GCSE English Literature Week 4 Exam Preparation Tips

How and why to plan

Instead of the usual ‘welcome’, I want to start this week’s blog post by saying that I used to HATE planning. I vividly remember getting told by teachers to plan in all of my essay subjects, but it took me a very long time to actually give it a go. I used to think it was a waste of time – why use up some of your writing time, of which you don’t have very much anyway, to do a plan? I didn’t see the point, especially because timing wasn’t my forte in exams. “So why are you writing an entry on why we should be planning?”, I hear you ask. Although I’m not normally one to accept defeat, I have to admit that planning quickly became one of my most valuable tools in GCSE English once I started doing it. Now, I’m not here to tell you what to do. If you’ve tried planning and it doesn’t work for you, then that’s fine and I’m not going to force you to do it. However, I would recommend that those of you who don’t believe in it give it a go. And don’t just give it a go, give it a go in the correct way.

That’s right! There are good and bad types of planning, at least for me. And planning is much more than just something to do in 3 minutes in the exam hall. It is my most effective method of revision, even now as I’m revising for my university exams.

Planning as a form of revision

One thing English students often complain about is not knowing how to revise, and I sympathise with this. It’s a problem I still have now, because English isn’t the same as subjects like maths and science, so you shouldn’t revise it in the same way. Planning as a form of revision is a really effective way of making sure you have a well-rounded view of each of your texts and forces you to consider your opinions on the text and form a line of argument. It ensures that your revision is completely focused on the exam, and the actual questions you’re going to have to answer on the day. You’re not just revising to get a general idea of the book: you’re revising with your end goal in sight. And purposeful revision is the best kind of revision! Firstly, you need to know the kind of questions you’re planning for and compile a list. Have a look through your notes to find any potential questions your teacher might have given you or any questions you’ve done in mocks. Then get on to the exam board website to look at past papers and copy down all the questions that have come up in previous years – even the tricky ones, you want to be as well-prepared as possible! Once you have this list, you might want to add a few questions of your own just to make sure that you’re covering all the potential themes and characters: the questions are quite formulaic, so this shouldn’t be too hard to do.

Now comes the hard part: planning. You want to make sure you’re using the assessment objectives as the basis of your plans so that you’re jumping through the right hoops in the exam. The weighting of the AOs for each question can be found on the exam board website. To create your plan, use all of your resources like notes, textbooks, revision guides, the internet and (of course) your brain! Keep in mind the assessment objectives to make sure that you’re planning for every aspect of your response.

You should find that at GCSE, much of the content you could use for each answer will overlap. This means that although the first few plans will take a while, the subsequent ones should be quite quick to put together as you can reuse the arguments you’ve already constructed.

Once you have planned for as many questions as possible, it’s time to learn them if you have time. I would advise condensing your plans into a few bullet points on a flashcard and learning these off by heart. The main reason for this is confidence: there’s nothing worse than opening the exam paper and having no idea what to write. Planning well and learning your plans as much as you can will give you a springboard to use in your exam and ensure that you don’t blank or freak out (everyone’s worst nightmare!).

Planning in the exam

If you’ve learnt your plans well, planning in the exam should be very quick. It won’t, as my year 11 self originally thought, take away much time from your writing at all. Your plan can simply act as a refresher, as a quick reminder at the top of the page of the direction your essay is going in so that you don’t get distracted.

This is the revision technique I suggest to everyone, as I truly believe it is the one that helped me most when preparing for my GCSEs, A-levels and even my university exams now. Good planning is a skill worth investing in, so I hope it works for all of you!

Have any questions about how to prepare for your GCSE exams? Having problems with any hard to understand content or tricky past exam questions? Then ask Addie. Addie will be hosting a series of Q&A webinars in the 2 weeks before final exams. Post your questions here, and Addie will answer them in these sessions.