English Lit paper 2

What advice would you give to revise english literature paper 2, like poems and un seen, Im struggling to revise right now and I don't know when to start

Reply 1

Thelols4

Hello! I got a grade 8 in my lit GCSE but I was 7 marks off a 9 and it was purely due to my timing error!

Paper 2 was my absolute favourite paper so I am more than happy to try my best to help with revision.
My major advice for English is to utilise your teacher. I understand some people aren't as fortunate as I am but my teacher was so lovely and I would just write essays after essays and have her mark them for me and take on her feedback. This went for An Inspector Calls and Poetry.

Specific advice for Poetry I would say is to know the accommodating poems and what I mean by that are the poems that can be used as comparison to pretty much any other poem. For example, one of the best poems to know off by heart is Ozymandias (I only did Power and Conflict and I'm writing on the assumption you're doing the same, I can't help with Love and relationships but the idea should be the same). It sounds controversial, but Tissue is a really good poem to have in your back pocket because it's so vague. By the time I got to year 11 I wrote at least 2 or 3 poetry comparison essays with Tissue all with a different poem.

Unseen is difficult to revise for as it is unseen but the best thing to do is just to know what to do.

Analyse the title

Read the poem

Re-read the poem and find the features

Analyse the features and link them back to the question (utilise the question because it tells you exactly what to look for)

My teacher prepped us for the unseen poems by making us annotate our seen texts on our own and it was quite eye-opening. She then, of course, as the year progressed gave us actual unseen questions so we could get the exam practice. It will never hurt to go online and just analyse a random poem. I did that and I found it quite helpful to just analyse a poem - even if I wasn't going to use it for an essay.

I hope this is at least a little bit helpful 🙂 Good luck with your revision and exams !