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English Lit B AQA help with revision!!

I know this is super late but can anyone help me with revising for English lit??? I’m in year13 and although I know the material well, I always fall down when I’m trying to write my essays. I usually get low Cs and Ds but I need a B for my uni and I’m currently stressing and none of the AQA mark schemes help when I’m self marking!

The texts I study are:
TRAGEDY
Othello
Death of a salesman
Keats - La belle dame…, Lamia, Isabella and the pot of basil, eve of st Agnes

CRIME
Hamlet
Atonement
Rime of the ancient mariner

Any help is appreciated!! It’s so hard to get good grades for some reason, so any focus on writing the essay (implementing form, structure and language and quotes mainly) is appreciated!! <3

Reply 1

Out of all your content, I only do Othello. I'm in need of major help as well, but something I've found helpful are:

Checklists with everything you need to get done

Mind maps

Summarise chapters/scenes with main quotes that cover most themes from each

Character analysis

Exam practice, to test timing and your knowledge

Flashcards (especially Anki, where you can do them daily on your phone whenever you want)

I hope this has given you some help, which you could also apply to your other topics.

Reply 2

I would also like to ask by what you mean by your struggle with implementing form, structure and language?

Reply 3

Original post by kiragd
I would also like to ask by what you mean by your struggle with implementing form, structure and language?


I’ve had a really bad teacher for both my years in a level, and since the get-go she told us that language and structure isn’t that important in our essays. Me and my entire class have now been almost failing each mock and assessment in class because of her advice, and she has never tried to give us any structure for our answers.

We’ve all ended up being unable to implement FSL easily into our essays, and she is just now telling us that it is needed. It’s honestly really stupid, I know, but it’s what happens I guess :/

Reply 4

I swear English teachers can be a hit-or-miss, but that's so unfortunate. Something that our teacher recommended is looking at exampler essays online and analysing how each of them are cohesively written and structured, including how they analyse quotes - try looking at ones from low to high bands to see the difference. In essays, I always keep a mental checklist on if I've achieved all of my AOs (from AO1-AO5). From looking at the AQA spec, AO1 is worth 28% of marks whilst AO2+AO3 are worth 24%, so your teacher was completely wrong if they thought structure and language wasn't important.

Let me know if there's any specifics or help you want to know!

Reply 5

Original post by kiragd
I swear English teachers can be a hit-or-miss, but that's so unfortunate. Something that our teacher recommended is looking at exampler essays online and analysing how each of them are cohesively written and structured, including how they analyse quotes - try looking at ones from low to high bands to see the difference. In essays, I always keep a mental checklist on if I've achieved all of my AOs (from AO1-AO5). From looking at the AQA spec, AO1 is worth 28% of marks whilst AO2+AO3 are worth 24%, so your teacher was completely wrong if they thought structure and language wasn't important.
Let me know if there's any specifics or help you want to know!


Thank you so much! I really just need to collate a bank of key FSL words that I understand and know how to analyse to get the marks, as I’m so worried about my grade now! All the stress has collected and made me worry that I’ll fail lol.

If you have anything on critics or certain FSL that can help that would be much appreciated!!

Reply 6

Hi! I do DOAS, Keats, and Atonement so helpful I can provide some advice...
You should try to implement all of the AO4s in every paragraph, even in small ways. Try to structure everything in a way that focuses on the author: for example, don't talk about what Biff does but how Miller uses him. For the crime paper in particular (as it's open book) try to back up everything you say with evidence; even if you don't have a quote, just reference a specific scene for evidence instead of just talking vaguely, so the examiner knows you are basing it on real evidence and not just making it up. The most important thing really is that you show them you have an in-depth knowledge of the book. Not all of your quotes need to be super long - it's better to have even one word than nothing. For example, don't just say that Lamia's transformation is painful but you can say that she 'convulsed'. Also try to make sure to link things back to crime and tragedy as much as possible, in particular for the extract question, as this is specifically about tragedy. For tragedy it is really easy to just replace certain words with tragedy specific terminology, e.g. anagnorisis instead of realisation, peripeteia instead of transformation (from good to bad). For Keats, try to throw into every essay something about how he was a Romantic, as this comes up in pretty much all the poems - if your teacher hasn't covered this, basically he thinks dreams and fantasy are great and reality is terrible and ugly. Similar themes also come up in DOAS. You can also throw in words like 'feminist reading' (for example talking about the roles of Lamia, the belle dame, or Linda) or 'Marxist reading' (when talking about DOAS) because you don't have to be an expert on them but it makes you sound smarter.
Hope this helps!

Reply 7

Hi! I do DOAS, Keats, and Atonement so helpful I can provide some advice...
You should try to implement all of the AO4s in every paragraph, even in small ways. Try to structure everything in a way that focuses on the author: for example, don't talk about what Biff does but how Miller uses him. For the crime paper in particular (as it's open book) try to back up everything you say with evidence; even if you don't have a quote, just reference a specific scene for evidence instead of just talking vaguely, so the examiner knows you are basing it on real evidence and not just making it up. The most important thing really is that you show them you have an in-depth knowledge of the book. Not all of your quotes need to be super long - it's better to have even one word than nothing. For example, don't just say that Lamia's transformation is painful but you can say that she 'convulsed'. Also try to make sure to link things back to crime and tragedy as much as possible, in particular for the extract question, as this is specifically about tragedy. For tragedy it is really easy to just replace certain words with tragedy specific terminology, e.g. anagnorisis instead of realisation, peripeteia instead of transformation (from good to bad). For Keats, try to throw into every essay something about how he was a Romantic, as this comes up in pretty much all the poems - if your teacher hasn't covered this, basically he thinks dreams and fantasy are great and reality is terrible and ugly. Similar themes also come up in DOAS. You can also throw in words like 'feminist reading' (for example talking about the roles of Lamia, the belle dame, or Linda) or 'Marxist reading' (when talking about DOAS) because you don't have to be an expert on them but it makes you sound smarter.
Hope this helps!


Thank you so much! I did Keats in secondary so I did a bit of romantic movement but my teacher now has pretty much f-ed me over 😅 thank youuu!!

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