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We want to help you revise and learn GCSE English and GCSE English Literature to your full potential.

Of Mice and Men: George to Lenny Chapter 1

“Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don’t belong no place. . . . With us it ain’t like that. We got a future. We got somebody to talk to that gives a damn about us. We don’t have to sit in no bar room blowin’ in our jack jus’ because we got no place else to go. If them other guys gets in jail they can rot for all anybody gives a damn. But not us.”

Of Mice and Men: George  in Chapter 1

“Whatever we ain’t got, that’s what you want. God a’mighty, if I was alone I could live so easy. I could go get a job an’ work, an no trouble. No mess at all, and when the end of the month come I could take my fifty bucks and go into town and get whatever I want.”

Of Mice and Men: Lennie in Chapter 3

“We could live offa the fatta the lan’.”

Of Mice and Men: Crooks in Chapter Chapter 4

“S’pose you didn’t have nobody. S’pose you couldn’t go into the bunk house and play rummy ’cause you was black. How’d you like that? S’pose you had to sit out here an’ read books. Sure you could play horseshoes till it got dark, but then you got to read books. Books ain’t no good. A guy needs somebody – to be near him. A guy goes nuts if he ain’t got nobody. Don’t make no difference who the guy is, long’s he’s with you. I tell ya, I tell ya a guy gets too lonely an’ he gets sick.”

Of Mice and Men: Slim in Chapter 6

“Never you mind. A guy got to sometimes.”

Be sure check out our GCSE English Literature learning song, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck “The American Dream”

As part of our FREE character profiles for 12 key GCSE texts. We want to help you revise and learn GCSE English and GCSE English Literature to your full potential.

Mrs. Johnstone: The very poor mother of 7 kids. Mrs. Johnstone was left by the fathers of the kids
Mickey: One of the twins central to the Blood Brothers story, Mickey lives with his mother. Micky falls in love with Linda.
Eddie: One of the twins central to the Blood Brothers story, Eddie lives with a rich foster mother.
Narrator: The narrator of the Blood Brothers Story.
Mrs. Lyons: Eddie’s foster mother. Mrs. Lyons is desperate for Eddie not to meet Mickey.
Linda: Linda falls in Love with Micky
Sammy: Son of Mrs Johnstone, Sammy is a nasty man.

Be sure check out our GCSE English Literature learning song, Blood Brothers by Willy Russell “Careful Mrs. Johnstone”

As part of our FREE character profiles for 12 key GCSE texts. We want to help you revise and learn GCSE English and GCSE English Literature to your full potential.

Link/Dave: Main character in Stone Cold by Robert Swindells.  Link  got his name from the “Thames-link” railway sign. One of his first sites on arriving in London from Bradford or “up north”, as Link refers to it. Link becomes friends with Ginger, but does not 100% trust him.

Shelter: A former sergeant-major who has made it his sick mission to kill all of London’s homeless people. Shelter despises homeless people and thinks  they ‘make the place look untidy.’ Shelter wishes he was still in the army and uses military precision to lure homeless people into his house. He then kills them and hides their body under the floor boards calling them ‘the Camden Horizontals’.

Ginger: More streetwise than Link, a seasoned homless person who befreinds Link in a doorway.

Gail: Journalist reporter who goes undercover to expose the truth behind homelessness.  Gail first meets with Link just after Ginger goes missing. Link is suspicious of Gail’s phone calls home and probing questions.It is only after Shelters arrest that Link finds out Gail’s true identity. Link is very disheartened on finding out and feels used.

Be sure check out our GCSE English Literature learning song, Stone Cold “What would you do”

If you have any links that you believe could help others excel at GCSE English or GCSE English Literature please let us know and we will post them.

In the meantime keep an eye on the community section of the LearnThruMusic website over the next few weeks. As we will be adding special promotion codes for a selection of our GCSE English and GCSE English Literature learning songs.

As part of our FREE character profiles for 12 key GCSE texts. We want to help you revise and learn GCSE English and GCSE English Literature to your full potential.
•    Shylock: A wealthy Jewish Moneylender. Shylock feels he has been mistreated by Antonio and other Venetian Christians. A strict adherent to the law of contract Shylock demands a pound of Antonio’s flesh as a guarantee for a loan. Shylock’s scheme for revenge is thwarted as he comes unstuck by the contract he thought to take advantage of.

•    Antonio: A Venetian Merchant. A friend of Bassanio. Antonio agrees to let his flesh secure a loan for his friend. Antonio shows a disliking of Jews but eventually lets Shylock of the hook.

•    Bassanio: Citizen of Venice and friend of Antonio. Bassanio intends to marry Portia. With Antonio as his guarantor Basanio borrows money from Shylock.

•    Portia: A wealthy, beautiful and intelligent Lady from Belmont. Portia loves Bassanio but according to her fathers will she must marry whoever chooses correctly from three caskets. Portia disguises herself as a lawyer and saves Antonio from giving his flesh to Shylock.

•    Gratiano: A friend of Bassanio. Gratiano marries Nerissa who is Portia’s maid. Gratiano is quite combative and is a big critic of Shylock.

•    Nerissa: Maid or lady-in-waiting to Portia. Marries Gratiano.

•    Balthasar: Portia’s servant.

•    Jessica: Shylock’s unhappy daughter. Jessica elopes with Lorenzo despite him being a Christian and her a Jew.

•    Launcelot Gobbo: Bassanio’s servant who was formerly employed by Shylock.

•    Old Gobbo: Launcelot’s father.

•    The Prince of Morocco: A suitor to Portia who luckily for Bassanio picks the wrong casket.

•    The Prince of Arragon: Also a suitor to Portia and likewise picks the wrong casket.

•    Salarino and Solanio: Venetian gentlemen, friends and escorts of Antonio, Bassanio and Lorenzo.

•    The Duke of Venice: The Ruler of Venice. The Duke presides over the trial of Antonio and greatly respects the law.
•    Tubal: A Jewish friend of Shylock.

Be sure check out our GCSE English Literature learning song, Merchant of Venice “You Wont Find me There”

The second, is part two of an extract from Teachkit. The article focuses on assessment and preparing for examinations in GCSE English Literature and GCSE English. The aim is to help GCSE (ks4) pupils in the build up to GCSE English and GCSE English Literature revision.

Comparison and contrast

What’s the difference? ask your students. As a method, no difference at all – you put A and B together (or A, B and C). And when they show some similarities we find a comparison and when we see some difference we make a contrast. So we compare Piggy and Simon as outsiders (in Lord of the Flies) and contrast Piggy, a rational and objective child-adult with Simon, a visionary dreamer.

Children need to beware of finding a contrast or comparison which is meaningless. Suppose they are comparing the Gradgrind family in Hard Times with the Conways in Time and the Conways. They could look at ideas of reaping and sowing, of single-parent families, of the relationship of house and home, of work and play and of the way both texts explore glimpses of the future. But it would be silly to write: “Hard Times is a novel written in 1854 but Time and the Conways is a play written in 1937”. And even sillier to write: “These texts are similar because both have women in them.” It’s not enough to find similarities or differences – they need to be interesting or tell us something.

So what kinds of similarity or difference are worth looking for? Are there things we can expect students to look for in any texts? There are – some of them will be in many and some are almost guaranteed to be in all texts. These could include comparisons or contrast in:

time (relative or absolute, short term or long term)
sex and gender
attitude, mood, atmosphere
purpose and audience
language, form, genre, structure and other technique or method
Relevance
the reader’s preference

And this list can be used twice over. First for comparisons between two (or among several) texts, and second for comparisons within a single text. Examples: we can compare (very usefully) Pip in Great Expectations with Jane in Jane Eyre – both are characters from humble homes in search of fulfilment through social mobility. But we can also compare each character within each text at different stages in the narrative. In fact both authors do this for us. And Kay in Time and the Conways does so – at the end of Act Two she asks what has happened to the family of which she used to be part:

“Oh, silly girl of Nineteen Nineteen! Oh, lucky girl!…Remember what we once were and what we thought we’d be. And now this. And it’s all we have…it’s us. Every step we’ve taken – every tick of the clock – making everything worse”

Implied meaning

Implied meaning is not anything the reader imagines to be in a text – it must be implied by something the reader has found. What the students needs to look for is anything which should maybe not be taken simply in its plain or obvious sense.

The Teacher Training Agency’s National Curriculum for Initial Teacher Training in secondary English teaching reads: “Teachers must develop pupils as critical readers, recognising that:

writers manage authorial relationships, e.g. those between (sic.) narrator, author and reader
* texts can be construed and interpreted in different ways.”

Allusion

This is a kind of reference – the text may contain a phrase or longer structure which echoes another text. Example? In Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are A-Changin’ the line “And the first one now/Will later be last” is an allusion to the gospel of St. Matthew (19:30): “But many that are first shall be last.”

Understatement and overstatement

How can you tell when writers understate or overstate things? It’s not easy, but sometimes an author will appear to exaggerate or minimize a statement or attitude. A good example of understatement would be the final line of Mid-Term Break, where Seamus Heaney describes the coffin of his young brother as: “A four foot box, a foot for every year”. The understatement is partly in the slang eupehmism “box” for “coffin”, but mostly in the use of the measurements to tell us the age of the child and indirectly show the poet’s grief.

Irony

This takes many forms – what they all have in common is some space between what appears and what really is. A very familiar and crude form of irony is sarcasm, as when you greet a foolish action with “That’s really brilliant”. Dramatic irony occurs when the character on stage does not know what the audience or other characters realize, or when actions or words earlier in the play lead to some later action or consequence – as when Othello says to Desdemona “Honey, you will be well desired in Cyprus”, but it is his fear of another’s desire that leads to him killing her.

More generally, students should look out for the kind of irony where writers in some way distance themselves from the views expressed in their work – does the author really mean what he or she appears to mean? If there were no irony in the author’s stance, Swift’s A Modest Proposal would be horrible and inhumane. At different times, questions of good and bad taste may limit a writer’s readiness to be ironic.

Readers and readings

Reading the text | Reading the author | Reading the reading

This guidance will help students make use of the principles outlined above, as they make coherent responses to texts they study.

Students should look for ambiguity (alternative meanings). They should look for these both in the text, and in their response to it – for example where they change their reading after some reflection.

Students should look for ambivalence (alternative attitudes). They should look for these both in the text and in their reading of it.

Reading the text

In reading the text, students should try to achieve knowledge of content, familiarity with the text in detail and an appropriate (perceptive, sensitive) response. (Assessment objective 1)
Reading the text (AO1): examples

He has to shoot him in the head because if he didn’t do it, something more cruel would happen to him and he wouldn’t understand about it.

This book is about prejudice and injustice. It’s also about growing up and getting into other people’s shoes.

It’s mainly about racism but there’s a lot about growing up and learning about people.
There’s a lot of description about where they go but I like the bits where they are talking to each other.

At the start of the story…but later on…

When she talks to [name] she is…but when she talks to [other name] she…

Reading the author

In reading the author, students should try to achieve understanding of the writer’s purposes (in relation to the audience), of the writer’s means of control of the text and of the writer’s use of literary devices, methods and techniques. (Assessment objectives 1 and 2)
Reading the author (AO1 and 2); purpose and devices: examples

He wants you to think that Jack is organised and confident because the first time you meet him he’s leading the choir and giving orders

She makes you feel sorry for TJ when his “friends” let him down, even if you don’t like him because of the way he treated other people himself.

He thought all humans have evil in them, even if they are posh or so called civilised British. This is because he saw what decent people were like in war when there were no rules. Also he was a teacher and he must have seen nasty parts in lots of people he taught.

Keep you eyes peeled on the news section in the next few weeks we will be adding more articles to help with GCSE English and GCSE English literature revision.

The aims of English literature courses are to encourage candidates to develop:

The ability to read, understand and respond to a wide range of types of literary texts,

The ability to appreciate the ways in which authors achieve their effects, and

The ability to acquire the skills necessary for literary study;

An awareness of social, historical and cultural contexts and influences in the study of literature;

The ability to construct and convey meaning in speech and writing, matching style to audience and purpose.

Assessment objectives for GCSE English literature

There are three broad objectives for assessing candidates’ achievements in English literature. Candidates must demonstrate their ability to:

Respond to texts critically, sensitively and in detail, using textual evidence as appropriate;

Explore how language, structure and forms contribute to the meaning of texts, considering different approaches to these texts and different interpretations of them;

Explore relationships and comparisons within and between texts, selecting and evaluating relevant material.

Success in literature

A very good way to help students focus and work efficiently in exams and in coursework is to give them a checklist of different things to do. It is possible to achieve the very highest grades without writing excessively. Teachers and students often confuse quality and quantity. For some kinds of coursework, you may need to write at length, to develop themes in detail for a complex text, but even here you should keep a sense of proportion. In exams, the time limits mean that able students may lose the chance to gain high marks by dwelling too long on one kind of response.

The list below can be remembered by students as an acronym – AACIR – or in its entirety by, for example, display on a wall and regular chanting or asking students to recall it with eyes shut. The list is:

Attitude, Author Comparison and contrast, Implied meaning, Reader and readings

Attitudes

Attitudes in a text, Attitudes to a text, Attitudes behind a text, Attitudes in a reader

Attitudes in a text

The attitudes in a text are (usally) not those of the author, though we may suspect that some attitudes in it are close to the author’s. In a play we will necessarily have a range of characters with differing attitudes. In prose fiction this may also happen, though we may also have a dominant narrative voice or third-person overview from the author. And in poetry, the writer may adopt or assume attitudes – this is perhaps where it is hardest to know whether the writer agrees with the attitude in the work.

Examples? In Romeo and Juliet Tybalt hates all Montagues, Mercutio dislikes Tybalt but doesn’t support the feud, while Romeo regrets the feud and tries to keep out of fighting. Blake’s The Tyger expresses awe at the power of nature (this probably is Blake’s own view).

Attitudes to a text

Students should be invited to make a judgement on any work, but make it an informed judgement. They should form an attitude to a text and consider other people’s attitudes, in a kind of dialogue, before attempting to evaluate what they have read.

Attitudes behind a text

Every writer will be in some way representative of his or her time and place. One reason why the National Curriculum has a range of required reading is to let pupils experience a diversity of viewpoints. Sometimes, the student needs to look at the writer’s culture and assumptions, which lie behind the text as it immediately appears.

Examples? In Macbeth we are not sure whether all the supernatural things are really happening or are just in Macbeth’s mind, but Shakespeare knows that his audience will accept witches with magical powers as plausible (believable). In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare knows his audience will understand why in many cases arranged marriages are better than love matches. Some modern writers assume that romantic or sentimental love or self-development are more important than duty or keeping of promises. Writers such as Dante or George Herbert have a clear sense of God’s presence as an immediate and almost tangible reality in their lives.

Attitudes in a reader

Contemporary authors may be able to assume some things about their readers’ attitudes and write in ways which makes use of this. So escapist fiction may have careful product-placement of luxury goods included in a narrative. On the other hand, young people may be helped by what they read to question or challenge their own attitudes. To Kill a Mockingbird was written partly to challenge racist attitudes which were perhaps as widespread in the USA at the time of writing (1960) as at the time when the story is set, in the 1930s. In its use as a text for UK schools in the 21st century it may be challenging nothing much. It may be simply reinforcing the reader’s disapproval of racism.

The author

At the most basic level, students need to see that there IS an author, and write about the author’s attitudes (if these appear), purposes and techniques or methods. It is worth their learning the standard spelling of “author” (especially when they are studying Arthur Miller). It is also worth their learning, almost as a mechanical habit, to refer to the author in their responses to texts:

“The author [or name] shows that…”

“In this stanza the poet questions…”

“Later the playwright brings together…”

The negative version of this advice is to caution students against writing about texts as if recording events in the real world – this is especially dangerous with narratives: “Then Piggy got killed by Roger, and Ralph ran onto the beach. Then a man came in a white uniform and took Ralph home. He was sad because Simon and Piggy got killed.”

To be continued…

The aim of Teachbox.net is to improve the quality of education in the UK. Teachbox wants to help teachers plan and prepare lessons effectively, despite the numerous time pressures associated with teaching.

Teachbox helps teachers share ideas and resources with other teachers across the UK.

Professor Levitin has conducted a study that illustrates how music can affect the brain and personality. Research took into consideration listener’s response rate to music, using heart rate, respiration, brain waves and blood pressure as reliable measurable indicators.

Levitin concluded that “Music is effective at moderating arousal levels, concentration and helping to regulate moods through its action on the brain’s natural chemistry.  People, who use music daily, effectively provide feelings of comfort, arousal and both mental and physical fitness.”

The phrase “The Mozart Effect” has been given to describe the influence music can have on memory and well being, partly as a result of Levitin’s findings. Gordon Shaw a Californian physicist and Francis Rauscher a cognitive development expert tested the credentials of the “Mozart Effect” in 1993. Their results illustrated a temporary increase (approx 10 min) in pupils’ spatial-temporal reasoning.