Exam Tips

Below are some tips the Examination Board has come up with to help you answer Unit 1:

Tackling the Contextual Linking question - Victorian Literature

1. Devote a third to half of your answer to analysing the passage, but remember that the most successful candidates weave their comments on the extract with their wider reading comparisons.
2. Ensure your response links to ALL THREE genres covered by your wider reading: poetry, prose and drama.
3. Move beyond the story by using relevant quotations and exploring the ways writers use form, structure and language to create effects in your wider reading texts.

Note that the extracts used in this question will relate to one of at least four key areas. These are:

• ideas of progress: industry and empire;
• the position of women in Victorian society;
• social problems: urban poverty and the working class;
• evolving attitudes: culture, religion and science.

Question 1 Revision Activity

Take the topic list (above). Match one bit of wider reading for each genre to each topic.

Top 10 tips to construct an essay for LITA1A

1.       Read the background information very carefully at the beginning of the question. It will give you the context of the piece – the genre (letter, poem, novel, newspaper article, diary entry…), the date it was written, a little information about who the writer was and an introduction to the extract. Use this information in your answer.

2.       Re-read the question. It’s always the same:

How does the writer present his/her thoughts and feelings about aspects of Victorian life?

How far is the extract similar to and different from your wider reading in Victorian literature? You should consider the writers’ choices of form, structure and language, as well as subject matter.

3.       Read the extract really carefully, line by line, making sure you understand the basic meaning – it’s easy to misread when you’re under pressure, but it’s worth allowing time for this.

4.       Introduction – a couple of sentences on what the piece is about, referring to the background information (writer, genre, context, date) and picking up a key point about the writer’s thoughts and feelings about the aspect of Victorian life addressed here, such as his/her outrage about the introduction of the railways, role of women, treatment of children, Victorian morality, education… You could bring in the titles of your wider reading texts here if you link your play, novel and poems particularly well with the theme.

5.       Dive straight into language analysis of the extract. Look really carefully at the first sentence and pick up a point to analyse, such as the use of the collective personal pronoun ‘we’ to draw the audience into the text. Consider who the audience is and the intended effect on them.

6.       As you work through the text, make sure you comment on form, structure and language.

·  e.g. form – the silhouette of the text on the page - sentence structure, line length, rhythm, rhyme (if poetry), paragraph length (e.g. effect of one-word paragraph), use of dialogue, commas, dashes, exclamation marks;

·  structure – more of an x-ray of how the writer constructs meaning, using the form to give general information, build tension, use of description, changes of mood, juxtapostition of ideas, reflection, conclusion;

·  language – grammar – use of personal pronoun, rhetorical devices, imperatives, imagery, symbolism, connotations, emotive language, negative language, positive language.

7.       Throughout, suggest what the writer is doing with all these techniques – expressing indignation, provoking the reader, proving a point, moving the reader to action…

8.       Move on to your wider reading. Link to the main issue you have identified in the text. Use a quotation from your wider reading and compare with a quotation from the extract, choosing one that expresses thoughts and feelings similar to those in the extract.

9.       Second wider reading text. Choose a quotation that contrasts with the thoughts and feelings in the extract, contrasting with a quotation from the extract.

10.   Do the same with your third wider reading text. As long as you make a poetry, prose and drama link, you can mention other wider reading texts, too, if appropriate. At the end, come back to the main thoughts and feelings of the writer that you identified in your introduction.

Tackling the Poetry question

• Construct a balanced debate around the view given in the question, including poems that support the view given and poems that don't. If you read closely you'll be able to evaluate the complex effects created in ambiguous poems containing elements that support the view together with those that don't!
• Don't include too much context - lots of biographical details are not important here.
• Include in your debate:
• analysis of the named poem, with comments on subject matter as well as form, structure and language.
• links to other poems with similar subject matter or with similar style to the named poem.
• a counter-argument based on those elements of the poet's writing not present in the named poem.

Poetry Revision Activity

Using the indicative content of a question paper as a model, take a question on your set poetry text and the contents page.
Divide the poems into four categories:
Those which support the given view;
Those which could be used to argue against the given view;
Those which are ambiguous and could be used to argue either way;
Those which have nothing to do with the given view and so would be irrelevant to the question.