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Grade 9 in english literature??

Hi guys!

I am in year 11 and have mock exams next week. my English literature mock will be covering the love and relationship poems, and Romeo and Juliet (exam board ocr)

would anyone be able to either:

- give me grade 9 example responses to any questions
-give me advice on how to achieve grade 9 in the paper?

thank you so much!!
Original post by emaanqur
Hi guys!

I am in year 11 and have mock exams next week. my English literature mock will be covering the love and relationship poems, and Romeo and Juliet (exam board ocr)

would anyone be able to either:

- give me grade 9 example responses to any questions
-give me advice on how to achieve grade 9 in the paper?

thank you so much!!

Hi!
I’ve just had a mock for R&J, and my English teacher always says to try and include a paragraph which contrasts the question; for example, if the question is about masculinity, maybe do two paragraphs on people who are presented very masculine and a final paragraph on someone who isn’t (eg Romeo can be seen as feminine). Apparently this is a good way to get into the high grades.

As for poetry, I do power and conflict, but the structure my teacher tells me to use is paragraph 1 comparing poems A and B themes, then paragraph 2 comparing poems A and B structure, then a final paragraph comparing poems A and B language. And within each paragraph compare them both twice (A and B then A and B) if that makes sense?

Hopefully that helps a little!!
Good luck in your mocks :smile:
Reply 2
Original post by emaanqur
Hi guys!

I am in year 11 and have mock exams next week. my English literature mock will be covering the love and relationship poems, and Romeo and Juliet (exam board ocr)

would anyone be able to either:

- give me grade 9 example responses to any questions
-give me advice on how to achieve grade 9 in the paper?

thank you so much!!

Hi there 🙂 I did my GCSEs this year (2023) and got a grade 9, so thought I'd share what worked for me. Unfortunately I didn't do either love and relationships nor R and J so I can't say much for that so I'll just give some general advice.

Context - I genuinely cannot emphasise the use of context enough. It helped me so so much. When I say context, I mean things like: "what message is this text/poem trying to get across?", "who was the author and what did they support", "what audience was this text/poem aimed for?", etc - Include context in your introduction because it'll show the examiner that you fully understand the text.

Analysis - Keep in mind that it's much better to have less paragraphs but more detailed analysis instead of having 10 paragraphs of analysis that don't include much detail. English lit definitely requires quality over quantity (I literally wrote three paragraphs in my answers, but they were really detailed). Also, when analysing quotes, always try and link it back to the context. Again it just shows that you have a strong understanding of the text if you're able to link your quotes back to the contextual information you spoke about in your introduction.

Quotes - If you're struggling for quotes, Quizlet helped me out so much, you can find a ton of quotes on there. You could even find some with really good analysis too. I tried to make sure that I had a few quotes per character that covered different themes that may come up in an exam.


Hopefully that was somewhat helpful. If you have any other questions feel free to ask, and if you've not already done your mock exam yet then I hope it goes well 🙂

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