After teaching in IB schools and colleges in England for 10 years and now as a freelance tutor, I have lost count of the number of times a student has sheepishly admitted that they 'tend to leave English revision to the end' because their other subjects are so content-heavy. 'To the end' can too often be to the bitter end, and this does nothing for your stress levels, let alone anything else!
And it's true. You can't easily revise English (Lang&Lit/Lit) in the way you might revise History or Psychology or Biology. Particularly for Paper 1 where the unseen texts can encourage some students to think that there's nothing they can do to prepare other than cross their fingers and hope a better infographic than last year's comes up!
What seems particularly hard when revising for English and working on exam skills is the essential premise that you are required not only to understand how the craft of the text builds meaning, but to demonstrate that you can offer personal 'perceptive' insights that also need to acknowledge intended or received meanings. This is not a subject where you can simply memorise that great essay you wrote and regurgitate it on exam day!
But in truth there are a wealth of ways to prepare yourself for the exams in this subject, with reading, planning, writing, and embedding textual knowledge and understanding for both Paper 1 and Paper 2 being at the heart of this.
Your teachers, I know, will have drilled you by now (if you're in your exam year) in learning how to break down the question and plan a response with a clear eye on the assessment criteria. Many of you, too, will have engaged with a wide variety of literary (Eng Lit) and non-literary (Lang & Lit) texts as preparation for Paper 1.
So here are my top five tips for making the most of the time you have left:
- Read widely and actively — but make it purposeful Don't just read passively. Pick up a broadsheet newspaper, a short story, a poem, a travel essay — anything you haven't encountered before — and practise annotating it as if it were a Paper 1 text. Ask yourself: what is this doing, and how? What choices has the writer made and why might they have made them? The more you do this, the more instinctive your analytical eye becomes.
- Know your toolkit — and use it selectively There is nothing more dispiriting for an examiner than a list of literary devices with no connection to meaning. Revisit the key terms and techniques relevant to your course, but always practise deploying them in the context of effect and intention. 'The writer uses a metaphor' tells us very little. 'The extended metaphor of the cage builds a claustrophobic inevitability that...' — that's where the marks live.
- Plan before you write — every time Even under exam conditions, a few minutes of planning is never wasted. Practise sketching out a line of argument before you start writing. Your response should have a clear interpretive thread running through it, not just a series of observations. Teachers often call this your 'thesis' or 'stance' — whatever the terminology, it means: what is your reading of this text, and can you sustain and develop it?
- Revisit the assessment criteria with fresh eyes It sounds obvious, but many students haven't looked at the mark bands since their teacher first introduced them. Sit down with the criteria and honestly ask yourself: where are my current responses sitting? What is the difference between a 4 and a 5 in the criterion that matters most to me? This kind of self-assessment is genuinely powerful in the final stretch.
- Write under timed conditions — then review ruthlessly There is no substitute for this. Set a timer, write a response, and then go back and read it as if you were the examiner. Is your argument clear from the opening? Have you moved through the text or simply across it? Are you doing justice to your own ideas, or rushing? The review stage is where the learning happens.
To help you with exactly this kind of active preparation, I've put together a set of free downloadable resources — available right here on the site — including planning frameworks, and unseen text practice materials. These are designed to be used independently, in the days and weeks before your exams, and I hope you find them genuinely useful.
And if you feel you'd benefit from more personalised support — whether that's working through past papers together, building confidence with your written argument, or simply having someone cast an expert eye over a practice response — I still have a few slots available before the IB exams to offer one-to-one tutoring sessions tailored specifically to English Lang & Lit and to English Literature. Whether you have a few weeks or just a few days, there is still meaningful progress to be made. Feel free to get in touch to find out more: michellelesterenglishtutor@gmail.com
You've worked hard to get here. Now just show that examiner how hard!
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