How to Get a 9 in English Literature

Getting a good grade in all of your GCSE subjects is important, but if you want to open the door to as many opportunities as possible in the future, English Literature is certainly one of the core subjects to focus on.

The subject itself helps to improve your communication, critical analysis skills, and writing abilities, which is particularly appealing to employers looking for candidates with a diverse range of expertise. Whether it’s a job in media, public relations, teaching, or law, English Literature can be the foundation that equips you with the essential skills needed for success.

Tutoring as a Method

With this in mind, we wanted to give you some advice about how to get a 9 in English Literature, starting with a method that has been growing more and more popular in recent years. According to a recent study, the online tutoring market is due to hit a market price of $60.6 billion in the next two years, with more students than ever seeking personalised help to achieve top grades.

This is not really a surprise, given the numerous benefits that are often difficult to achieve in a traditional classroom setting. For one thing, online tutoring provides you with personalised attention, with a tailored learning plan and an opportunity to focus specifically on problem areas.

Private tutors can also provide in-depth feedback on your essays, focusing on your structure, argument development, as well as your clarity and style – which will be particularly important for English Literature, where effective communication of your ideas is critical. With help also available for text analysis and contextual understanding, this could be a beneficial avenue to explore if you want to distinguish yourself above the rest.

Other Effective Study Methods

It’s also important to make sure you’re working from the best GCSE revision books for GCSE. Whether it’s CGP GCSE English Literature Complete Revision & Practice or Collins GCSE English Language and Literature All-in-One Revision & Practice, you need to find a praised piece of text that gives you a consolidated guide for both language and literature, with a particular emphasis on exam techniques.

You then need to take time to self-study these texts – utilising online courses on platforms like Udemy or Coursera – and pay close attention in group study. School lessons will also be important when it comes to sharing and learning new ideas and techniques.

Exam Preparation and Techniques

One of the reasons school lessons are useful is because of their focus on exam preparation. In these lessons, you can practice using past papers – which are similarly available on websites like AQA and Edexcel – in a group setting, helping you to grow familiar with the exam format and the mark schemes. Teachers can also help you to develop strategies for managing your time during the exam itself – with in-class exercises that require timed responses.

Once again, these are things you can do yourself through self study or online tutoring, but being in a classroom environment with your peers and highly-qualified teachers is always going to be beneficial if you’re looking for the best grade possible.

Improving Literary Analysis

When it comes to what exactly you’ll be learning, of course, English Literature is all about literary analysis. With this in mind, you will need to familiarise yourself with common literary devices including imagery, symbolism, metaphors, similes, foreshadowing, and irony – taking time to consider their impact on various texts and what they add to the overall theme of the work.

Critical theory approaches like feminist criticism, marxist criticism, or psychoanalytic criticism will also be important, as it will prove your ability to engage with texts on a deeper level and analyse not only the content of the work, but also the social, political, and psychological contexts in which the work exists.

Reading Beyond the Syllabus

To do this, you will need to read beyond the syllabus. If you want to stand out as an English Literature student – and give yourself the best chance of understanding those contexts mentioned above – it’s critical to read a variety of literature and revision books, working to enhance your comprehension and overall analytical skills.

The most popular classic novels –including Dickens, Orwell, and Austen – poetry collections, and non-fiction essays, for instance, can all be useful when it comes to insights on literary themes and symbols, and they will do well to prepare you for the more complex discussions required for achieving that 9 grade.

Conclusion

Speaking of which, we’ll finish by saying that, while the road ahead is going to be difficult, achieving the 9 grade is possible if you put the work in now.

Through a combination of tutoring and self-study, you have the opportunity to engross yourself in the English language and fully understand the world of literature before you put pen to paper. So long as you do that, you can put yourself in the best position to earn that 9 grade, and really, that’s all you can ask for. Good luck!

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