Experienced teacher, examiner and Cambridge author, Elizabeth Whittome shares her top tips on active revision for English. No matter how your students are taking assessments this year, these tips can help develop existing knowledge and, most importantly, build confidence.
Imagine
Think of yourself sitting at a desk in the exam room. You are in a crowded hall, but you are all alone. You have no teacher or friend to share with, no smartphone, no internet and no texts. All you have is a pen and an empty page to write on – and of course, an exam paper full of questions to do in a limited time.
It sounds frightening! But the advice that follows will give you the right tools to tackle the challenges which arise. Most exams in Literature are written on paper with a pen – all very low tech – so you need to revise in the same way. Revision must be active and positive. Reading your texts again is not enough!
Prepare
Gather as many past questions on your set texts as you can. Study past papers, ask you teacher, get contributions from friends and make some up yourself. Write each one separately on a slip of paper, then fold them up so that you can’t see the wording of each question and put them into a a small box or similar. Shake them up – no peeping! (If you are revising poems and prose and drama, then have a similar number for each genre and keep them in separate boxes.)
Practice
- Take out one question
- Without using your text, your smartphone or your friend’s help, make a relevant essay plan in answer to the question you have selected, using a pen and paper
- Write the plan as quickly as you can: introduction, main body with five good points, conclusion
- If you use a spider plan/mind map, number the ideas as above, because an essay is ultimately a linear form
Follow up and review
- If you have difficulty with a particular question (probably the main body of the essay), try to work out why – perhaps you need to revise that aspect of the text again
- Work out some useful examples to support each of your main ideas
- Ask your teacher to review your work and ask a friend for comments
- Use online resources freely
The more often you create an essay plan in this way, using pen and paper, the more confident you will be of handling the demands of the exam! After a while you will be able to do the planning in your head, saving even more precious time. GOOD LUCK!
Author of Cambridge International AS and A Level Literature in English, Elizabeth is a poetry enthusiast and has shared passion for poetry in our teaching a poem blog post.
