Igcse literature english

Hi! I just did my English literature iGCSE in May and I'm predicted an A* (and got one in my internal exams). Feel free to message me if you need help with anything

I'm only familiar with The Merchant of Venice and AIC, of those four; it's probably a good idea to speak to your teachers if you're "clueless", so that they can give you advice which is specific to your personal progress and the literature you're studying. TSR has some AIC resources here and probably some more notes and resources here.

Basically, the two things you want to do when you're studying iGCSE English lit are quote-memorising and essay plans. The former can get quite tedious, but I'd advise planning some responses to certain essay questions open book first (i.e. with your copy of your text open so that you can look for quotations to include in your plans) and memorising the quotations as you practise writing. Take care to think about how the quotations you've learnt can be adapted to different questions; a mistake a lot of people make is to assign a theme or a character to a certain quotation and forget how many different ways there are to interpret any quotation.

When it comes to analysis, you can get top marks in iGCSE English literature just by using a really simplified structure for every point you make:
1) Point: a certain response to the essay question (e.g. if the question is "how is the relationship between [character] and [character] presented in [text]?" your point might be "the relationship between [character] and [character] often appears to be turbulent/peaceful/based on deep feelings of trust etc.."
2) Evidence: a quotation which implies that your point is the case.
3) Explanation: why the quotation you chose implies that your point is the case. This is where you should talk about specific techniques - imagery, phonological choices (alliteration etc.), sentence length and so on - and how these techniques contribute to making the point you're talking about (e.g. how they contribute to emphasising the turbulence/peace etc. of the relationship).
4) Link: how this whole analysis relates back to the essay title. This is usually done at the end of a paragraph; excessively linking will sound weird.