Reflections on Summer 2018 Eduqas papers: GCSE English Literature Component 1
We’re reflecting on this summer’s papers by summarising some of the main points from the principal examiners' reports. This time it’s the turn of GCSE English Literature Component 1.
The summer series is now over and it is time for centres to reflect on what has gone before and continue to move forward. An excellent way to get an overview of the papers is to read the Principal Examiner Reports. In this blog, I will summarise the key points from this summer’s exams. For a more detailed overview please go to our English Literature website and read the full reports here.
Component 1 begins with the extract question. All of the texts were attempted but you win no prizes for guessing which texts were the most popular! Macbeth inched ahead of Romeo and Juliet this year but it was still a pretty even split. Tracking is key in the extract question. Candidates that tracked carefully through the text did not go far wrong. While it is very useful to place the extract in the context of the play, candidates can waste far too much time doing this. A sentence or two is all that is required before moving on to answer the question. Candidates should make sure they use short, sharp quotations, there is no need to copy out swathes of text, especially as time is so tight! Close examination of the language and imagery will move responses up into the top bands but please avoid the dreaded feature spotting. And remember, ‘making it flow’ is not a thing.
A short note on context before we move on to the essay question. Context is not assessed in the extract question. Candidates should concentrate on the words in front of them and not get distracted by contextual details that will not add to their marks.
The essay questions all worked well across the texts. Tracking is still key here, a character’s involvement does not necessarily end with their death and candidates should try and track characters/themes across the whole text. SPAG is assessed in this question and candidates would do well to spend 5 minutes at the end carefully proof reading. The advice I always used to give was to ‘top and tail’ essays. A few minutes at the beginning formulating a careful plan and a few minutes at the end checking spellings is time well spent. It is also really important for candidates to remember the question! It sounds obvious but sometimes candidates can panic and write about everything they know rather than what the question is asking them to focus on. Candidates should try and pick out 4 or 5 key points across the text that answers the question and then develop that plan into an essay.
At the risk of sounding like a stuck record, tracking continues to be a key aspect in the poetry anthology question. The first poem is printed for candidates and this is an ideal time for close analysis of language, imagery and effects. Avoid feature spotting and avoid empty phrases. If a candidate cannot think of anything meaningful to say about structure they are better off avoiding it entirely rather than grasping at straws of meanings. No examiner was ever impressed by knowing how many times the word ‘and’ is repeated or whether there are 4 long lines and 5 short lines in a poem! As I have said in previous blogs, a candidate can go a long way by answering three questions on any poem. What’s it about? What is it REALLY about? How do you know? Context is assessed in this question and on the whole this was done well. Irrelevancy is still the biggest obstacle. We have produced a series of resources to help centres with this aspect of the specification.
The second part of the question allowed candidates to choose their own poem and then compare it with the printed poem. There were lots of well supported, well-chosen and well discussed poems in evidence. Taking the time to plan was important, this question comes at the end of a long examination and tiredness will be beginning to creep in. A few minutes picking out points of comparison ensures focus on the question and a focussed comparison. While it can be argued that there are no ‘wrong’ poems to choose, it is definitely the case that some are more right than others! Shoe horning one learnt poem into a conflict box did not always work and candidates should ensure they have a detailed knowledge of a range of poems from the anthology.
In a future blog I’ll be looking at Component 2.
