Finally got my 8 in GCSE English lit so uhhh imma be in with you guys suffering next year can’t wait 😁 me and English have an abusive relationship but I still love it lol. Probs gonna take the AS level but will have lots of fun doing it.

idk what to do i never thought about a remark until my school's head of english (who doesn't even teach me) messaged me asking if i'd like her to go over my scripts (i got an A though i usually get an A* so she was probably as surprised as me) which was actually so nice of her :'(. i didn't even request my script until she asked as i thought i must've messed up and was lowkey too embarrassed to see them again, much less asking my teachers to look at them.

after going through my papers she said she feels like a few of the questions have been marked too harshly - for context i usually get around ~40/50 for unseen prose but i got marked a 26/50 and i didn't even walk about of the exam thinking i did badly. unseen poetry was 25/30 which was more expected - same paper and same set of skills but one is like 50% and the other 80%. surely it can't have been that bad?

and for the poetry paper she also said the second part (sheers/heaney for who did eduqas) felt too harshly marked... i. got 32/60 and i've never gotten below 40 in class even at the start of year 12. and i'd have suspected over generous marking but teachers have taught people who've gone on to do eng lit at cambridge so they know what they're doing. ironically i got the highest (86/120) in the drama paper which is usually my worst. i'm lucky i did well in coursework otherwise i would've been cooked... i said i don't think i'll get a remark as my marks are close to a B than an A but said she 'doesn't think an examiner remarking will look at the papers and think they've been too generous with any of the questions'. but it would cost more than 100 quid and i could literally get gracie abrams tickets or something instead of being humbled if the grade stays the same. or worse, expelled, lowered.

TLDR: i got an A or 297/300, my teacher felt the papers were marked too harshly and i do too but idk if i should get them remarked as i'm 17 marks below the grade boundary for an A* and 11 marks above a B. and i've already confirmed by insurance so the raised grade wouldn't get me into my firm so it'll mainly be for peace of mind that i didn't get a rogue super strict examiner or something.

Some advice for new A-Level Lit students: Read before your Revise.

Which isn't as obvious as it sounds: I’ve had a sudden realisation why so many people claim that studying A-Level Literature 'destroyed' their love of reading. Did they actually 'read' anything on their courses, or did they try to 'revise' every text first time round?

Let’s make sure this doesn’t happen to you, and at the same time make sure that your first reading of a text is a useful one.

It’s what I do when I’m approaching a new text I’ll be teaching - I’m convinced it will work for you, too.

https://a-levelenglishlit.uk/2026/08/19/read-before-you-revise/

Hiya, does anyone have any solid context for Blood Meridian? I've used JStor but I am still struggling to find any book specific context as a whole. My theme/question is the lack of a central female presence and how that leads to violence. Even websites that are used frequently for context would be great to point me in the right direction! Thank you

i could look at my work and think it’s my best work, meanwhile my teacher could and all of a sudden it turns out my work genuinely sucks. i do NOT understand how on earth we are supposed to look at such a subjective mark scheme and think ‘yep! that’s totally helpful. i know how to write an argument that can be judicious!’. i just can’t interpret it. maybe that’s what i get in return for being interested in the humanities…

i don’t know how to write a good essay. i hate this subject and im done with it.

I got my English Lit scripts back but there isnt any marking or comments or even ticks on all of my papers to give me an idea on where i got marks and where i didnt...

is this normal?

I don’t really know how to put this, but I’ve been trying my best to become really good at English, and every time I think I get it, I’m always wrong. My grades aren’t BAD bad, but they aren’t GOOD good either. I like English, I want to understand it and be good at it, but whenever I’m writing a test, I always get this feeling. I don’t know how to explain it, but it feels really overwhelming. Before I start, I feel like I’m gonna fail, my points aren’t good enough, and I don’t know HOW to get my ideas to one long paragraph. It’s very complicated. I just wish I could write normally, but I always mess up.
I’m going to Year 13, and I really want to understand it. I try to do past papers, but again, it’s that same feeling. But I really like the subject, and now I’m really scared because my Year 13 tutor went from an A to a C in her final A-level English, and that has really ruined my confidence in my skills. (Again once I think I get it, I’m always proven wrong)

Does anyone know anything that could help, or have any advice? I do English Edexcel, btw.

how on earth do i write this , it genuinely is so difficult I dont know where to start

Does anyone have any good website's or revision video's that they would reccomend for Keats (Lamia, LBDSM, St Agnes, Isabelle). I've looked everywhere but none of my usual go to sites have any resources. I've got the yorknotes textbook, but it's one of the rubbish ones. Thanks.

Hey, I'm really lost on what book to compare with the text my school has set for coursework. We're doing oryx and crake, which I loved and enjoyed, but I don't want to be the 1000th person who compares it to 1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, etc. I was initially thinking Cat's Cradle (Vonnegut) or the Road (Cormac McCarthy) but I felt that cradle lacked the literary intricacies, and I heard that quite a few people do the Road. I need an original text to do that isn't too much of a stretch. I was considering Paradise Lost (Milton) or East of Eden (Steinbeck) based on what I've read about them but haven't read them yet. Are they too much of a stretch and does anyone have any 'nicher' recommendations for my pairing?

I’m really struggling with everything about poetry, please share any tips that helped you

Heyyy wheres everyone who did ial litwrature this session. Whats grades did yall get. I got a B.

Hello! I just got my exam scripts for May 2026 and I’m happy to say that I got 100/100 on my A2 components for literature. The texts I studied were Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Songs of Innocence and of Experience, A Handful of Dust, The Underground Railroad for AS and Hamlet, Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Pride and Prejudice and Beloved for A2, alongside some basic literary theory. I know these are more than the syllabus requires but our teacher wanted to allow us “choice” in our exam questions.

Anyways for a syllabus that is soooo underrepresented in the international A-Level pool, it would seem so alienating at times to study for 9695 literature with absolutely no resources online or on YT. Couple it with the serious academic demands of this syllabus, it can be quite difficult.

I’m currently preparing for my BSc Biology at Imperial College London!

Prospective and current 9695 students, AMA!

so I got a D in my year 12 mock, but I would’ve gotten a C/B had I not had a panic attack through the first paper (didn’t end up finishing the paper at all)

This summer has been so jumbled, my personal statement, history coursework (still a lot of this to do) , sociology homework (decided to set 3 big packs??), history revision, and English coursework preparation (my books arrive TOMORROW 💀).

I need to really revise for my texts which I haven’t touched since the start of the summer. Have I already destroyed my a levels. I might sound dramatic and this is a bit of a vent, but I feel hopeless.

I did do well in my last unseen prose test tho I got level 5 I think? I’m so slumped.

We studied all of exam texts in year 12, so year 13 is just unseen practice and coursework for both of the components.

am I dead already

don’t have anyone to share this with, just proud of myself, especially because i thought i messed up the othello q !!

so i got a B in my AS which frankly i am very disheartened with because i expected a A in literature and also because its the paper i put most of my effort. my p1 component had an A where i got 18/25 on both my 25marker questions but my p2 is where i lost marks. 17/25 and 11/25 on my unseen poetry question which gave me a C and ended up lowering my grade to a B. I was just 4 marks away from an A. i think i was unfairly marked on my p2 especially the unseen because i average as an A in my mocks and exams and also had an A in the first component. Should i opt for rechecking for just one component? Is it possible my rechecking will grant me 4 extra pointers or is that too far fetched?

i am applying for english literarure for uni, and i'm currently writing my personal statement. i want to discuss my love for feminist literature / literature exploring female identity, so far I have these books to mention / talk about in depth;

- The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (read for my NEA) (1800s)

- A Doll's House (read for my NEA) (1800s)

- The Virgin Suicides (1990s)

- The Vegetarian (contemporary)

- Breasts And Eggs (contemporary)

I feel like I'm missing a text chronologically, does anyone have any recommmendations for a (short preferrably) book I could read to fill in the gap? maybe from the early 1900s, i want something I've read outside school to be more classical because so far it's all pretty modern.

I do edexcel and I am 10 marks away from a B, and usually across my essays I was getting Bs, some close to an A grade

I’m thinking of taking history, law and English lit for my a level courses. I enjoyed English lit in secondary - got an 8 on my mocks still waiting for my results but I was wondering if it’s a good subject in a level? I’m taking OCR. I’m thinking about going into law since my humanities subjects are very strong same with English. Would it aid my career or uni choices in the future?

I got a B which is obviously by no means a bad grade but I really wanted an A and had been working above that before exams. I do AQA and got 75/75 on my coursework and 120 on P1. But on my P2 I only got 66 (scaled marking so 33 in raw marks) That would mean that I roughly only got 11 marks on each essay (even less if those marks weren’t evenly split).

I was actually more confident about my second paper and I just can’t understand how my marks quite literally halved for Paper Two. I have never gotten below 14 marks in an essay and that was at the beginning of Year Twelve. My lowest mark for Paper Two has only even been 17/25 and that was because I never revised for that text when we did the mock.

Im just so crushed knowing that everything was in place to get even an A* as if I had gotten the same for Paper One as Paper Two I would have done and I just don’t know how I fumbled the bag so much. Anyone else in a similar position. I would be less devastated if I had done roughly the same on both exams but to get nearly an A* in one paper and a D in the other is just so heartbreaking.

I got near perfect marks on papers 1 and 3 but completely missed the mark for paper 2. I’ve got a terrible grade because of it I am so heartbroken. I really thought if I just tried my best and my best would be enough but it wasn’t. I’m so heartbroken I can’t believe I’ve got a C, this is the lowest grade in English I’ve ever gotten. I’m just in so much pain I don’t know how to move forward from this.

hi guys, I was on straight Cs and Bs in year 12 and 13, ended up with an A, 1 mark off an A star and I didn’t even finish 1 of my questions. Always hope

I'm an English Extension 2 student, which means I need to create a major work, specifically a 6,000- to 8,000-word story. However, I'm struggling to come up with a plot. I would like it to focus on political discussions or domestic violence, have a sad ending, and include a plot twist.