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Level 7,8,9 english GCSE essays

Hey everyone. An idea just popped into my head. So i was thinking, if anyone has written any good essays for GCSE English Literature questions (doing the new specification) it will be really nice if you could share them by uploading them onto this thread and other people could use them for revision or to improve their own essays. I'm doing the 9-1 AQA English Literature GCSE and I'm studying: Romeo and Juliet, Inspector Calls and A Christmas Carol and as for the poems, I'm doing the power and conflict poems (cluster 2) from the AQA poetry anthology. If anyone has essays for questions on either of the books or essays for any of the poems in the anthology, which you think are of a level 7, 8 or 9 standard, please upload them to this thread. If you've handwritten them, take a picture of the essays with your phone and upload the pictures or scan them in.

Thanks in advance <3

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Reply 1
Original post by rosita.zadeh
Hey everyone. An idea just popped into my head. So i was thinking, if anyone has written any good essays for GCSE English Literature questions (doing the new specification) it will be really nice if you could share them by uploading them onto this thread and other people could use them for revision or to improve their own essays. I'm doing the 9-1 AQA English Literature GCSE and I'm studying: Romeo and Juliet, Inspector Calls and A Christmas Carol and as for the poems, I'm doing the power and conflict poems (cluster 2) from the AQA poetry anthology. If anyone has essays for questions on either of the books or essays for any of the poems in the anthology, which you think are of a level 7, 8 or 9 standard, please upload them to this thread. If you've handwritten them, take a picture of the essays with your phone and upload the pictures or scan them in.

Thanks in advance <3


Hi can you upload your essays?
Original post by Nav2017
Hi can you upload your essays?


I don't have any good ones. Mine are mostly at grade 5. I was hoping that others would upload higher level ones. If you want grade 5 ones, I could upload a few if you want. :smile:
Reply 3
If you could please upload it or pm it me. I would be most grateful I will upload mine in about 10 minutes. I would encourage other people to upload essays so everyone can learn.
Original post by Nav2017
If you could please upload it or pm it me. I would be most grateful I will upload mine in about 10 minutes. I would encourage other people to upload essays so everyone can learn.


I'm going to be uploading some of mine in about 15 mins. I took pictures of all of them so now I'm going to put them all together.


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For some reason I can't seem to upload them. I'll try again tomorrow morning.


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https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_LlTQ4U4mbTeUlOQTZtaEp0Zzg

This is a link to my essays. Most of them (I think it may actually be all of them) are at level 5. It is all in order and the ones that say 'with feedback' are the ones that my teacher has marked and given feedback on. The ones that say 'sample' or 'example' are the ones that I did not write, but are the ones that our teacher gave as 'exemplars'. Hope they help :smile:
Original post by Nav2017
If you could please upload it or pm it me. I would be most grateful I will upload mine in about 10 minutes. I would encourage other people to upload essays so everyone can learn.


Could you perhaps upload your essays as well?
I might dig out some of mine, but ngl I would be pretty nervous to do so. :redface:
Original post by _gcx
I might dig out some of mine, but ngl I would be pretty nervous to do so. :redface:


Please do! Don't be nervous. Mine were pretty terrible anyway😂 And my handwriting is atrocious😂 but we're all in the same boat 🚣 so don't be nervous to upload them!


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Here are mine from my mocks! The AIC/Poetry was a grade 8, and the Shakespeare/Dickens was 2 marks from a 9:angry:

I hope this helps, sorry for the amount I tend to panic and overwrite in exams! :smile:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwgUHGjDJ5hnLU1ScTFHVnRsZFE
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwgUHGjDJ5hnSktjNE9MWGRLYVE
Original post by chloerhia
Here are mine from my mocks! The AIC/Poetry was a grade 8, and the Shakespeare/Dickens was 2 marks from a 9:angry:

I hope this helps, sorry for the amount I tend to panic and overwrite in exams! :smile:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwgUHGjDJ5hnLU1ScTFHVnRsZFE
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwgUHGjDJ5hnSktjNE9MWGRLYVE


WOW they are amazing! I slightly regret putting mine up as mine are terrible compared to yours :s-smilie::frown:
Original post by chloerhia
Here are mine from my mocks! The AIC/Poetry was a grade 8, and the Shakespeare/Dickens was 2 marks from a 9:angry:

I hope this helps, sorry for the amount I tend to panic and overwrite in exams! :smile:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwgUHGjDJ5hnLU1ScTFHVnRsZFE
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwgUHGjDJ5hnSktjNE9MWGRLYVE


How do you revise English Literature? What methods do you use? I've never revised for it because I really don't know how to. Judging by your amazing answers to the questions, you must be revising well! :biggrin: Also how many quotes are you memorising for each of the books and poems? :smile:
Original post by rosita.zadeh
How do you revise English Literature? What methods do you use? I've never revised for it because I really don't know how to. Judging by your amazing answers to the questions, you must be revising well! :biggrin: Also how many quotes are you memorising for each of the books and poems? :smile:


I've never really revised for Great Expectations- I really enjoy the book so I've read it and annotated so many different copies it is just in my memory really!
But definitely for all of the texts I make REALLY detailed mindmaps on each character and theme, and then plan points you could make in an essay for each of those - as the question style is very much the same each time. So say for An Inspector Calls you could brainstorm 5/6 points you could make about responsibility or Eric etc.. and then you have those in the back of your mind for the exam, which also helps with initial stress/panic in the exam over what to write! Also it may help to go over different key relationships in each text - particularly Shakespeare/Dickens, as these came up in my mocks.

For quotes, if you made the brief essay plan/points you could pick out which quote could go with your point, making that around 5 for each major character/theme, but a lot of quotes are reusable so it may end up less than that! And for the Dickens section you don't always have to quote, you can use references to the text if you don't have an exact quote - for example saying Mrs Joe often hit Pip and Joe, would be sufficient!

Anthology poetry I made my own "revision guide" using class notes instead of the revision guides, as my English teacher said it's to our advantage to write original points instead of what they've seen repeated a lot from the standard revision guides!

For unseen poetry if you're really unsure on what to write, pick interesting, or things that stand out to you from the poems! Structure you can easily focus on the beginning and end - and then form just point out something about how it is written - 1st/2nd person, any personas or rhyme scheme etc..

Wow sorry this was long :biggrin: I hope it helps though!
Original post by chloerhia
I've never really revised for Great Expectations- I really enjoy the book so I've read it and annotated so many different copies it is just in my memory really!
But definitely for all of the texts I make REALLY detailed mindmaps on each character and theme, and then plan points you could make in an essay for each of those - as the question style is very much the same each time. So say for An Inspector Calls you could brainstorm 5/6 points you could make about responsibility or Eric etc.. and then you have those in the back of your mind for the exam, which also helps with initial stress/panic in the exam over what to write! Also it may help to go over different key relationships in each text - particularly Shakespeare/Dickens, as these came up in my mocks.

For quotes, if you made the brief essay plan/points you could pick out which quote could go with your point, making that around 5 for each major character/theme, but a lot of quotes are reusable so it may end up less than that! And for the Dickens section you don't always have to quote, you can use references to the text if you don't have an exact quote - for example saying Mrs Joe often hit Pip and Joe, would be sufficient!

Anthology poetry I made my own "revision guide" using class notes instead of the revision guides, as my English teacher said it's to our advantage to write original points instead of what they've seen repeated a lot from the standard revision guides!

For unseen poetry if you're really unsure on what to write, pick interesting, or things that stand out to you from the poems! Structure you can easily focus on the beginning and end - and then form just point out something about how it is written - 1st/2nd person, any personas or rhyme scheme etc..

Wow sorry this was long :biggrin: I hope it helps though!


Thank you so much for sharing your revision techniques. I never thought of a lot of the things/methods you mentioned! This really helps a lot! Thank you once again❤️


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Reply 15
Original post by chloerhia
I've never really revised for Great Expectations- I really enjoy the book so I've read it and annotated so many different copies it is just in my memory really!
But definitely for all of the texts I make REALLY detailed mindmaps on each character and theme, and then plan points you could make in an essay for each of those - as the question style is very much the same each time. So say for An Inspector Calls you could brainstorm 5/6 points you could make about responsibility or Eric etc.. and then you have those in the back of your mind for the exam, which also helps with initial stress/panic in the exam over what to write! Also it may help to go over different key relationships in each text - particularly Shakespeare/Dickens, as these came up in my mocks.

For quotes, if you made the brief essay plan/points you could pick out which quote could go with your point, making that around 5 for each major character/theme, but a lot of quotes are reusable so it may end up less than that! And for the Dickens section you don't always have to quote, you can use references to the text if you don't have an exact quote - for example saying Mrs Joe often hit Pip and Joe, would be sufficient!

Anthology poetry I made my own "revision guide" using class notes instead of the revision guides, as my English teacher said it's to our advantage to write original points instead of what they've seen repeated a lot from the standard revision guides!

For unseen poetry if you're really unsure on what to write, pick interesting, or things that stand out to you from the poems! Structure you can easily focus on the beginning and end - and then form just point out something about how it is written - 1st/2nd person, any personas or rhyme scheme etc..

Wow sorry this was long :biggrin: I hope it helps though!


What grade boundaries were you given for grades 8 and 9 in lit paper 2?
Original post by e2014
What grade boundaries were you given for grades 8 and 9 in lit paper 2?


We were never told the grade boundaries we were just given our grades, but grade 9 for our other literature mocks were only dropping around 10 or so marks on the whole paper
Original post by rosita.zadeh
Thank you so much for sharing your revision techniques. I never thought of a lot of the things/methods you mentioned! This really helps a lot! Thank you once again❤️


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You're very welcome, I hope it's useful! ☺️❤
Reply 18
Original post by chloerhia
We were never told the grade boundaries we were just given our grades, but grade 9 for our other literature mocks were only dropping around 10 or so marks on the whole paper

Oh, okay! We were given our mark but not the grade because our teachers say there is no accurate way of knowing the grade at this point.
Roughly, 9 = A** 8 = A* 7 = A 6 = B 5 = Low B/High C 4 = Low C 3 = D 2 = E 1 = G. So Really, you need anything above a 4!
(edited 6 years ago)

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