English Literature

Exam Board: Eduqas

Grading System: 9-1

What does my son or daughter need to know for English Literature?

Students need to have a deep and secure knowledge of the texts that they have studied.

These are:

Othello by William Shakespeare
War of the Worlds by H.G.Wells
An Inspector Calls by JB Priestley
An Anthology of of 18 poems from 1789 to the present day, including poems by Carol Ann Duffy, Wilfred Owen, William Blake and Ted Hughes.
Student will also need to be able to analyse an unseen poem.

For each text, students need to understand:

Plot and key events (or for poetry, what the poem is about)
Themes and Characters
Key quotations for themes and characters

..and in addition for poetry

3 ideas and key quotations per poem, covering the language, structure and form.
Comparisons and links between poems.

In summary

The two key things students need in order for students to be successful in Literature are:

to know each text like the ‘back of their hand’
to be able to look at each text ‘forensically’- to do this students need to look ‘closely’ at key words ad phrases and consider their significance.

What does revision for English Literature look like?

The following strategies are useful for revising for English Literature:

Re‐read all of the texts multiple times
Storyboard the events of the each text - Direct references to texts (i.e this happened here) can be just as useful as quotations.
Create a list of themes and characters for each text
Mind map key quotations, events, patterns, ideas and context for each character and theme
Venn diagrams to compare anthology poems
Make quotation flash cards
Record their ideas and listen to them back
Annotate quotations for language, form and structure
Planning answers to practice papers
Writing answers to practice papers

How much English Literature revision should my son or daughter be doing?

Students should read for 30 minutes every evening. This should include the texts and poems that they are studying, but balancing this with other texts is a good idea.

Student should spend around 90 additional minutes per week working on the strategies listed above.

What does my son or daughter need to be able to revise for English Literature effectively?

The following things will be useful when revising for English Literature:

A quiet space to work. (This could be during extended study in school)
Lined and plain paper
A set of blank cards for making flashcards such as these or these.
Highlighters and post‐it notes
Their texts and poetry anthology
Film and TV versions of the texts studied can be very useful too.
- Othello (1995) Directed by Oliver Parker
- War of the Worlds (1995) Directed by Steven Spielberg
- An Inspector Calls (2015) Directed by Aisling Walsh

How will my son or daughter know their strengths and areas for development?

Students complete a number of assessments in sessions and in any personalised additional support sessions where they will receive bespoke/personalised feedback regularly. Students are then also given opportunity in their sessions to respond to this critique.

Students should also look back over past assessments, alongside the models, to further their understanding of examination strategies. These are available in students' portfolios and exercise.

So how exactly can I help?

Help your son or daughter to get organised and give them a quiet space to work

Help your son or daughter to come up with a revision timetable and plan that is manageable. Remember spaced practice is better than cramming.
Check that your son or daughter is sticking to their revision timetable, or when they are not able to, that they make up the time.
Help to get your son or daughter used to working for 2 and a half hours without music or their phone.
Get your son or daughter to organise their flashcards and notes around each text's themes, characters, plots and quotes.

Talk to your son or daughter about the texts that they are studying

Watch adaptations of the texts of plays on film with them.
Test your son or daughter on their flash cards and quotations
Let your child teach you about a topic or theme from one of their texts

How will my son or daughter learn so many quotations?

Your son or daughter will need to learn a lot of quotations! Here are some tips and strategies that they may find useful:

Choose short, multipurpose quotations that cover more than one character and/or theme – it will save them from learning more in the long run. Mrs Smith and Mr Sprakes can help them to choose the quotes with the most value.
Don’t try to memorise too many new quotes at once – stick to 5 at a time.
Get them to put them on post‐it notes or flash cards and stick them around the house where they’ll see them (the back of the bathroom door, or a bedroom mirror is a good one...).
Get them to draw cartoons, sketches or symbols to help them remember them – especially if the quotes contain imagery.
Get them to act them out
Read, cover, say and write, check, repeat. This really works but takes determination as it obviously gets very repetitive but that is the
Get them to annotate each with quote with inferences, and the effects of language and structure
Remind them to aim for little and often. 5 minutes, twice a day will make them stick permanently, rather than cramming.
Remind them to use the quotes in practice essays – it will give them more meaning. That’s the whole point of learning them.
Repeat, repeat, repeat – once they’ve memorised a quotation, they need to return to it so that they don’t forget it. Test your son or daughter regularly.

How Can I Support My Child’s Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar?

There is an increased emphasis on spelling, punctuation and grammar (SPAG) in the new English GCSEs. It now counts for 5% in English Literature.

Read with your child

You do not necessarily need to sit down and have your child read to you, but reading the same book and then discussing what you both thought of it is very useful and lots of fun too.

Encourage your son or daughter to proof‐read every piece of writing they do at home

Get your son or daughter to independently check that they've used capital letters and full stops and identify spelling errors in their work ‐ and then encourage them to correct them.

If you then want to check their work, please don't identify every spelling error. Focus on three of four key words first.

Watch TV and films with subtitles

This is great for if your son or daughter is not always secure with spelling.

They can watch anything ‐ not just 'English'y things

It also works brilliantly for revising texts such as Othello ‐ it will bring the script to life and help them to understand the language.

Word of the day

Pick a 'word of the day' or week, and use the word in conversation as many times as you can that day or week ‐ you could even make a game of it.

Wordthink.com and Dictionary.com and many other websites offer a word of the day and its definition(s). You can also sign up to have a daily vocabulary word delivered to your email inbox from oxforddictionaries.com, or use apps such as Word of the Day on your phone.

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