Achieve that A*

1. Read… ACTIVELY

If you want to do well in English Literature, if you want to hit the A* grades, that means you are going to have to read. This doesn’t mean reading only Shakespearean sonnets and long Dickens’ novels, it means reading anything you can get your hands on. Whether that be a news article, non-fiction, contemporary fiction. The wider your range of reading, the better. And when I say read, I don’t mean read passively.

Passive reading is often where you read for the sake of reading, taking in the bare minimum so you can get to the end of whatever it is you're reading. Instead, try to actively take in the details of the text, try to analyse as you read. It is much better to only read a few pages actively than to passively read an entire book. This doesn’t mean stopping every five seconds to have a look at the punctuation in a sentence – it means noticing. For instance, I might pick up a book, read the first chapter and realise a recurring theme, an interesting setting, unfamiliar structural techniques. Once you’ve recognised these, then try to go a step deeper. Ask why and how the author has done this. Often, when people talk about English Literature, they make fun of the subject. ‘The curtain is blue so that means the character is sad’. How many of you have heard a joke like this, a joke that assumes English Literature is making pretentious insights, making something deep that is innately shallow? So, try not to force interpretations when they are simply not there. Ask yourself, if you were the examiner, and you had one student breaking down the colour of the curtain, and another discussing the ambivalence of the language used to frame a character – which one would you be more engaged with?

So, don’t just read, actively read. Get into the habit of pulling texts apart and asking why, how, why, how? When you come across the unfamiliar in a text, make sure you make it familiar. For instance, vocabulary. It’s so easy to just skip over words we don’t understand. In almost every English literature syllabus, GCSE, A-Level, etc, part of the marking criteria is ‘range of vocabulary’. Reading is an excellent way to develop this, but it means you must read actively and search up those unfamiliar words. If you want to go a step further, then as-well as searching up the words, try to place them into sentences, into contexts. You might find the unfamiliar word ‘lugubrious’, so you search it up online to find it means ‘looking or sounding sad’. Why stop there. Chances are, you’ll forget this word in a few days. To keep it in your mental vocabulary, practise using it. You may see your sibling coming down the stairs after being caught doing something they weren’t supposed to, and so why don’t you construct a sentence to make the unfamiliar, familiar – ‘they lugubriously dawdled down the steps, sighing loudly’. Any word that you hear, write, or speak, exists within a context – they are not isolated signs, but signs that are part of a system; part of a language, so use and practise them so.

For essay writing, reading essays help. It’s as simple as that. Maybe you’ve read a text not on your syllabus that you really liked – this could be anything. Why not go onto google scholar and search the text up. You will likely find some essays that have been written in response to these texts. Have a go at reading them, and remind yourself these are scholars, academics who have had years in the field, and so you won’t understand everything. But there may be certain phrases, analysis, contextual factors that you do understand, and that you could mimic in your own work. Take inspiration from essays to improve your own. If you have friends also doing English Literature with you, why not ask a few of them if they would mind you having a read through their work. Chances are, you find bits and pieces that are excellent and that you want to start to emulate.

2. Rewrite… DON’T JUST WRITE

When you write an essay, what happens? It goes to your teachers, they mark it, they hand it back, you look at the mark and you are likely either ecstatic or disheartened. Then, onto the next essay. But that’s not enough. If you do this, you will continue to produce the same essays again and again with the same marks and the same emotional response. My teachers always used to leave me an EBI, even better if, and WWW, what went well. I would take my time to scan over both, closely, and then re-read my essay recognising what parts and paragraphs this feedback applied to. Yet really, even this isn’t enough, you can go further: you can rewrite. I don’t mean rewrite the entire essay, but there will be places, maybe a paragraph, maybe a bit of analysis that is bringing your marks down. Target these and rewrite these parts making sure to incorporate feedback.

For instance, perhaps your teacher highlighted a portion of your work and said, ‘this analysis doesn’t make any sense’. Ask yourself, why? Is it because of your writing style, have you made it confusing with long sentences that contradict one another or that don’t allow the reader to take a breath? Is it because you haven’t used evidence to back up your analysis? Is it because you are making an interpretation that doesn’t have enough evidence to support it? Find out what it is – make the diagnosis. Then, fix it – take your work into surgery. You may find you only have to make a few tweaks for it to be improved, and you may find you have to start all over again. Either way, take your time to do this. I have found this exercise much more useful than writing a different essay on the same text all over again, and so, I would prioritise my time to do the former over the latter.

If your teachers don’t mind, ask them to have a look at your rewrite. If you have followed your original feedback thoroughly and acted upon it, likely, your teacher will see an improvement. If not, if your teacher says it is the same, or perhaps worse, drill them – ask them why, ask for the specifics and note these down.

After you have rewritten a paragraph, why not place the original and rewrite besides one another and read through them both, aloud. Can you hear a difference? Is it a positive difference? Where does the difference come from? Try to make yourself as consciously aware as possible of your writing – of its flaws, nuances, strengths. This way, when you go into an exam, you won’t go in blind. When you write your essay, you will know when to scribble out a sentence and rewrite it.

3. Remember word for word… SPARINGLY

If you have an open book exam, then life is a lot easier for you. If you have a closed book exam, then I feel your pain having to learn all those quotes. Nevertheless, even in an open book there will be contextual factors you will have to remember or critical interpretations. Here’s how I managed to remember everything so that it didn’t feel like such a burden.

The nice thing about remembering quotes from texts, is that you know them contextually. When Othello says, ‘My wife, my wife, what wife?’, you know that he has just murdered her and is coming to terms with the monstrosity of his actions. Before memorising the quote, familiarise yourself with the context and then, if it’s dialogue, embody it, become an actor. Especially for plays this makes the process of memorisation so much more fun. It might feel silly first, but it works. Speak the line in your head as Othello would, as a distraught, confused husband would. Breathe life into the quotes so they don’t feel like robotic words from an instruction guide.

To make your life easy, don’t memorise everything, and don’t memorise long monologues. Pick and choose and be very picky. You want the short, sharp quotes that effectively back up themes, characters, setting. If you come across a quote you think would be useful, ask yourself, how? Where and when might I use it? For example, ‘My wife, my wife, what wife?’ is a quote I could use to showcase Othello’s character arc, to prove the extent of his emotional grief. Then I would ask, is there much I could do with this quote in terms of analysis. Not every quote you pick will have loads of analysis you will be able to get into, but make sure at least some of them do. With this quote, you could dissect the repetition and the rhetorical; explain how they exemplify Othello’s disorientation – you could contrast this against his rhetoric’s at the beginning that were so confident and grandiose. Based on all this, I would decide this short quote is worth remembering. Some of you might be tempted to remember more, ‘My wife, my wife, what wife? I have no wife;/ O insupportable! O heavy hour!’. But ask yourself, is it worth it? Have you already memorised exclamations Othello proclaims in Act 5, if so, why remember this too? Make your life easy.

Especially at A-Level, you will have to learn and memorise some context, critical theories or quotes and perhaps some genre-specific information. Don’t bring in these factors randomly just for the sake of it. On my syllabus, bringing in critical theories was part of the marking criteria, so at the beginning, to ensure I nailed this, I would very conspicuously start sentences like this: ‘From a Feminist perspective’… Or bring in context in a similar way: ‘Shakespeare wrote in the early modern period where King…’. This isn’t necessary, and it’s not as nice to read because the fluidity of your essay is broken up by what feels like tangential facts. Try to incorporate such factors seamlessly, and relevantly: ‘Emilia’s proto-feminist speech reveals her strength but arguably nowhere near as much as when she stands up against the patriarchal forces in the bedroom of Act 5, refusing to be silenced by her husband and the subservience conventionally expected of the wife.’ That was long-winded, but hopefully you see I have incorporated feminist theory and context within a point and within analysis, so that it doesn’t overtly jut out.

Anyway, the point is, you don’t want to remember rigid facts because then you will likely try to force in these rigid facts and lose the fluidity of your essay. Instead, take a note of some more generalised contextual bits and genre-specific information. You don’t want to remember something like, ‘Aristotle defined three key elements which make a tragedy: hamartia, anagnorisis and peripeteia’. Rather, condense this so that it is more malleable: ‘Aristotle – tragedy elements = anagnorisis (personal revelation), peripeteia (structural turning point), hamartia (protagonist’s flaw)’. Then, you can bring in the pieces of this information when its relevant – it’s unlikely listing all these elements will be necessary in your essay. Make sure you understand what you memorise. If in an essay you remember the word peripeteia, but then have no idea what it means, it’s useless. If it helps, why not simply remember that ‘a structural turning point’ is a key element to Aristotelian tragedies rather than a long old Greek word that’s meaning you can’t quite recall. Examiners aren’t going to give you bonus marks for long words – in fact, if your work becomes condensed with archaic long words, it might detract from the clarity of your argument, and you could lose marks. So, remember words/ quotes and their meanings, and if this is too difficult, then strip the long words back to their simple meanings.

Critical quotes can be excellent, because they show you have done wider reading around your text and are engaging with other voices in the field. But don’t just plonk them down in your writing and then move on to a different point. Engage with them. This could be noting the significance of a critic’s interpretation because… Or, if you are feeling confident and genuinely disagree, then say so: ‘Critic x’s claim that Othello is a …. Is unfounded and contentions arise when one recognises ….’. Make sure you can back up your point thoroughly if you are to disagree with a critical voice.

To remember all these quotes, I find writing them down on flashcards is helpful. Don’t overdo it. Give yourselves breaks in between. Leave your flashcards for a few days and come back to them to strengthen your long-term memorisation. See if you can widen the gap between when you go through them and see whether you can still remember the quotes well. If the quotes are from texts, from plays, embody characters, embody the narrator’s voice, and recall their contextual positions. Become the storyteller and actor, and if this means getting up and pretending you are a drama student for a bit, enjoy the variation. The more actively, the more physically as well as mentally engaged you can be with memorisation, the more memorable.

4. Check your syllabus... THOROUGHLY

If your writing is excellent – your style is clear and unique, your range of vocabulary is great, your analysis is individualistic and thorough – if you are doing the right things and your grades still aren’t where you want them to be, check your syllabus. Each syllabus has different criteria, and though, for the most part, this is quite similar, there may be something you are missing. Some syllabi are very specific and will cap you at a certain grade if you don’t showcase certain assessment objectives. Also, sometimes these objectives can be weighted differently – maybe the coherency and clarity of your written expression might constitute 35% of your essay grade. So, be sure to check it through thoroughly.

It is a good idea to draw a mind map of all the things you need to hit.

Lastly, if you’ve taken English Literature at higher levels, then it’s likely you enjoy the subject. Try to keep it that way. Don’t put so much pressure on yourself so that it saps the joy out of writing, reading, and engaging with interpretations. If you do find yourself starting to grow numb to the subject, remind yourself why you took it – perhaps it was a book, play, author, ted talk that sparked your interest, so why not go back to that. And try not to be a perfectionist. English Literature is not like other subjects, not like Chemistry or Maths where it’s perfectly possible to hit 100%, where a question has a wrong or right answer. With English Literature, everything is more subjective. So, if you are one or two marks from your goal, try not to beat yourself up about it. Take in the feedback and keep going. Chances are, if it was a different examiner or teacher marking your paper, you might have hit that goal or come closer to it, so keep persevering!