GCSE English Lit and Language

Hello, I want to ask you that I mainly got a 5 for Lit and 3 for language in my mocks and I'm quite upset as people in my school get like 8s and 9s and I don't know how to get 8s and 9s and like I don't know how to revise for english.

Reply 1

harleynotquinn

hiya,
i got two 7s in my gcses this year, so maybe i can help!
first of all, lang. lang is so, so annoying as you can't really revise for it like you can with subjects like maths, science and humanities. my advice would be just to learn all the structure and language techniques that you can; tripartite sequences, types of noun, anything like that. maybe try and practise finding and annotating some different texts to pick out some of these techniques; newspapers and short stories are always great to practise with. for the writing section, remember to keep the techniques you've learnt in mind and try to weave these into your writing. practise exam questions for this section and look at mark schemes to see what the examiners are looking for. it's the cliche when it comes to gcses, but it works!
as for lit, it's all about the quotes. learn as many quotes as you can for different themes, characters and events in the texts you're reading. try and link these together at times as well so you can show how the themes and characters interweave with one another. i'd say structure your essays around your quotes so that your points always make sense to an examiner. context is also really important, so for example if you're looking at romeo and juliet, research the globe and how the play would be presented in a theatre back in the period the play was written. links to what the reader would think about a particular event or quote works too!

hope i could help, good luck for your gcses! :smile: