Hello everybody and welcome to this video:
a few final tips for next week’s AQA English Literature paper 1 GCSE exam.
Now next week’s exams are unique, in that you will be sitting two papers from the following:
Paper 1P: Anthology of poetry Paper 1N: 19th-century novel
Paper 1M: Modern prose/drama
So what I want to do in this video is give some general tips to help you,
no matter which papers you’re sitting.
First off, are you someone who typically spends longer on one literature question than another,
or who likes to go back to the first question when you’ve finished the second one? Well for
next week’s AQA English Literature Paper 1 exam you won’t be able to do either of those things.
Why? Because students cannot have access
to the second paper until the first paper has been completed,
and students cannot return to their first paper once they have started the second paper.
Now this is because AQA have stated that: ‘To make sure the exam runs smoothly, the first paper
and answer booklet must be collected before giving students the second paper and new answer booklet.’
I’ve linked that AQA document in the description of this video if you want to read it yourself.
Taking full advantage of the time available is therefore more important than ever in this exam.
If you plan, write and check through the first answer in, say 40 minutes, you’re going to be
sat there with nothing to do for the next ten minutes – you won’t even be able to look at
the next question, because you won’t have it yet! And that’s valuable time being wasted.
So from now until the exam, one thing to practise is spending EXACTLY 50 minutes on a paper 1
question. You can do that through downloading free sample exam questions at mrbruff.com/worksheets.
You want to be able to plan, write and check your answer in 50 minutes.
One of the ways you can make the most of the two 50 minute papers
is through careful planning. In the June 2018 exam report it was explained
that, ‘where plans were used, the responses tended to be better quality
and the thinking time enabled the response as a whole to be more crafted and purposeful.
So it really is worth planning your answers.
One of the most common mistakes I see in Literature work is that students are so
desperate to write about the brilliant ideas they have about the text, they lost track of the task.
Let’s explore how this might work. Let’s say you go into the exam with an idea about
The Charge of the Light Brigade being written mostly in dactylic dimeter,
but one example where it isn’t is the line ‘someone had blundered’. And that’s a contextual
link to the word ‘blundered’ which featured in the news report Tennyson read about the light brigade,
and is therefore his subtle way of questioning the mistakes which led to the deaths of the soldiers.
Well that’s a great idea, but you can’t prioritise the idea to the point where
you insist on forcing it into your answer, no matter what the question is. You must answer
the question! So plan your answer as a response to the question, and use the
wording of the question in your paragraphs to help make sure you don’t drift off topic.
And one final piece of advice: don’t write about the characters in your text as if they are real.
You need to realise that they are constructs created by the writer to present certain ideas and
themes. The wording of the question always helps remind you of this. Let’s look at an example:
How far does Priestley present Sheila as a character who changes during the play?
This question isn’t asking you what Sheila is like. Sheila isn’t real!
It’s asking you how Priestley presents the character!
For example - don’t write:
Sheila is an immature person at the start of the play, acting in a childish manner.
Instead, go for:
Priestley depicts Sheila as immature at the start of the play.
Reminding yourself that the characters are constructs will help you think about
how they are constructed, through the writers’ use of methods, so you might then go on to add:
We see this in the infantile terms of address used when Sheila refers to her parents as
‘mummy’ and ‘daddy’…and on it goes.
Now if you don’t already know, I have playlists on every text on this channel, so please do flick
through to see the videos you need for revision for Literature paper 1. Whether it’s anthology
poetry, modern prose and drama, or the 19th C novel, I’ve made videos on pretty much everything.
If you found this short video useful please do give it a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel.