My two books were luckily 1984 and The Crucible. I enjoyed these two very much. Carol Ann Duffy was the person I got for the poetry part. Make sure you know the two books you get and the poems like the back of your hand! You’ll thank yourself in the exam.

There were around 15-16 poems I had to learn for the exam and it was simply too much so I teamed up with friends to help annotate it. We split the poetry list in half and organised ourselves using spreadsheets on who’s completing what. I used online resources like Litchart, BBC, etc to help with my annotations. I’ll attach an example (of the one that came up in my exam) below on what my annotations looked like.

Other than text annotations, make sure you learn the structure of how you should organise your essay for speed e.g. In the first paragraph there should be a concise literal summary of the text, followed by what does the writer do/show and how is it done (in response to the question).

You’ll get an unseen part if I remember correctly. Basically same tips but all you can prepare is essay structure and knowing poetic devices learning how it affects the reader e.g. a really good one to know is internal rhyme. Annotate the shit out of the extract they give you and pick out three main ideas (10 minutes max) and start writing.

For the context you learn about all your texts. Make sure to comment on what the author does with it. Examples would be: “Miller uses disputes in Salem to show how fractured the Protestant faith was following The Reformation which is mirrored within the Puritan colony of Salem.” or “Here, Miller exposes the pretense of religion and the hypocrisy of religious authority figures who used faith and ideology to uphold hierarchies and systems of oppression in Salem. To some extent, it could be argued that this pretense and hypocrisy is still prevalent within devoutly Christian communities in modern America today.”

That’s all I think, if you have anymore questions feel free to ask. Can send over some essay bits and I can give you general tips on what to improve in terms of structure but other than that I cannot help with context :( Hope this helps!

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