What Are the Changes to GCSE in English Language and English Literature?

The following document aims to provide you with information about assessment changes in GCSE Mathematics, English Language and English Literature. We also aim to provide you with some useful techniques to help students revise effectively for their GCSEs. Students have approximately 8 months left to prepare for their examinations and changes to assessment system mean that it is imperative that students know how to revise effectively and are proactive and independent in their studies. Targeted and early revision is extremely important in order to ensure that students are able to recall all of the information they will need in their GCSE examinations.

What are the changes to GCSE in English Language and English Literature?

What are the changes to GCSE in Mathematics?

How do we actually revise?

In order to understand how we revise, we need to understand a little about how memory works. If we understand how and why memories are retained we can go some way towards understanding how we can boost memory and help our students to be able to recall the information or skills they will need in their GCSE examinations.

Memory

There are two different types of memory: short-term memory and long-term memory.

Short-term memory only lasts between 15-30 seconds. It holds the information we’re currently working with or using for thinking.

Long-term memory is the type of memory we need to be successful in exams. It has a physical presence in the brain. When we receive information or practise a skill, neurons make new physical connections and synapses, a bit like a pathway. The brain stores that pathway and a new long-term memory is formed. The more times we repeat the skill or receive the information we need, the stronger the pathway gets. This means that we can recall that information more easily-something that is vital for success in examinations.

Unfortunately our brain cannot store every piece of information in our long-term memory and if we have not used the information our brain will “supplant” existing memories with new ones.This is why revision is so important.

Spaced Revision vs Massed Revision

The Forgetting Curve

After we receive information, scientists have shown that we forget a large proportion of the information even 10 minutes after we have received the information. This loss of information can be plotted on a graph and is known as the Forgetting Curve.

The only way to overcome the forgetting curve is to practise/revise/revisit the learning at regular intervals, e.g. immediately after the learning has taken place, a week after the learning has taken place and a month after the learning has taken place. We can use these time intervals to help plan out a revision timetable.

Try to map out all of the topics you will need to study and revisit the information at regular intervals.

Remember to introduce new topics and revisit those using the same time interval patterns (see the example revision timetable for more information).

Some Revision Strategies

•Make revision cards

•Draw a mind map

•Mnemonics

•Associate information with pictures or stories

•Create revision posters

Revision Cards

Leitner System

In this method flashcards are sorted into groups according to how well the learner knows each one in the Leitner's learning box. The learners try to recall the solution written on a flashcard. If they succeed, they send the card to the next group. If they fail, they send it back to the first group. Each succeeding group has a longer period of time before the learner is required to revisit the cards.

Example-Three boxes

Suppose there are 3 boxes of cards called "Box 1", "Box 2" and "Box 3". The cards in Box 1 are the ones that the learner often makes mistakes with, and Box 3 contains the cards that they know very well. They might choose to study the Box 1 cards once a day, Box 2 every 3 days, and the Box 3 cards every 5 days. If they look at a card in Box 1 and get the correct answer, they "promote" it to Box 2. A correct answer with a card in Box 2 "promotes" that card to Box 3. If they make a mistake with a card in Box 2 or Box 3, it gets "demoted" to the first box, which forces the learner to study that card more often.

The advantage of this method is that the learner can focus on the most difficult flashcards, which remain in the first few groups. The result is, ideally, a reduction in the amount of study time needed.

Memory Tricks

• Repetition, repetition, repetition: the more you go back over something the better you’ll remember it.
• Write things out: this helps you get your head around it.
• Read things out to yourself: the more you say it the better.
• Learn key words and phrases: if you have these you can build around them.
• Use acronyms: take the first letter of a set of words you need to learn and form a word with them. This will help you recall the words later.
• Use acrostics: the same as acronyms, only this time make up a silly sentence with the first letters. Once you have the first letter you will remember the full word.
• Use rhyme: rhyme complicated sentences and you’ll never forget them.
• Use pictures: draw little pictures around words or put steps to learn into a picture. Close your eyes and you will see the picture and the words inside.
• Use visualisation: Visualise yourself doing the thing you are trying to remember.
• Use stories: put what you need to learn into a story.
• Use flash cards: a question on one side and the answer on the other can be a great help.

Top Tips

What do you need to revise for English Language and English Literature?

• Read and respond to a 20th Century literary text.
• Descriptive or narrative writing

• Read and respond to questions about a 21st Century non-fiction text
• Read and respond to questions about a 19th Century non-fiction text
• Transactional writing.

• Great Expectations
• Romeo and Juliet

• A Taste of Honey
• Power and Conflict poetry anthology
• Unseen poetry

• Inference and deduction
• How texts are structured in different ways to engage the reader.
• Language techniques e.g. rhetorical questions, alliteration, similes, puns etc.
• How to construct different types of sentences.
• How texts are adapted for different audiences and purposes.
• Comparison skills
• The ability to make evaluative comments about a text.
• Accurate spelling, punctuation and grammar

• PEA
• Poetic techniques and terminology
• How to compare poems

• Quotations for key characters in ‘Great Expectations’
• Key themes in ‘Great Expectations’
• Key context information in ‘Great Expectations’

• Quotations for key characters in ‘Romeo and Juliet’
• Key themes in ‘Romeo and Juliet’
• Key context information in ‘Romeo and Juliet’

• Quotations for key characters in ‘A Taste of Honey’
• Key themes in ‘A Taste of Honey’
• Key contextual information about the play

• Key quotations from each of the 15 poems
• Contextual information about the poems.

• Be able to read, analyse and understand the meaning of an unseen poem

What do you need to revise for Maths?

Maths Revision Resources

All students are given a unique Mathswatch login (for which allows them to complete their weekly homework they are set. Through this website there is access to a video clip for each of the 219 skills for the whole Maths curriculum split into Higher and Foundation. These videos along with their shorter versions, '1 minute maths', provide invaluable revision of the core topics but for these to be effective it needs to be an ongoing process between now and the exam, reviewing material covered in class and revising other topics they may have forgotten, don't fully understand or just need recapping. Teachers can provide help with what to cover and when.

English Revision Resources

Students will be provided with a CGP revision workbook for EDUCAS GCSE English Language. However, some additional workbooks/revision guides may be useful.

Some suggestions are:

York Notes for ‘Great Expectations’

York notes for ‘Romeo and Juliet’

CGP revision guide for AQA GCSE English Literature ‘Power and Conflict’ cluster

Useful Revision Websites for English Literature

Useful Revision Websites for English Language

The BBC Bitesize website has a variety of useful links, activities and videos that students may find useful to support their studies and revsion. The website address for this is: