Get going on A-Level revision...

Easter is coming up and with it that make or break A Level revision period. The hours you put in now will make the difference between scraping an E and hitting B or above. So be radical:

• Learn to cope with poverty as you ditch the Saturday job or at least cut your hours (going without for a few weeks now should mean better grades and therefore a better job / wage long term)
• Make an easy onscreen revision table that you can modify when you don’t meet every target (because, believe me, you will slip up) - but don’t spend ages making it pretty…
• Aim to do an hour’s revision each school/college day – yes, on top of the usual H/W
• On non-school days, divide the time into morning / afternoon / evening sessions and aim to allocate two out of three to revising
• If you have got gaps in your class notes, ask a friend or your teacher for backup info before the Easter break
• Vary the styles in which you learn: writing notes, creating mind maps, testing yourself or using on-line revision helps like Crossref-it.info are all useful ways of embedding vital information into your memory
• Pace yourself – make your breaks from work enjoyable so that your mind doesn’t get dulled
• Sort out your diet now – regular intake of Omega 3 fatty acids found in oily fish will improve your memory (whereas just eating fish fingers on exam day will have a limited effect…)
• Keep in mind why you chose your subjects in the first place - as a balance to what lies ahead, focus on how much progress you have already made since you started
• Believe you can climb the mountain of revision – as entrepreneur Henry Ford put it:
  

‘Whether you think you can or whether you think you can’t, you’re probably right.’

William Shakespeare Timeline

We all know him, we all love him. Right? ...and most of us have (had) to study at least one of his works in school.

And yet, it can be hard getting an overview of his life. Pages like this are fantastic in helping us to delve into William Shakespeare's world. However, they do have a lot of text and are time-consuming to read.

What would it be like to have a time line which, with just one glance, gives an overview of Shakespeare's life, with a separate column for literary events and another column for political and historical events - so you can look at Shakespeare's life and his world at the same time?

And what would it be like if one could click on any event on the time line and subsequently get a complete literary / historical / biographical overview of the 9 years surrounding it?

What I am about to say might not come as a complete surprise: The amazing comprehensive Shakespeare time line exists and can be found here!

Enjoy it and, as always, let me know if you have any thoughts / comments or know of other, high quality related web resources...

Symbolism in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre

In January I caught the BBC re-run of Jane Eyre which I really enjoyed (again … OK, call me sad). One of the strengths of any filmed version is that it can make visual the images and symbols which run through texts such as Brontë’s novel.

In this adaptation

• Jane and Bertha were linked by the flowing red robe which swathed Jane in her imaginary desert and was hung from Bertha’s window: red for passion, red for danger, both ideas brought together with Jane’s incarceration in the Red Room as a child.
• The natural contrasts of harshness and comfort, cold and warmth, winter and spring, exposure and cosy firelight glow were emphasised via effective scenic photography and clever lighting of interiors.

To look at how Brontë used these ideas in more detail, the Imagery and Symbolism in Jane Eyre section on Crossref-it.info provides a discussion of Nature and Fire and light More difficult to convey is the symbolism associated with the central text Brontë could assume all her readers recognised – the Bible. Today many students aren’t familiar with the allusions and they are even harder to communicate on screen.

Click here for an explanation of the relevance of Adam and Eve to Jane Eyre, or investigate the following religious / philosophical context articles on Crossref-it.info and consider how Brontë drew on these ideas through the novel:

• Temptation
• Penitence, repentance, penance
• Parents and children
• Mission, evangelism, conversion
• Lost, seeking, finding, rescue
• Judgement
• Journey of faith, Exodus, pilgrims and sojourners
  
• Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve
  
• Forgiveness, mercy and grace
  
• Apocalypse
  

If you were a TV producer, how would you ‘show’ these concepts?

Also, for an excellent discussion of the show, take a look at this blog.

The Good-morrow by John Donne

We want this blog to be fun to read. Occasionally, we are thus posting short literary 'snippets'. Today's 'snippet' is a poem by John Donne - The Good-morrow. Enjoy!

I Wonder by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved ? were we not wean'd till then?
But suck'd on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers' den?
'Twas so ; but this, all pleasures fancies be;
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.

And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone;
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown;
Let us possess one world; each hath one, and is one.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Whatever dies, was not mix'd equally;
If our two loves be one, or thou and I
Love so alike that none can slacken, none can die.

For synopsis, commentary and a discussion of the themes and language of this poem please go to Poem analysis > The Good-morrow

If you have a suggestion as to which poem you would like to see as the next 'snippet', please do let me know by leaving a comment...

Have you got a university offer?

• If you haven’t yet, don’t give up, but make sure you focus on putting maximum effort into getting the kind of results that will make you stand out come August. That way you are in with a chance at clearing or being accepted for the following year.
• If you have, well done! Now you just have to get the grades… No pressure!
  

So what will raise your game?

Remember that the people awarding you marks are human!

• They wince at txt spk, illegible handwriting or poor expression, plus students failing to answer the question.
• They enjoy answers that clearly focus on the relevant texts, whilst being able to set them within the bigger picture (25% of marks are allocated to contextual awareness). They want to see your involvement with what you have studied, not just the same tired classroom notes as fellow students.

For more info on creating a positive impression, go to www.crossref-it.info/articles/312/How-to-write-a-good-English-exam-answer. This website is strong on the ‘big picture’ elements which will impress.

Go for it, pace yourself and good luck!

What do you enjoy about Great Expectations?

Over at Book 'n' a Mug they have a wonderful little review of Dickens' Great Expectations. At times, in the middle of revision, it can be easy to actually forget the joy of sitting down with a nice mug of coffee and a good book.

If you are studying Dickens' Great Expectations then perhaps you are currently brushing up on your knowledge of imagery and symbolism, or narrative, or social / political context, or themes and significant ideas, or (...and the list goes on...)

So why don't you:

• Use the Crossref-it.info resources I've linked to above to help you study more efficiently, thus saving you time and a headache
• Take a deep breath and make yourself some coffee (or whatever is your preferred hot beverage)
  
• Sit down with the book and enjoy the process of reading it

...you might well find that this approach will not just make your revision less annoying, but also more fruitful!

So... What do you love about the book?

The World of the Victorians

You may just have brain ache by 9pm on a Sunday night, but if you can catch it, Jeremy Paxman’s BBC 1 series on looking at Victorian society through the pictures they painted is a great way of providing contextual information on any of the 19thC texts you are studying.

• If you have a note book handy, you could jot down the names of any memorable pictures that relate to a theme in your novel / poetry and potentially reap some real benefits in terms of exam results.
• Another idea is to go to the World of Victorian writers section on Crossref-it.info for handy articles about the impact of industrialisation, transport, education etc. on society
• Paxman’s series shows how Victorian society was heavily shaped and motivated by commonly held beliefs which were widely promoted, be it conventional Christian morality, free will or whatever. Some of these ideas are explained in more detail here.

Remember that 25% of the new A Level English Lit course depends on relating texts to the world in which they were created, so information like this can have a huge impact on your chances of success!

Need to analyse a passage and don't know where to start?

Maybe you were given a piece of homework similar to this. You need to analyse a passage but have no idea where to start or what to write. Obviously, it is helpful to start by reading the actual text, but what next? Do you know what is going on between the lines? Confused by some of the terminology?

In the example above, I would first recommend reading through the page in the Crossref-it.info Jane Eyre study guide on Analysing a passage. This will help you come to terms with what is expected of you! After that, you might want to take a look at the relevant synopsis and commentary sections: chapter 4 and chapter 5.

Although we do try to help, we are unable to do all the work for you though, so after this the ball is in your court...

Succeed in your interview and get onto that English university course

Any joy with university interviews? English is a tough course to get onto – though great to do once you get there!

Interviewers want to see that you have grasped the texts you are studying, but also that you have read beyond them.

What connections can you see between one text an author has written and others written before it or afterwards? E.g. if you’re studying Tess, how does it relate to an earlier work by Hardy such as Far From The Madding Crowd? How does an author’s output echo the themes / subject matter of contemporaries?

An interviewer always sits up when you notice that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein for example, draws on the same gothic elements that Austen mocks in Northanger Abbey, published the same year.

It can be tougher to connect with what was going on in society at the time. I remember an interviewer asking me why Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73 referred to ‘bare ruin’d choirs’ and I was so relieved I remembered about Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530’s!

Knowledge like this can make the difference between the university offering you a place or not. You’ll find Crossref-it.info provides a quick way of finding out all the contextual information you need to help you shine in an interview.

And yes, it can mean hours of curling up with a book. But hopefully that’s why you want to take English anyway!