GCSE English Lit/Lang

Hi there,

I am going into Year 11, and for English Literature I struggle with Macbeth as I am not really able to remember the story properly and our teacher barely made us annotate our Macbeth books. What sort of quotes do I have to memorise, and any tips just in general, should I try annotating all of the Macbeth book?

For English Language, Paper 2 I am confused on all the questions except Q1, I've tried watching videos but when I get to practising the exam papers, it just goes out of all my mind, such as the structure and what the question wants me to provide. Any tips?

Thank you.

Reply 1

username6317368

11

Try lots of different resources, for example, my favourite youtubers are Mr Salles and Stacey Reay. Others include Mr Everything English, Mr Bruff and First Rate Tutors.

Reply 2

loulai_

6

Original post by cupcakeglorious6

Hi there,

I am going into Year 11, and for English Literature I struggle with Macbeth as I am not really able to remember the story properly and our teacher barely made us annotate our Macbeth books. What sort of quotes do I have to memorise, and any tips just in general, should I try annotating all of the Macbeth book?

For English Language, Paper 2 I am confused on all the questions except Q1, I've tried watching videos but when I get to practising the exam papers, it just goes out of all my mind, such as the structure and what the question wants me to provide. Any tips?

Thank you.

Hiya! Litcharts is a good website for english, its got plot summaries, it has infomation about each scene, chararcters, themes that appear, important quotes from each scene/character and has annotations for them - some stuff can be locked behind a subcription tho but if you pay the 9 pound for a month you can just download the pdf for whatever texts your studying and they'll stay in your files.

For trying to remember the story could you try create a timeline of events with a small summary of each scene with characters involved and hang it up on your wall like a poster so you can always see it and remember it?? My teacher made us make a timeline on an A3 sheet of paper and glue it on the front page of our book so we could always look back and refer to it if we forgot that could be something to help you remember in class

For quotes i usually sort them by if theyre imporant in describing a character like their emotions, or description of another character and by theme - so for example quotes about the theme of deception

I study english literature at A-level so if you have anymore questions or need more help feel free to ask! (:

Reply 3

user1787

7

Original post by cupcakeglorious6

Hi there,

I am going into Year 11, and for English Literature I struggle with Macbeth as I am not really able to remember the story properly and our teacher barely made us annotate our Macbeth books. What sort of quotes do I have to memorise, and any tips just in general, should I try annotating all of the Macbeth book?

For English Language, Paper 2 I am confused on all the questions except Q1, I've tried watching videos but when I get to practising the exam papers, it just goes out of all my mind, such as the structure and what the question wants me to provide. Any tips?

Thank you.

Hey, i have recently finished year 11 and i took gcse english language early (year 10) and got a 9 and i'm predicted a 9 in english LIT.
I did Macbeth, A Christmas Carol, Animal Farm and Power and Conflict poetry. For all of them i wrote 30/30 essays every week for a practise (it was my homework) that i then replicated in my final exam this year.
For me Macbeth was my absolute favourite to the point i would spend hours just writing essays, and if im being honest i read the book at the start of year 9 went over some of it in year 10 and start of year 11 but that was it. So what i would do is pick out what they call "juicy extracts" (basically what the exam board could use as they can't use irrelevant ones)
Then as it got closer to the exams i would write an essay that includes a quote or 2 from every juicy extract but each time link it into a big piece of analysis using the technique parallelism.. for example - "Valour's minion" - you talk about the smaller techniques first saying how this presents a gruesome and vivid image of macbeths battlefield prowess and masculinity - how he would be seen as like a Heruclean hero in a Jacobean society... carry on waffling with like an alternative idea e.g - the noun minion connotes slavery. Therefore this suggests Macbeths power is a facade....
Then you go - The the noun 'valour' is paralleled in act__ sc___ when Lady macbeth states that she will 'She will chastise him with the valour of her tongue'. This parallelism is significant as it presents lady macbeth and macbeth as a binary pair... then talk about how this links to the biblical allusion of garden of Eden and Lady Macbeth as the character archetype of Eve...
Then link this somewhere else so that you can use it no matter what question comes up.
So if you struggle memorising quotes just find some that link if you need anymore help or example grade 9 stuff lmk :smile:

Reply 4

Glemon

16

Hi, for basic summaries the CGP books are super helpful. Then for a more in-depth review, I'd say Mr Salles on Youtube is very handy. Definitely have a look at some essays that have done well and borrow quote annotations! Hope this helps.

GCSE English Lit/Lang

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