A-Level English Literature Week 5 Exam Preparation Tips

It’s one week until you are writing your English Literature exam, and chances are you are feeling STRESSED. It’s completely natural to feel nervous and anxious in the next few days, however, we want to combat these anxieties as much as possible. Not only is it an unpleasant feeling, but it can also interfere with your exam performance. Thus, today we are going to talk about how to make sure that you feel cool, calm and collected on the actual day of your exam.

In the week leading up to your exam, make sure you get 6-8 hours of sleep. Make sure you know exactly where and when the exam will take place and plan out your journey in advance. Always plan to leave much earlier than the journey usually takes in order to avoid the added anxiety of transport delays. Make sure you have everything you need, for example, spare pens, pencils and any other permitted equipment (not sure what else you would need for an English Literature exam but you do you boo).

On the actual day, the first thing you need to remember is that you have prepared for this. If you’ve followed my tips throughout these past five weeks, you will be able to smash these exams! Give yourself a tap on the shoulder and remind yourself of all the hard work you’ve put in. This simple step should calm your nerves significantly.

The next step is to remind yourself that a little bit of stress is normal and sometimes even good. A little bit of stress will increase blood flow, and thereby, oxygen supply to our brains. The result is improved attention, focus, energy and determination. In fact, research shows that the major determining factor in stress outcomes is our mindset. Those who regard exams as an opportunity for growth and self-improvement perform better. Those who view exams as a threat shows decreased performance and effort. Simply ignoring stress and suppressing your emotions is not going to help. Instead, you want to accept the feeling and use it to your advantage. Reframe the narrative by approaching exams as a challenge as opposed to a threat; tell yourself that exams are a great opportunity to show everyone how hard you’ve worked. It sounds wishy-washy, but it actually works.

The experience of stress is a result of our bodies preparing for a challenge. It does this through the sympathetic nervous system (a fancy word for our ‘fight-or-flight’ response) which increases the heart rate, increases blood flow to the muscles, and makes you perspire (how great?!).

However, too much stress is not good.

When we are preparing for a fight, we cannot think straight. Our brain does not know the difference between an actual threat and your exams. Thus, your body is preparing to fight off a bear when, in reality, you are sitting in an exam room writing about Shakespeare. It may be that at this point you would rather take your chances with the bear, but unfortunately, that is unlikely to happen. The first important thing when you walk into the exam room is to take a few, deep, breaths. This sounds like the classic tip and you’re probably sick of hearing about it. But it’s a classic for a reason; breathing increases oxygen supply and has been shown to lower heart rate and stress levels. A lot of the time we focus so much on memorisation and exam room skills that we forget the basics: our physical state. Breathing correctly won’t get you a top mark on its own. However, it would be extremely frustrating to have put in all that effort and trip on the finish line because you were too stressed out. So, in through the nose, out through the mouth and use your belly (belly breathing, also known as diaphragmatic breathing or horizontal breathing). Ten deep breaths will instantly trick your body into thinking it’s not stressed out anymore.

When our body is in a stressed state, we do this thing called narrow framing. Aka tunnel-vision. If we need to fight off a bear, tunnel-vision is great because we need to focus on only one thing. However, when we are writing an English Literature exam, we need to consider all perspectives. Remember how we spoke about regurgitating previously? Yeah, narrow framing is most likely the culprit. Instead, we want to keep our minds open to considering all the useful information we know, not just a sliver of it. This is where our essay plans come in. Hopefully, you will have developed a formulaic approach to writing essays thanks to all your practice paper revision. This is going to massively help you combat narrow framing. After you’ve read the exam question, take a few minutes to make a plan. Use the structure you have developed and adapt it to fit the relevant question. Make sure you know your thesis statement before you start writing and include bullet points of things you want to mention in each section.

It is extremely important that you take a bit of time planning. This will calm your nerves and ensure that your essay will be well-structured, focused, and well-rounded. Also, make sure you read the question carefully; you don't want to end up getting a bad mark because you misinterpreted the question. You’ll kick yourself for it.

When you are making your plan, make sure to include rough timings for each section. You want to ration your time, otherwise, you might end up writing one amazing answer, but nothing for the other questions. If you have to answer 3 separate questions, remove 10 minutes of the total time (5 minutes for planning, 5 minutes for reading through everything at the end) and split the remaining time into three. I recommend using equal amounts of time for each answer (if they are worth equal amounts of marks). Even if you are tempted to allocate more time for an answer you think is more difficult, try to resist. Instead, try to answer the ‘easier’ questions as fast as you can, and if you have time to spare, you can use it on the more difficult sections.

Sometimes you will find yourself going completely blank. There is a lot of pressure and tension surrounding these exams, so it’s not uncommon to have a bit of a brain fart. If this happens, brainstorm words and ideas onto a sheet of rough paper or onto the back page. If you get stuck on a specific section, leave a space and go onto something you can do rather than sitting with the same problem. The information will probably come back to you later – and if it doesn’t, it may not be critical.

The only thing left to do now is to simply write the exam. If you have followed all these tips, I am sure that you will do amazing. Good luck and have fun!

Have any questions about how to prepare for your A-Level exams? Having problems with any hard to understand content or tricky past exam questions? Then ask Klara. Klara will be hosting a series of Q&A webinars in the 2 weeks before final exams. Post your questions here, and Klara will answer them in these sessions.