Exams have arrived – it’s now or never

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

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

What does it mean to revise: An author’s methods of presentation?

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

The key aim of questions like these is to get you to focus not on ‘what happens’ but how the author has crafted the text in order to elicit a particular response in the reader.

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.

Plot

1. With whom is a reader to identify – a 1st or 3rd person narrator, a particular character?
   
   a) How has the author achieved that sense of identification?
   b) How does it shape the reader’s perspective on the plot?
   
   
2. If there is a sub-plot
   
   a) What is its relevance to the main one?
   b) How are the main and sub-plots interwoven?
   
   
3. What is the impact of presenting events chronologically / non-chronologically?
   
   a) What is the impact of any time frame on the presentation of the plot?

Narrative perspective

1. Who is telling the story and how close is the reader to him/her?
   
   
2. At what pace do events unfold – how has the author created that effect?
   
   
3. Is there direct authorial comment and/or does tone / irony / mood guide a reader’s response?

Patterning

1. What themes brought to the fore? (See previous blog in series)
   
   
2. How are imagery and / or symbolism used?
   
   
3. Are there repetitions / echoes of:
   
   a) Events
   b) Locations
   c) Family structures?

Description

1. How would you characterise the author’s descriptive techniques?
   
   
2. What kind of language is employed when – to what effect?
   
   
3. How do these techniques create:
   
   a) Character (see previous blog in series)
   b) Location and atmosphere
   c) Drama, tension / suspense?

As you cover these ideas you always need to keep in mind the intentions of the author – and remember to tell the examiner what they are!

GOOD LUCK

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.

A Level reading in the holidays

Recent blogs have encouraged subscribers to tackle some of the larger texts you will be studying for the coming year, particularly any long Victorian novels, during the lazy days of the summer holidays.

Reading for yourself, but not on your own

Ideally this means that you:

• Develop a personal response
• Get a sense of what the story is about
• Engage with the characters and their situation
• Start to have a feel for the author’s perspective
• Enjoy the text!

However, a first reading will probably throw up all sorts of questions in your mind. Although term hasn’t yet started, you might like to find some immediate answers.
What to do? No-one's around, and the notes in the back of your text are too short or confusing. That's where Crossref-it.info can come in useful. You are not on your own.

Making sense of Victorian novels

At Crossref-it.info, you can click on any specific chapter of three significant Victorian novels to get a summary, an explanation of difficult words, and some pointers as to what the author is doing. If you want to switch over to read the actual text on-line in a new screen, go to texts.crossref-it.info, then you can flip between that and the explanations.

Or you can find out some biographical information about Dickens, Charlotte (and Emily) Brontë or Thomas Hardy themselves. How did each of them come to write their novels? Where in England did they set them, and why? Over the summer, four more texts by these authors are being covered by Crossref-it.info. Launched this week are helpful compilations of material relevant to two more Hardy novels: Context links: The Mayor of Casterbridge and Context links: The Return of the Native.

To get a picture of the times in which they were writing, there is a huge array of background material on the Victorian era. We are no longer familiar with things that these authors took for granted when they were writing, but a handy on-screen explanation can quickly halt confusion.

There is no substitute for reading at A Level, but for everything else, there is Crossref-it.info. It's been designed with you in mind.

Reading novels for A Level: Tess of the d’Urbervilles

Over the summer, students have a great chance to get to grips with the texts they will be examined on the following year. Make the most of it and read for pleasure! Spend indulgent hours with the longer novels (which are harder to fit in later) and be honest about your initial response.

Tess and first impressions

It's difficult not to have strong initial reactions if you are reading Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles as your Victorian novel (appearing on the AQA and OCR papers). It is a tremendous and passionate story, so let yourself be drawn in.

Many of Hardy's descriptions are very cinematographic, but one of the pleasures of reading is using your imagination to create his descriptions in your mind, and then sense the emotions that come with those pictures. They're your emotions, and they form part of your first impressions.

Imagine it for yourself

Although there are several good adaptations of the novel, it is the words on the page that make the difference. However tempting, don't substitute a DVD for your first encounter with the story. A film controls too many of your responses, and maybe edits out some of the parts you will enjoy most when you read it.

Besides, you need some hours to get acquainted with Tess herself. After all, she is one of English Literature's most iconic heroines. If you find things which puzzle you, there is a discussion of Hardy’s heroine at Crossref-it.info, - but don’t look at this until you have read her story for yourself!

Hardy’s poetry

Tess’s figure of a sensuous woman and the theme of missed opportunities recurred in much of Hardy’s poetry, which also appears on the A Level syllabus. For a way into the mind of the poems’ creator, a new mini guide links you to Hardy and his world. Find it at Crossref-it.info > Context links: Selected poetry of Thomas Hardy.

Last minute exam help

If you have managed to make it into school and are sitting any English modules this week, well done and good luck! Hopefully last week’s snow meant that you got in some uninterrupted revision time.

Select your detail

This may be your first time of needing to write an exam answer at a greater level of detail than previously. Knowing this, it is tempting to put in as much as possible, but DON’T!

The examiner knows that you are answering under pressure of time and can’t include every example – instead they are looking for you to select the most relevant instances, and to ruthlessly ignore anything that is not pertinent to exactly what you are being asked. So keep reminding yourself of the question!

Time management

The best way to lose marks is to fail to regulate the time you spend on each answer. In a paper of four equally weighted questions, one extensive piece that gains you 25% won’t make up for the fact that you only half do the third question and don’t even get to the last – that’s 37.5% lost without even trying and no-one can afford to do that!

Believe in yourself and what you have been taught – and while it snows, keep revising…

The world of Chaucer

Whichever part of The Canterbury Tales you may be studying for A Level English, you will discover helpful information about the world Chaucer inhabited and for which he wrote, at www.crossref-it.info.

A recent addition to the site is The world of Chaucer. It provides answers to intriguing queries like why death seems to play on people’s minds. It helps explain the weekly routine of medieval life. If you need to make sense of the expectations of women in the era, you can read about courtly love and women’s economic status.

Although there were significant shifts in society as a result of the Black Death, one of the key concerns in medieval society was keeping harmonious social order. This was founded on the idea of there existed a ‘chain of being’ which predetermined a person’s ‘position’ in life. This ‘chain’ started with God at the top, as the creator of all life, and ended with stones at the bottom. Take a look at The world of Chaucer > Making sense of the intangible world > The chain of being for more info.

Within human society, deference was to be paid to those in authority because it was believed that they had been raised to that position by God, who had ultimate authority. Each person’s status, or ‘degree’, needed to be recognised. Those who rose ‘above their station’ were regarded with unease.

We might baulk at such a concept today, but the actual economic and social difference between the wealthy and the poor was far narrower in medieval times than the extreme gap between the rich and poorest in most western societies which exists today.

Tougher than you thought?

Six weeks into your course, you may be realising that A Level English is more demanding than you thought it was going to be! Suddenly there are whole texts to get through at speed, rather than individual scenes, and you need to grasp far more than plot and characterisation.

We’ve noticed at www.crossref-it.info that lots of people are coming for help as they encounter the Metaphysical poets. These contemporaries of Shakespeare and Webster wrote some amazing and memorable poems. Many of them are either arguments to persuade their beloved into bed, or debates with God as the poets struggle to submit to him. Sometimes there is quite a cross over between the two!

An alien world

Both types of poem are tightly woven with images which need unpacking. They were written within a society that expected women to be chaste until they married (though not men!), and was convinced of the reality of God, heaven and hell. The poets could take for granted that everyone understood these ideas and the language associated with them – terms which today might seem alien.

If you regularly get this blog you’ll know that Crossref-it.info exists to help students confronting this sort of information. Handy pop-ups deal with unfamiliar words and concepts and everything a student needs to know about the poem is explained simply and clearly.

But don’t take our word for it. Check it out yourself.

What does it mean to revise: An author’s methods of presentation?

How on earth do you prepare for an A Level Eng. Lit exam?
Welcome to the third in a short series about how to revise English successfully.

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

The key aim of questions like these is to get you to focus not on ‘what happens’ but how the author has crafted the text in order to elicit a particular response in the reader.

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.

Plot

1) With whom is a reader to identify – a 1st or 3rd person narrator, a particular character?

• How has the author achieved that sense of identification?
• How does it shape the reader’s perspective on the plot?
  

2) If there is a sub-plot

• What is its relevance to the main one?
• How are the main and sub-plots interwoven?
  

3) What is the impact of presenting events chronologically / non-chronologically?

• What is the impact of any time frame on the presentation of the plot?

Narrative perspective

1) Who is telling the story and how close is the reader to him/her?
2) At what pace do events unfold – how has the author created that effect?
3) Is there direct authorial comment and/or does tone / irony / mood guide a reader’s response?

Patterning

1) What themes brought to the fore? (See previous blog in series)
2) How are imagery and / or symbolism used?
3) Are there repetitions / echoes of:

• Events
• Locations
• Family structures?
  

Description

1) How would you characterise the author’s descriptive techniques?
2) What kind of language is employed when – to what effect?
3) How do these techniques create:

• Character (see previous blog in series)
• Location and atmosphere
• Drama, tension / suspense?
  

As you cover these ideas you always need to keep in mind the intentions of the author.

What does it mean to revise: Themes?

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.

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

How is the theme dealt with differently in comparative texts?

• Look at 1 – 3 above

Author:

How does the author ‘use’ this theme – what ‘meaning’ does it represent?

• How is the theme outworked to support this (include imagery and mood)?
• 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 does it mean to revise: Characterisation?

Revision for subjects like History and Biology seems pretty straightforward; if you get your head around some significant facts and marshall your evidence, you are likely to do well. But how on earth do you prepare for A Level Eng. Lit?

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

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.

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.’