Gcse tips & advice

English literature:

English literature is my favourite subject!

Youtube
YouTube holds videos from some of the best English teachers out there! My favourites are Stacey Raey, Mr salles, and Mr Bruff. They all have videos on their channels with high level analysis and explain things in a different way that I'd never considered before. They also teach you the books/poems context really well. Stacey Raey also has an Instagram account with quotes and live streams. I can't recommend her enough!

Poem mindmaps:
For the poems I made mindmaps on all 15 so that I had a page for each poem and all the information was in one place. On the poster I had context, 3-5 quotes, method, structure, and form.

Flashcards for quotes
I used physical flashcards for my texts. I wrote out around 40 quotes for each text I studied and got my sibling to test me on them. I would get her to test me every night and walking to school. For the poems I used Quizlet as I had about 70-80 quotes (5 quotes from each poem with some extras). I really recommend writing out the quotes so you can recall them quickly and you will recall the analysis alongside it.

Know your context
Knowing context really helped me as it meant I had something different to write about than most people at my school. My school didn't really teach context. Context boosts up your grade and makes you seem more knowledgable about the text/poem. Use youtube for this!

Base quotes around methods
The best quotes have particular methods to write about. Especially for poetry! I would pick quotes that fit a character or theme but also if they had a set method if i could.

What not to do
I made posters for every theme and character. Do not do this! It took up too much time and the themes I wrote about didn't appear anyway. Instead make sure you know/ write down quotes for the main themes, but don't spend ages learning set analysis as it might not come up. Instead I recommend you briefly jot down words to describe the character and then find some quotes to match. Also make sure you have quotes to fit the main themes.

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Currently working on updates :) the best is yet to come❤️I hope it's helpful so far and I'd appreciate any feedback❤️