OCR A-level English Literature Paper 1 (H472/01) - 24th May 2024 [Exam Chat]

Hello everyone,
Just putting out a message letting you know i’m glad to answer questions or give advice having received full marks on this paper last year and A* overall.
I wish you all well and wanted to also make you aware i’m selling my notes that I used for this exam on Etsy under Tulipstudies for affordable prices trust me, with over 100 pages of essay plans, quote analysis’ and everything you need to get an a*.
This does specifically focus on the gothic genre, dracula, the bloody chamber, rossetti, a doll’s house and Hamlet.
So if anyone is interested in that or particularly struggling let me know and check those out, it’d be appreciated.
Thank you 🙂

really freaking out about this one haha, need to get an A for uni and am extremely nervous

hi! thankyou so much, whats your biggest tip for the comparative in terms of strcture wise and what was the best method of revsion for you?

Revision for me for the comparative was quite difficult because we learnt the two texts quite singularly and didn’t do proper comparisons throughout. But, when i was re reading for revision back to back a lot of those things became apparent.
What I did was grouping comparisons into themes and common ideas and practiced essays. For my texts, Bloody Chamber and Dracula for example I came up with themes of ancestry, blood, masculinity, heroism, wealth, marriage, class, interior spaces, dreams and hypnotism, meals and diets etc… for which i came up with very specific examples with evidence in quotes that i exploded.
In these final stages I put this all on one document, printed it and started to make my own practice questions which I would randomly select. At first i would time but use my document to construct lines of arguments and form my essay, but as I began to learn the contents of the document off by heart I could move away. By learning these wide themes that connected them both, I felt like no matter what came up I could always bring it back to the most interesting, developed and thoughtful points I had worked hard to form during the course.
In terms of structure, I believe I used text 1 paragraph text 2 paragraph structure three times over, trying to weave comments about the other text in both to make it even but also not so segregated. For example paragraph 1 would be on Dracula but I would add comments such as, similar to that of ____’s charisma in the bloody chamber: (insert some analysis) and then pulling together a nice little bit to alert the examiner to the fact that you grasp the focus of the question.
This isn’t obviously the set standard and it is just simply what worked for me, considering I became a very fast writer after doing essay based subjects.
But fundamentally, do not forget the context. For every quote or point I had, I made sure I had some context behind it.
It was also very useful to watch productions of the text and have a good bank of ao5 for which i used quizlet.
also doing this really inspired some ideas.
I really hope this helps and best of luck with your revision!

Revision for me for the comparative was quite difficult because we learnt the two texts quite singularly and didn’t do proper comparisons throughout. But, when i was re reading for revision back to back a lot of those things became apparent.
What I did was grouping comparisons into themes and common ideas and practiced essays. For my texts, Bloody Chamber and Dracula for example I came up with themes of ancestry, blood, masculinity, heroism, wealth, marriage, class, interior spaces, dreams and hypnotism, meals and diets etc… for which i came up with very specific examples with evidence in quotes that i exploded.
In these final stages I put this all on one document, printed it and started to make my own practice questions which I would randomly select. At first i would time but use my document to construct lines of arguments and form my essay, but as I began to learn the contents of the document off by heart I could move away. By learning these wide themes that connected them both, I felt like no matter what came up I could always bring it back to the most interesting, developed and thoughtful points I had worked hard to form during the course.
In terms of structure, I believe I used text 1 paragraph text 2 paragraph structure three times over, trying to weave comments about the other text in both to make it even but also not so segregated. For example paragraph 1 would be on Dracula but I would add comments such as, similar to that of ____’s charisma in the bloody chamber: (insert some analysis) and then pulling together a nice little bit to alert the examiner to the fact that you grasp the focus of the question.
This isn’t obviously the set standard and it is just simply what worked for me, considering I became a very fast writer after doing essay based subjects.
But fundamentally, do not forget the context. For every quote or point I had, I made sure I had some context behind it.
It was also very useful to watch productions of the text and have a good bank of ao5 for which i used quizlet.
also doing this really inspired some ideas.
I really hope this helps and best of luck with your revision!

this exam is on my bday and i might just have to kill myself during it. need an A for uni soso nervous i hope the questions are nice!!! doing tempest and merchants tale/duchess of malfi if anyone else is :-0

one more question- how many quotes did you do per theme ?

Hello everyone,
Just putting out a message letting you know i’m glad to answer questions or give advice having received full marks on this paper last year and A* overall.
I wish you all well and wanted to also make you aware i’m selling my notes that I used for this exam on Etsy under Tulipstudies for affordable prices trust me, with over 100 pages of essay plans, quote analysis’ and everything you need to get an a*.
This does specifically focus on the gothic genre, dracula, the bloody chamber, rossetti, a doll’s house and Hamlet.
So if anyone is interested in that or particularly struggling let me know and check those out, it’d be appreciated.
Thank you 🙂

Hi! Do you have any tips for revising the Gothic in general? I’ve re-read and annotated Dracula and The Bloody Chamber, but I feel really demotivated to practice past questions. In my mind, if the question has already come up, the theme/discussion point is less likely to come up in my exam. Also, with Hamlet, what do you do if you are in the exam and none of your critics are relevant for the B) question? Thank you!

Hi! Do you have any tips for revising the Gothic in general? I’ve re-read and annotated Dracula and The Bloody Chamber, but I feel really demotivated to practice past questions. In my mind, if the question has already come up, the theme/discussion point is less likely to come up in my exam. Also, with Hamlet, what do you do if you are in the exam and none of your critics are relevant for the B) question? Thank you!

not this person but i made a biiiig table (like 10 pages?) for both comparison questions with all of the comparative themes / motifs / characters / contexts i could think of. i divided it into each short story for the bloody chamber and had dracula on the other side. can send it to you but would probably be more helpful doing it yourself.
other than that just lots and lots of practice essays/ paragraphs and planning in timed conditions. which i hate 😭 it sucks but if you do one for each theme you can think of you will be so much more confident going in!!! i need to make myself do more because i really can’t be bothered a lot of the time. but Ya. also i have anki flashcards for quotes / context / critics but you probably already have something like that. sighhhh please ocr just give us a question on gender or otherness or something

not this person but i made a biiiig table (like 10 pages?) for both comparison questions with all of the comparative themes / motifs / characters / contexts i could think of. i divided it into each short story for the bloody chamber and had dracula on the other side. can send it to you but would probably be more helpful doing it yourself.
other than that just lots and lots of practice essays/ paragraphs and planning in timed conditions. which i hate 😭 it sucks but if you do one for each theme you can think of you will be so much more confident going in!!! i need to make myself do more because i really can’t be bothered a lot of the time. but Ya. also i have anki flashcards for quotes / context / critics but you probably already have something like that. sighhhh please ocr just give us a question on gender or otherness or something

hii not this person either but with the essay practise I also think just making plans of essays or mind mapping ideas under a time limit is useful. For example, I’ve been going onto random past papers, scrolling to the Gothic questions, picking one & setting a timer for 5-10 minutes to blurt down a plan that includes all the assessment objectives. This helps mimic exam conditions without writing a full essay draft every time. Then I just schedule into my revision timetable some slots to do the full question then hand into my teacher to mark🤷*♀️