparing??

Scroll to see replies

Reply 1
Yes - infact, I'm doing the same books, although I think I have a different Poetry anthology.

I'm mostly going over the practice papers I've done so far, and going through the class notes/other stuff I've got, with a particular focus on exam structure and technique.

Anyone have any predictions as to the possible Prepared Texts topics?
Reply 2
Yeah. Im focusing on particular scenes in TKR and making connections with poems looking at themes and language techniques etc

Not sure what question they could ask.

Posted from TSR Mobile
Reply 3
Need help please. Basically one of the poems i may want to use is not on the anthology im studying (101 poems against war) but it is on another anthology that is still listed on the exam (Legion, David Harsent). Can i still use it in the exam or would i get penalised?
Reply 4
Me! Relationships - Rapture, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, The Great Gatsby.

I haven't written any good essays :C I am very scared.
Reply 5
I would think you could use it on the exam, although may still be a bit of a risk if you haven't studied it in class.
Does anybody have any good notes for the unseen? Or the links between the kite runner and poems? How's revision going?
Anyone else doing 'Identifying Self' with Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, The Fat Black Women by Grace Nichols and Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes by Billy Collins? Planning on doing a straight poetry comparison myself, weak on Dickens.
Original post by MJasper
Me! Relationships - Rapture, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, The Great Gatsby.

I haven't written any good essays :C I am very scared.


I'm doing relationships too! Although all my books are different other than Gatsby. I'm studying Gatsby, Captain Corelli's Mandolin and Metaphysical Poetry. I'm really worried they'll choose two difficult questions again like the last two years, the question last year on places and events would have ruined the exam for me.


Original post by Hannah196
Need help please. Basically one of the poems i may want to use is not on the anthology im studying (101 poems against war) but it is on another anthology that is still listed on the exam (Legion, David Harsent). Can i still use it in the exam or would i get penalised?


I think you would be able to talk about it but I know the exam board want you to study and discuss the collection as a whole rather than individual poets and poems. Might be a bit risky if it's the only poem from the other anthology you can discuss.
Reply 9
Yes I'm doing identifying self but with life of pi, great expectations and fat black women's poems, I'm planning on focusing mainly on the novels as I find it hard to link to the poetry
Reply 10
I am also doing The Kite Runner and 101 poems against war. Instead of including Spies (which I hated) I will include 2 poems.
Right now im re-reading some of the essays I wrote and basically going through the most important events in the book E.g
I'm doing The Kite Runner and Spies too! Totally going to fail! Good luck everyone though! Our poetry anthology was 'Poetry in Motion'. x
Reply 12
Original post by Gezus8
I am also doing The Kite Runner and 101 poems against war. Instead of including Spies (which I hated) I will include 2 poems.
Right now im re-reading some of the essays I wrote and basically going through the most important events in the book E.g


Im not going to include Spies too! Instead im going to add atleast 3 poems :smile:. For TKR im focusing on 5 scenes.

Posted from TSR Mobile
Reply 13
Does anyone have any useful tips on how to tackle the unseen?


Posted from TSR Mobile
I'm doing the relationships questions with Captain Corelli's Mandolin, The great Gatsby, and Rapture.
I'm doing Tess of the D'Urbervilles, metaphysical poetry and Rapture.

Often the question will ask why a conflicting relationship is interesting for the reader? How would you form an essay based on this? The obvious things I can think of is so it engages the reader and so we can be presented with key character defects. Help?
Original post by smartarse
I'm doing Tess of the D'Urbervilles, metaphysical poetry and Rapture.

Often the question will ask why a conflicting relationship is interesting for the reader? How would you form an essay based on this? The obvious things I can think of is so it engages the reader and so we can be presented with key character defects. Help?


You dont have to agree with the statement. If you have your own views of the books, that you can back up with evidence, and it differs from the statement, then argue your case against it.
I too am doing Spies, Kite Runner and 101 Poem Against War. I have loads of quotes and analysis on all three texts as well as context for them which I know is an important part of the exam. If someone is doing the same texts and needs some help I can give it to you. With the unseen section of the exam I also have some tips that might help if people would like these too :smile:
Reply 18
Original post by smartarse
I'm doing Tess of the D'Urbervilles, metaphysical poetry and Rapture.

Often the question will ask why a conflicting relationship is interesting for the reader? How would you form an essay based on this? The obvious things I can think of is so it engages the reader and so we can be presented with key character defects. Help?

Pick passages in the texts that show conflict and talk about how they're interesting. Or find bits that don't show conflict and show that they can still be interesting (like Tess + Angel at the end of the novel, their relationship isn't in conflict because they're together). Find some critical quotations of people saying that the conflict makes it interesting, or that the conflicts are too simple and plainly cut so they're not interesting :P

Does anyone have any useful tips on how to tackle the unseen?

I think that I'm okay at the unseen although I'm really bad at writing quickly. Read it several times, identify the subject matter and themes. Go line-by-line, not having to include everything if you run out of time but definitely look at the ending. With every technique talk about how it represents the meaning of the passage or ties into those themes, and the effect that the technique has on the reader.

Talk about the following: narrative voice (+perspective), imagery, overall form/structure, sentence structure (+punctuation), sounds (+rhyme), rhythm/metre, tense, word choice and placement (juxtaposition/contrast/antithesis), maybe character and setting.
Original post by MJasper
Me! Relationships - Rapture, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, The Great Gatsby.

I haven't written any good essays :C I am very scared.


ah, I'm doing those three texts too. Really worried about it, the best essay I've done is 51/60 :/ :/

Quick Reply

Latest