9's at GCSE English - AMA + Advice

First thing I'd tell you to do is to chill! Dont stress yourself out because its only gonna make things look more worse. What do you get wrong? Is it your essay structure or you the points you make? Look at the feedback/talk to your teachers and see where you go wrong in essays and try and work on it, understanding where you're going wrong is essential first.

Then ensure you actually understand your texts, such as knowing the plot, the significance of each character etc

you still have time to turn it around, you just need to identify where youre going wrong

thank you! what about for english languagee?

still an A! Well done are you talkinng about that poem To Autumn by Keats?

hey its cool, im here to help! What I did when I had some free time was jot down every single theme it could possibly ask you. Also realise that when it asks you something like 'power of loss' its really just realting to a general theme like death / effects of conflict it could me about war. Dont overthink it, the question may be phrased weird but its really just being specific to see how you react.

anywho, yeah, make a list of every theme that could come up and then put your poems in all of the ones it fits in to, from there, pair them up (some poems are better at pairing up with more than one poem than others and if anything it makes it easier!) you dont need to do an essay for each of them, just have a few main points at outlined/jotted down so you feel prepared for anything

No, it was the unseen. Something about autumn being a robber. It just felt such an obvious metaphor and there was really very little subtlety to it to explore. But meh, I did ok.

Thank you so much for clarifying! Will definitely implement that into my revision. In terms of essay plans, do you do the same for your modern texts and Shakespeare? Thanks in advance.

oooh right...still be proud, not many people can say they recieved an A in English

What tips do you have for unseen poetry??

I'll be posting them tomorrow

HELPPPPP , i am struggling with writing in english language , i can only write 1 2 sided page in 45 minutes , 300 words max and thats not enough to get my target grade of 8/9 , any tips , its so close i dont know what to do , each time i get a brainfreeze and dont know what to write, what vocab it good etc and i just write so little at the end !

okay first, calm down lmao honestly, stressing yourself out is gonna make things worse, i was in the same predicament as you this time last year. I would focus on being concise in your answer so you dont need to worry about the qunatity of your work, but the quality. In the exam trust me when I say that you'll be much more clear minded and things will seem to be somewhat slower, just make sure you're doing essay plans and before you write ur essay write a brief plan too, stressing makes everythingn worse so surround yourself w people who arent negative -even if theyre ur close mates just distance urself from them before exams and also make sure you arent being negative also, believe me it does make an impac

thank you! i try my hardest but sometimes it becomes natural to panic , like i cnt stop myslef, i get stomach cramps everyrime i feel anxious which makes it worse

Hey, I constantly have this problem in the middle of writing an essay where I immediately lose focus and waste time? Idk it's weird and in all the exams I've done, I never seem to write enough and so lose marks for not getting enough points down. Also, do you have any tips for waffling as I tend to do that a lot too :\ any help would be appreciated thanks.

Hii thanks for the follow! (this answer is regarding your question on my profile
)You're doing the exact same board + topics as I did (minus Christmas carol.....so actually the exact same as my twin sister lol) -mad respect to WJEC English people
I have a guide I wrote previously that should be super useful, theres a few pictures of examples of my notes on pages 2+3 I believe https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=5208682#primary_content my overall advice would be to be adaptable. If you have an idea, always back it up and if you can, try and give an alternate interpretation. I know a lot of people say this but for gcse PEEL is ultimately the way to go! (its been a year since I did gcse English believe me, you'll forget everything the summer afterwards)
example:
-How does Macbeth change throughout the play? Macbeth has clearly become desensitised with death [POINT] which can be seen with his reaction to his wife's death, when he states 'she should have died hereafter. there would have been time for such a word.' [EVIDENCE] The fact that he merely brushes off his wife's death shows just how normalised violence has become,the euphemism 'she' further showcases his indifference towards, (EXPLAIN) and contrasts with how Macbeth previously viewed her as 'my dearest partner in greatness'. This demonstrates how throughout the play Macbeth becomes more and more disconnected with his surroundings and those he loves. (LINK)

Luckily my teacher set us essays every few weeks/months but if not I definitely recommend writing essays to ask you teacher to mark, whilst its beginning of they year I would recommend typing it up and emailing/printing out rather than timed essays, that way you can see everything you do right and wrong and improve from there. I would also recommend writing essay plans for large broad topics first, for example I did a quick idea for the topic of change, you can look at change of relationship between LM + M, M as a character, state of country and perception of Macbeth, then when you do an essay plan for LM+M or just LM you can pick out paragraphs from the essays you've previously done

as for English Language, practise practise practise as well as reading books. If you dont know what a word means, look it up, if you're writing an essay you're more likely to remember words you've taken time to look up. I also recommend sometimes searching up synonyms for words when you're writing an essay, this makes you learn new words as well as helps you sound like you know what you're talking about I hope this helps, feel free to ask more questions in the thread

@Hiro2468

Hi, I received two 9's at GCSE for both English Lit and Lang (Englishes? English's? whatever) I've been around TSR recently giving advice for what I did and I surprisingly received a lot more questions than I expected.

As a result, I'll be adding my tips and tricks that helped me through GCSE English and will be happy to answer any questions

Inspector Calls:

Macbeth (or any Shakespeare play)


Poems:

NOTE: EXAMPLE OF MY NOTES ARE ON PAGE 2 AND 3 OF THIS THREAD

Whilst I appreciate that some of you may need help on a specific character, theme, etc, I wont be posting any other note requests on here just because
a) Takes too much time
b) I'm doing this voluntarily to help give an example of what you could be doing for your OWN revision, not giving the answers away to someone who has a class test tomorrw, it's not fair. I'm hoping my examples clear up questions some of you may have

Hope this helps!

EDIT: @adamantacademic was nice enough to condense this thread into a snazzy powerpoint, check it out if you just want a quick summary
https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=5317336&p=77228676#post77228676

ANOTHER ANNOUNCEMENT [02/05/18]: To those of you who have exams coming up, good luck! I know it may seem overwhelming but the hardest part about revising for a subject is starting it! Just do your best to jump right in and dont be too hard on yourself, take breaks, care about your mental health and just do as well as you can