English lit revision tips

Please could I have some tips on revising for English literature, I have my mock in about two weeks. We are doing inspector calls and macbeth.

I struggle with planning the questions, for the 40mark question on inspector calls.

Reply 1

1357anonymous

Hey, not sure if this will be any help as English Lit is a hard subject to pinpoint exactly how you need to study/plan, but this is what I did (and I managed to get 9 in both eng lit and lang so hopefully it'll be of some help?)

I wrote down all the different themes in Inspector Calls and Macbeth and in this case since you're struggling with inspector calls, the younger generation vs older generation or capitalism vs communism are pretty big themes, and I then looked through my annotated book and websites online for important quotes which you can use under pretty much any theme. Also if you struggle with pinning down exact themes then do it under the characters instead. E.g. Mr. Birling representing the bourgeoisie, representing capitalism, representing older generation and find a few important quotes that can fit under each character and can fit into how you categorise them, if that makes sense?
If you do preparation into thinking about the most significant quotes and analyse them in depth, I think that would be really beneficial to make planning your essay questions a lot easier :smile:

Also I think examiners quite like it if you include stuff about stage directions because Priestley included those for a reason.

In terms of Othello I did the same but included more notes on stage directions instead and the relationships between each of the characters, e.g. macbeth with desdemona, macbeth with emilia, macbeth with iago, emilia with desdemona. I remember the exam question I did for macbeth 2 years back was about desdemona and emilia and I was taken aback because I was so sure it was gonna be about Iago and Macbeth... you never know so best if you analyse relationships between all characters.

Hope this helps. :biggrin:

Reply 2

Emily_5410

You need to work out if you learn the best through words and constantly repeating stuff to yourself or whether you learn from pictures and colours. There's no wrong or less intelligent way to do it, it's just that people's different brains can either process lots of constant information better than they can make associations between colours and content, or vice versa.

It you learn in an information intake kind of way then make cue cards. Ask yourself questions about the themes, contexts, quotes etc and then answer them on the back. You'll revise while creating them and then you can either quiz yourself or ask a friend/family member to quiz you!

If you learn better with pictures and colours then try a poster/mindmap! Do small notes with little doodles that might help to jog your memory (a tiny drawing of a knife for "is this a dagger I see before me") and do themes in say pink, contexts in purple, and quotes in blue etc. If you keep the posters up on your wall then you'll unknowingly take in the information and hopefully be able to imagine the posters in your exams! This is how I learn best and it really helped me at GCSE! (I got an A because of it!)

Good luck 😊

English lit revision tips

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