OCR A-level Latin Paper 2 (H443/02) - 5th June 2023 [Exam Chat]

Hey how is everyone feeling? Are most people planning to do prose comp or comprehension?

I'm planning to do prose comp, what about you?

Same here! It's quite nice feeling like I've revised a lot of it already for the first paper so hopefully haven't got too much to cover, beyond my tenses... How are you feeling about it?

I'm less nervous for it, having done the Unseen Translation paper. I need to review tenses, too, because I always have a stray 'a' or some vowel when I shouldn't, lol.

Hopefully I'll be able to get 35/50 or more in the exam? I already know a lot of vocabulary so I just need to review that occasionally. I don't think I'll get any of the 5 style marks because my word order tends to be awful lol but I hope to do well in it. My strengths lie on Verse and Prose lit papers since I'm better at the analysis, so I'm hoping that raises me to an overall A haha <3

I wouldn't give up on the style marks - I don't think they would take them away for word order and you can def get them elsewhere. If you put in an ablative absolute or just add the word 'quidem' (indeed) somewhere, they seem to lap that up. Also, try promoting the subject of the sentence (putting the nominative name at the start of the sentence if it wasn't already there in the English, but leaving everything else as it is). The lit isn't that strong for me so I'm hoping for 40 at least in the prose comp (you only need 38 for an A*) but will need to do a bit more practice to get there haha

how do you guys mark the prose comp? i'm tempted to do it, but every time i do a practice paper and look at the mark scheme sometimes they've used completely different vocab/constructions to me, and although my translation makes sense and is correct in my head, i can never tell if they would give me marks lol. does anyone know how lenient they are with marks considering it's pretty hard and not many people choose it?

Give it to your teacher - you get the best feedback and its the most honest.

how do you guys mark the prose comp? i'm tempted to do it, but every time i do a practice paper and look at the mark scheme sometimes they've used completely different vocab/constructions to me, and although my translation makes sense and is correct in my head, i can never tell if they would give me marks lol. does anyone know how lenient they are with marks considering it's pretty hard and not many people choose it?

As far as I'm aware, the examiner will award the marks if the overall Latin translation is correct and still holds the 'essence' of the original English. In the prose comp mark scheme, it says "examiners should assess on its own merits any approach that satisfactorily conveys the meaning of the English."

So, for example, if the English was "While the women were crying, the men began to prepare to leave their houses", you could either use dum + subjunctive or an Ablative Absolute for the "while the women were crying". The idea of prose comp is that it conveys the meaning of the original English.

i go to a pretty bad state school, and the teachers unfortunately are pretty useless when it comes to marking. i dont usually get stuff back until about 2 months after i hand it in.

With style marks, don't worry abot trying to get them. Just focus on writing simple/gramatically correct latin and the style marks will follow.

Does anyone know which year is best to follow in terms of prose comp grade boundaries?

The main thing I would say is that the marking is not too harsh, as long as you get your tenses and cases right for your verbs and nouns and make sure all your constructions are super secure. Vocab might lose you a few marks but it's not drastic and you probably learnt a fair bit for paper 1 (plus they keep it fairly straightforward, except for the odd curveball but guessable word - you're def not expected to know as much vocab english to latin as you are the other way around). The main thing I would say is don't be afraid to mess with the phrasing a bit if it's throwing you off. Subordination (moving full stops and sentence breaks) is totally ok and even encouraged!

For example:
if the english was "the general had the barricades removed by the soldiers in order to move the camp"
your latin for the first part could be quite complex and involve curo + gen gerund for 'get something done', however equally you would get marks for rephrasing it into an indirect command if you felt more comfortable with that construction. Both would potentially get you a style mark.
Again for the second half you could use a purpose clause with "ut", but if you used "qui" that would be considered stylish, and you could even go in for ad + accusative gerund if you wanted and that would def get you a style mark.
You could EVEN go in for "the soldiers, having been ordered by the general that they should remove the barricades, moved the camp".

That was pretty long-winded, but my point is that there are work-arounds, and sometimes these even benefit you further. But obviously focus on your core constructions and grammar because unfortunately even if you do something super stylish, if there are any errors at all, you won't get a style mark!

Thank you so much for this! If I saw that in the exam, I would translate it as "The generals ordered the soldiers to remove the barricades in order to move the camp" (so indirect command and then purpose clause) - would this be allowed in the exam or is it too exaggerated? My gerunds/gerundives are absolutely terrible and I feel more comfortable with easier stuff

I should think that would be completely fine! And certainly better than an inaccurate gerund/-ive. Obviously there are some places where you are essentially forced to use a particular construction because there is no other clear way to express something, but that tends to happen more with obvious things like purpose & result clauses and indirect statements, questions and commands.

One other thing I would say I have noticed is that older past papers tended to require more complex and random vocab, but the grammar was a bit easier to manage, so there was a bit more room to get style marks. Nowadays the papers seem a little more simplistic in terms of vocab but you are unlikely to get through a passage without at least one bit of required difficult grammar (be it oratio obliqua, conditionals or something else similar). I personally prefer the old papers in spite of the grammar jeopardy just because the passages are already quite stylish now so it's much harder to get style marks in my experience, but that's personal preference. Either way, don't worry about the style marks too much and focus on your main constructions and you should be fine.

My personal favourite way to check where I'm at ahead of a prose comp exam is to open up my book to a random passage and decide where I would rephrase and subordinate to figure out what the passage would look like. Then I look up any constructions or vocab I think I would have found tricky and repeat from the start with a different passage without wasting time translating things my teacher won't have time to mark.