Exam skills and assessment overview quiz - Edexcel GCSE English Literature quiz

2 hours 15 minutes, 50%

1 hour 45 minutes, 50%

1 hour 45 minutes, 40%

2 hours, 60%

1 hour 45 minutes, 50%

2 hours 15 minutes, 60%

2 hours 15 minutes, 50%

1 hour 30 minutes, 40%

AO1 (37%)

AO3 (16%)

AO4 (5%)

AO2 (42%)

The post-1914 essay (Component 1 Section B)

The Shakespeare question in Component 1 Section A

The unseen poetry comparison in Component 2

The anthology poetry comparison question

About 5% of the whole GCSE

Between 20 and 25%

Roughly 10% at the most

Comfortably over half of it

The post-1914 essay

The 19th-century novel whole-text part

The unseen poetry comparison

The anthology comparison

A separate, detailed history paragraph placed at the very start of the essay

As much general background information about the period as you can possibly fit into it

Only a detailed account of the writer's own life story and biography

Embedded in analysis, proportionate to its weighting, and relevant to a specific line

The Shakespeare question and the 19th-century novel question

The anthology poetry question and the unseen poetry comparison question

The post-1914 essay question and the unseen poetry comparison question

The anthology poetry question and the post-1914 essay question

Spend most of the time on the novel question and then rush all of the poetry tasks

Give broadly equal time to each of the four tasks, since they carry similar marks

Skip the unseen poetry comparison entirely if you start to run short of time

Spend the whole of the time on the anthology poetry comparison question

Naming as many different literary devices as you can possibly spot anywhere in the extract given

Writing the longest possible answer that you can manage in the time you are given

Explaining the effect of a method, not just naming it, because AO2 is the largest objective

Adding a paragraph of historical context to every single question on the paper