English Literature Exam Skills
25th April 2010 • University of London Union • 10:30-4:30
Want to do well in your English Literature AS or A Level this summer?
Debate Chamber can give you the skills and confidence you need to achieve those high grades.
This intensive one-day course will be divided into four sessions that collectively meet all four assessment objectives covered by AQA, Edexcel and OCR exam boards.
Constructing an Argument
Think you’ve got the material but not sure how to put your point across? During this session you’ll learn how to construct coherent, logical arguments that really answer the question. Interactive workshops will teach you how to write the perfect introduction and conclusion, to get the most out of your quotations and to use strategies for comparing texts.
Talking About Prose
To impress examiners you need to know the many technical devices relating to form, structure and language that writers use to shape meaning. This section gives you the critical terminology you need to analyse grammar and syntax, tone and diction, prose style and genre intelligently and closely.
Talking About Poetry
This section focuses on the poetic devices of verse forms, metre, rhythm and sound, again testing you through group discussion to assess and understand the different ways writers use such tools to shape meaning.
Literature in Context
A text isn’t just about the words on the page. To achieve highly at A Level and make your answer stand out, an awareness of the context in which texts were produced and received is crucial. You’ll have the opportunity to choose between two specialist sessions on Shakespeare and his Contemporaries and Literature in the Nineteenth Century, in which you’ll be challenged to relate the texts you’ve studied in these periods to additional contextual information provided by our expert tutors. These sessions include a lecture, group work, and opportunity to ask questions.
Debate Chamber English Tutors
Megan Murray-Pepper
Megan has a first class BA in English Language and Literature from Balliol College, Oxford, and has just completed her MA in Shakespearean Studies at King’s College London, where she is currently embarking on doctoral research on global adaptations of Shakespeare and early modern travel narratives. Megan’s other research interests include sensation novels, cultural theory, and the dynamics of film adaptation.
Paul Earlie
Paul graduated with a BA in English Literature and French from Trinity College, Dublin, before completing an MPhil in European Literature and Culture at the University of Cambridge. He is currently reading for a DPhil at Balliol College, Oxford, examining the links between deconstruction and Freudian psychoanalysis. Though his main interests lie in continental philosophy, other academic interests include literary theory, European modernism and postwar political fiction.
Book a Place
Please note this course is only suitable for students expecting a B or above in their A or AS Level exam this summer.
The fee for the English Literature Exam Skills Session is £85 per student. If more than one exam skills session is booked together then the cost is £155 per student for two events or £195 per student for three. Places will be allocated on a first come, first served basis. Debate Chamber offers a limited number of full and partial bursaries for students who would otherwise have difficulty attending. To book a place please call 0845 519 4827, email info@debatechamber.com or fill out the form below.
If you are an English A Level teacher interested in holding an Exam Skills session in your school, please click here.