Hey! Hope you don't mind me asking a question-

I'm doing OCR, and for paper 1 we compare The Duchess of Malfi and The Merchant's Tale. I've been thinking about notions of morality and good and evil in the two texts. I have quite a few things to say for Duchess of Malfi, but when it comes to Merchant I haven't got too much- there doesn't necessarily seem to be any 'good' or truly 'moral' actions/characters, which is definitely interesting in terms of interrogating morality and how morality is defined by context/society. I'm not sure how familiar you are with The Merchant's Tale, but I'm just wondering how I would go about writing something about positive morals/actions, given that the text seems to negate implication and lacks true punishment or reward? I feel like my points for Merchant tend to be a bit same-ish (that it seems like an amoral text) and I want to try and mix it up a little so there's range in my arguments!!

As one idea, I would maybe try to think about the Merchant narrator as a character with his own motivations and moral compass and using the critical view that his misogyny is product of marital disillusionment extend this to question whether the tale he tells is immorally inclined or shaped by societal expectations and therefore not really 'bad'... (if that even makes sense??)

Do you have any other suggestions/ideas? Thanks :)

Heyyy - side note, I have been horribly sick the past 3 days and to my horror missed the AO2 webinar during one of my naps HAHHAHAHAHHAA
I was just thinking about AO5 reception and how to put it in/remember to include it in the OCR comparitive essays. I can definately understand how context changes how a piece is recieved, but putting that in an essay and making it sound natural I struggle with!

Do u have any advice for this!

Hi all!

Just a reminder that I'm going to be running my FREE English Literature webinar today between 5 and 6pm!

We're going to be covering how to do AO2 analysis in the exam, with a focus on prose and plays (Shakespeare), but there will be another one soon on unseen poetry!

Just like last time, we're going to start with me explaining what the examiner is looking for. Then, I'm going to break down the thought process that goes into unseen analysis, with examples! We're going to also spend some time thinking about how AO2 analysis is different at A-level compared to GCSE.

If you're around, please do come along! Otherwise, the webinar will be available on my shop just like the other one afterwards.

I hope I see you there!

https://shanistutoring.com/community/event/how-to-do-close-analysis

Hi!

Here's the next set of English revision prompts for you!

• Pick the character with the least power in one of your texts. Create a Literary Scrapbook two-page spread where you cast an actor to play them and explain why you've chosen that actor. Choose a colour scheme and song lyrics that you think represent them. Then, add the quotes that you think sum them up the most. Somewhere on the scrapbook page, explain why you think they have the least power.
• Read this lecture handout on Feminist Theory. Choose one of your texts and explain what a first, second and third wave feminist might notice and write about in that text.
• Research the word 'Hegemony'. Write 3 sentences for each text you study explaining how that word relates to the text.
• Write an essay plan for the following question: 'How do the writer(s) of your text(s) present the connection between the human body and the natural world?'
• Test yourself on quotes: Choose one text and time yourself. For the theme of exploitation, see how many quotes you can write down in that time without looking at the text. Then, when time is up, find other quotes and write them underneath in a different colour.

As usual, this is an accountability post! It's supposed to give you ideas of things you can do to revise, but you should also let people know which one(s) you're going to do today and how it went! That way, we can be sure you actually did the revision! 😉

Hi all!

Come along for the next webinar in the series: How to Do Close Analysis!

In this webinar, we'll be focusing on how you can ace AO2, looking at Shakespeare, other plays and prose in particular!

But don't worry if you have to do close analysis for poetry! I have another webinar planned for that, too! Stay tuned for that announcement!

If you're available next Sunday at 5pm, please do come along! Bring friends, if you can! The more people show up to these, the more regularly I'll do them! Let me know below if you plan on coming!

For anyone who missed the previous webinar and would like to watch it, it's available on my shop.

Hi!

This is the first set of revision prompts for you:

• Read this summary of The Will to Change by bell hooks. Is what hooks says about men, masculinity, and women being complicit in upholding patriarchy true for the texts you're studying? Write one paragraph explaining your thoughts.
• Create a mindmap based on the theme of regret in one or two of your texts. Select one colour for your AO1 interpretations (what is the text warning or teaching us about regret), one colour for quotes from the text and 1 colour for AO5. Preferably, do this on an A3 piece of paper.
• Read this article on Foregrounding. It can be easy to think you have to analyse every single part of the novels you're studying, but you don't! Once you've read the article, find 3 places where the writer uses language to draw your attention to something in a novel or prose text you're studying.
• Create an essay plan for the question: 'How do the writer(s) of your text(s) present alienation and othering?'
• Test yourself on quotes: Which character do you find least likeable in your play text? Pick out 5 short quotes that back up why you feel that way and try to shorten them to no more than 3 words per quote.

I hope these are useful!

Hi all!

In the lead-up to the exam, I thought I would create Revision Accountability Posts!

I'll post regularly giving you prompts based on the following things:

• Read/research
• Resource creation
• Essay plan
• Literary scrap book
• Test yourself on quotes

You can pick and choose which prompts you're interested in doing!

This will give you actual, achievable goals for daily revision, and it will hopefully help you to feel like you're less out of the loop with how to revise well.

Please do comment with your revision results every day! It's a great way to make sure you're doing your revision little and often, and stopping yourself from getting overwhelmed.

The first one starts today!

Hi everyone! With the engagement on the other discussions in this past week, I thought it would be great to add another one! I also thought I would explain why I'm making these, and why I recommend you do them even if they're not phrased in the same way as your exam board's essays.

How these discussions can help you

With the exams coming up so soon, I think it's important that we talk about why you should be engaging with discussions like this! Here are some of the reasons:

• Revision strategies that are passive like rereading the book and reading AO5 are good and all, but they're not very efficient. When it comes to trying to remember something for an exam, the best thing you can do is use the information. That will help it stick in your head better. These discussions are designed to help you use the information in the texts you study.
• One of the most underappreciated ways to revise is to do essay questions in a style and format you're not used to. For example, doing questions written by a different exam board expands your horizons of the types of questions you could be asked. The past papers are in the past; they're not going to come up again. But the papers of other exam boards? Something similar could come up in yours! Plus, they force you to think about your texts in different ways, which expands your understanding and improves your AO1.
• I make these questions up from scratch, so most of them have never been done before. That means there's much more of a likelihood that they could come up again!
• The discussions I post are phrased like A* AO1 thesis statements. So by you telling me if you agree or disagree with them and why, you're basically setting yourself up to improve your AO1
• You might have noticed that I've been around replying to people's responses to these questions. So you're getting real-time support and advice from a teacher on how you can improve your essays even before you write them! I like to include bits of AO5 here and there as well, so it will help you with that, too!

For me, it also helps me to achieve my goals. I really want to make Shani's Tutoring the best place to get revision from, so the more you engage, the better I can make the experience!

The Prompt

Now, let's get back on to the prompt. For this week, it's:

Literature teaches us that human nature is characterised by hypocrisy.

Questions

Here are some questions to help you analyse this better!

• Who is hypocritical? Is it everyone? Or are certain groups of people more hypocritical than others?

• What does it mean for a human nature to be 'characterised' by something?

  • That you can't be human if you don't do it?
  • That pretty much all humans do it?
  • That we should expect humans to do it?
  • That it's the thing that separates humans from animals?

• What do we mean by human nature? Do we mean the way people act, or what Freud would call the 'Id' – the more base, 'primitive' aspects of a person?

• Hypocrisy in what spheres? Do we see it in the law? In gender dynamics? Racial dynamics? Religion? And do they all suggest the same thing about hypocrisy?

Hi all!

If you missed the sign-up from the AO1 webinar, I've now created access to it on my shop! I hope I've listed it for a reasonable price!

https://shanistutoring.com/resource/ao1-masterclass/

When the Affiliate Programme is up and running (soon – I'm currently writing a contract for our new teacher, and then that's my next priority in terms of admin stuff), this will be one of the things you can make money from by recommending it to other people!

I'm going to be listing all webinars like this on my site. Then, I'll create a special monthly subscription that includes all of them, plus some revision worksheets!

For the people who were there for the webinar or who watched it afterwards, sorry I tagged you in this! You still get free access! Although it would be awesome if you could leave a comment below if you found it useful!

In my revision I wanted to do some planning, I tried to write an essay introduction but weirdly I dont know how to word it so I get my 2 main points in without it feeling like a big change (?) in a way. Probably almost definitely overthinking it, but if there are any tips for how to approach it that would be lovely

‘Gothic fiction suggests that very primitive forces lie beneath civilised life.

I got this idea because whenever I think of “primitive” being a word that describes humans I immediately think of the way many people viewed colonised people in comparison with the supposed “civilised” people of Britain and continental Europe in the 17-19th centuries. This angers me as it makes no sense how the people who kill and enslave for imaginary money can be seen as civilised? By that measure, if we have defined "civilised" against this ideal of the austere wealthy British aristocrat, does it hold any weight? Is civilised really the anti thesis of primitive?

• The primitive desire for power -> men are given a monopoly on “power” in “civilised life” due to patriarchy (civilised), but 1. they abuse their power beyond the confines of what “civilised society” dictates and 2. Women also have his desire for power -> goes against how “civilised society” has distributed power, despite this “civilised” power it is not a match for primitive human desires
• The desire for companionship (and sex) -> the social construct of family (civilised) but 1. The social construct of a traditional family is commonly usurped in favour of other modes of companionship 

What is deemed as “civilised” is highly flexible and responsive to changing standards -> not fixed -> not clear -> not real

Both Shelley and Carter depict that as primitive forces “peek through” supposed “civilised life” -> we must not have a true civilised life/state. Is it worth making the distinction between “forces” and “life”, I noticed it but I do not know how to phrase it. 

Both Mary Shelley’s "Frankenstein" and Angla Carter’s “The Bloody Chamber” challenge the notion that primitive forces lie beneath civilised life. Instead both Shelley and Carter suggest that the distinction between supposed ‘civility’ and ‘primitivism’ is imagined as civilised life  only exists though actions and forces hypocritically condemned by society as primal and base. The sheer prevalence of these primitive forces within society contest the notion that they lie beneath or apart from civilisation, instead these primitive forces can be seen as indistinguishable from civilised life. ...