Help - Exams are getting closer!

How on earth do you prepare for an A Level Eng. Lit exam?

Welcome to the second in a short series about how to revise English successfully.

2. What does it mean to revise: Themes?

It is very likely that at least one of the questions you will face in the exam will focus on how an author presents one or more themes within or across texts. How can you prepare for that?

There are basic areas to cover, regardless of the text. For each of the following:

• Try and make condensed notes / a mind map / list headwords
• Learn a quotation or specific example to illustrate.

Selected theme:

Within a text

1. Identify the theme’s emergence – instances of its recurrence
2. What imagery is associated with the theme? Does this create a particular mood?
3. How is the theme worked out through the plot / narrative arc?
4. In prose, do any relationships between characters illustrate this theme?

Across texts

1. How is the theme dealt with differently in comparative texts?
2. Look at 1 – 3 above

Author:

1. How does the author ‘use’ this theme – what ‘meaning’ does it represent?
   a) How is the theme outworked to support this (include imagery and mood)?
   b) Are there direct authorial comments that guide the reader’s interpretation of the theme?

Reader:

1. Do you have a personal response to this theme – has it made you reflect on aspects of contemporary life?
2. Are you satisfied with how the author has ‘used’ the theme?

Always keep in mind that themes are highlighted by an author to serve the purposes of the text – what are these purposes?

Looming exams - Arrggghhhh!

If you are a more recent subscriber to this blog, you probably won’t be familiar with some material we presented a couple of years ago about how to prepare for sitting A Level English exams. Unlike the obvious marshalling of facts that provides a framework for Chemistry or History for example, how to go about revising English texts is less obvious. So, for our current students:

Welcome to the first in a short series about how to revise English successfully.

1. What does it mean to revise: Characterisation?

It is very likely that at least one of the questions you will face in the exam will focus on characterisation (how an author presents a character). How can you prepare for that?

There are basic areas to cover, regardless of the text. For each of the following:

• Try and make condensed notes / a mind map / list headwords
• Learn a quotation or specific example to illustrate

Selected character:

1) The character’s narrative arc:

• How s/he is introduced
• His/her story/development through the novel
• The character’s own new perspectives by the end (what s/he has learnt)

2) His/her physical appearance and the language s/he uses (register, syntax)

3) His/her relationships with others in the text

4) The imagery associated with him/her.

Author:

1) The author’s attitude to the character – discerned through

• 2 and 4 above
• Differences in perspective
• Tone used describing that character and direct/indirect judgements on him/her (authorial intrusion?)

2) Changes in attitude / sympathy – ultimate assessment of character.

Reader:

1) Be aware of your personal response to the character – have you found the hero / heroine attractive – annoying - funny?

2) Are you satisfied with how the author created the character

• Are they believable (2D or fully rounded) – or more significant for the role they play in the text’s ‘meaning’?
• Do you have other criticisms about the characterisation?

Always keep in mind that every character is simply a literary construct, created by an author for the purposes of the text.

The impact of one book

The significance of May 2nd, 2011

Three days ago Britain marked what most believe to have been the publication date of one of the most important volumes in the English Language.

On May 2nd, 1611, the ‘Authorised’ or King James Bible rolled off the press and was circulated to every church in the United Kingdom. Not only did it become the ‘official’ Bible of Great Britain, but it was taken even further:

> by early colonisers to North America and Canada
> by traders to India and Africa
> by mission societies to Asia
> by emigrants to Australasia.

It encouraged the spread of the English language around the world, because non English speakers needed to get to grips with the Bible of the traders, colonisers, emigrants and mission societies. Thus the KJB is in part responsible for the fact that the dominant international language of the physical and electronic world today is English.

In Britain it became familiar to everyone in the land:

• through their schooling
• through their weekly religious attendance
• and ultimately through what they read.

From the era of the Metaphysical poets in the seventeenth century to that of D.H. Lawrence in the twentieth, the King James Bible has been imbibed by authors, poets and dramatists. It has shaped their thought and language, to then be shared with their readers.

More important than Shakespeare

There were other translations before it, on which the KJB drew, and there have been many since, which echo its poetry in more modern idioms. But for sheer literary dominance, the KJB cannot be touched.

According to Melvyn Bragg, the KJB has been more influential on English society than Shakespeare. Whilst culturally Shakespeare has often been the preserve of the educated, the KJB was a text for everyone, found in almost every home, sometimes as the only book people owned. And because it was a book of faith, its messages were repeated and learnt, day by day, then re-enforced by weekly readings and sermons in church and chapel. Authors knew that their readers would pick up every reference.

Today many of us do not recognise the impact of the KJB on literature, because we are not familiar with the original. That’s why Crossref-it.info materials explain every Bible reference encountered. They show users where each allusion comes from and thus how authors have created a subtext to their work.

Text / subtext / inter-textuality – these are all terms a student of English needs to get the most from what they are reading. Crossref-it.info is here to help.