Get exam ready for GCSE English Literature: Part 4 – developing a personal, critical voice
12 April 2024
Lydia Ridding, English Subject Advisor
This blog was originally published in 2017.
This is the fourth and final blog in a short series designed to support you with last minute exam practice for the OCR GCSE (9-1) English Literature exams – a recap of key skills and tips to remember when you’re in the exam hall. It follows on from the three earlier ones which focused on:
What do we mean by a personal, critical voice?
Suggest your students ask themselves the following questions when they respond to an extract or even a quotation:
- How does this make me feel?
- Is this theme relevant to me now?
- In my opinion, what is powerful here about the:
- plot development
- character development
- language
- structure
- style?
- How do I react to this in a received context (now)?
- How might I have reacted to this if I had been receiving it at the time it was written?
Here you can think about what Assessment Objectives call developing an ‘informed personal response’. In other words what effect does the text have on you? Remember that the word ‘informed’ means that you need to relate these thoughts to the language of the text. Try thinking about this in relation to an unseen poem or short prose or drama extract:
- What do you think is particularly effective?
- Are there alternative ways in which the poem could be understood or interpreted?
Informed personal response
AO1 is a weighted assessment objective and requires candidates to:
Maintain a critical style and develop an informed personal response.
There are two elements to this bullet point, maintaining a critical style and developing an informed critical response. The challenge for your students is how to do both: to write in a reasonably formal way, using appropriate terminology, and also to develop that personal response.
In many ways ‘personal response’ means trying to express what the text might mean to an audience or a reader today. It is related to the idea of context – particularly the ‘context of reception’: how the text relates to our understanding of the world. The word ‘informed’ means that it is necessary for candidates to refer closely to the text in justifying these interpretations.
Although Shakespeare was writing over 400 years ago, people still believe he has something to say about our contemporary world. Yes, the contexts in which the characters exist are different, but human nature probably hasn’t changed that much. We still experience the same emotions – love, jealousy, hope, ambition and so on – as human beings have always done.
Do you think the play does have something to tell us about attitudes and relationships today? Students could think about which events in their play most relate to the modern or contemporary world. Perhaps they could imagine a similar event happening today, or they have experienced similar feelings in their own lives. Or they may be reminded of events that have been shown in a film, or on TV, or video, or on the news.
Suggested activities
Students could think about the following themes from the play they have studied:
- Prejudice in The Merchant of Venice
- The effects of ambition in Macbeth
- Deception and trickery in Much Ado about Nothing
- Fate in Romeo and Juliet.
Then:
- Write a few sentences about how the play addresses this theme.
- Explain how this theme is presented, or dramatised, in one specific moment in the play. Include a couple of short quotations.
- Write a few sentences about what we learn about the theme from the way it is presented in the play.
In conclusion
We hope that some of the ideas, reflections and suggested activities presented in this series of blogs have resonated with your own teaching or have given you food for thought when preparing your students for the exams.
Stay connected
Let us know if you’re finding this series of blogs helpful, and do get in touch if you have any questions. You can leave comments below, email us at English@ocr.org.uk or message us on X (formerly Twitter) @OCR_English. You can also sign up to receive email updates to keep up-to-date with the latest news, updates and resources.
About the author
Prior to joining OCR in June 2023, Lydia spent 20 years working in a range of sixth form colleges across the country, teaching A Level and GCSE qualifications in English. She was a coursework moderator with OCR for a number of years and has an MA in Victorian Studies from Birkbeck University.
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