Do Better: Reach for the (A) stars in English - Part One

By Herman Park

English can be tricky. It’s one where remembering facts and figures becomes worthless, and the matter of true intelligence put to question. So how can we succeed in such a complex, demanding and unpredictable subject?

When it comes to the exam, many will have no clue in what the question is going to ask. The most they can be sure of is what book or poem or article they are going to be asked about.

Of course, there will be ‘unseen’ ones, and they do like to make it more puzzling by giving you a bunch of poems and articles in a so-called ‘pre-release booklet’ to study and only pick a few to test you on.

But they aren’t just being tricky for the sake of it. They’re trying to test you, to really challenge you and to understand how good your skills are.

The kind of skills you are tested on don’t come naturally, but you can help yourself to pick them up by understanding a few things…

1. Read, read, read…

Don’t be scared of text. Read more and more, little by little, because a lot of little is what you call a lot. This article is a good start!

Reading is the simplest, easiest and laziest thing you can do. If you do it regularly enough (rather than, perhaps, going out to play disappointing football matches with your posse) you are far more likely to succeed in the exam. How about that?

You don’t need physical prowess or a will of steel. Just to sit down on a comfortable chair, in a nice, relaxing, squeak-less environment and delve deeper into what other people have written about.

Whether it’s a novel, a blog, a newspaper… it really doesn’t matter. But preferably, you’d want to read things that are relevant to your GCSEs such as reading Twelfth Night, Macbeth, or Of Mice and Men and highlighting sentences that are memorable, and the ones that do deserve to be used as quotations in your coursework and examinations.

2. Ask loads of questions

Talk with your classmates, enquire your teachers as many times as you want about what you aren’t sure about. A confusing word, a misleading theme, a paradox or just about anything that you don’t perfectly understand. This will give you a firmer grip on the book, article or whatever you’re studying and will certainly help when it comes to your exam. But if you just choose to be the quiet little mouth in the midst of harsh chilly forest that is GCSE English, you will be caught by the cat next door in a split second.

You won’t look stupid. It is more than likely that others have the same kind of questions as you, and if they don’t they’re probably not aware that they don’t understand that part of the text. Be brave in opening up doors of opportunity and possibilities. Be proud of asking, proud of what you learned and proud of what you’ve helped others to understand.

Read part two and discover how writing can be the key to expression and how to prepare for the exam.