hello and welcome to another video in my of my semen revision series today we're going to be looking at how can you get a grade nine in your mice and men exam and this is aimed at those of you taking igcse english lit with edxl pearson let's get straight into the mark scheme before we do anything else so for for the advice of main question which is um modern prose you are assessed on two assessment objectives so a01 demonstrate a close knowledge understanding of text maintaining a critical style presenting an informed personal engagement 20 marks an ao4 which should show understanding of the relationship between texts and the context in which they were written okay so unlike other parts of your english late you're not going to have to analyze language in as much depth as normal um that's not the aim it's looking at how do you um critically answer the question we're going to look at a bit more what that means but i've cropped mark's scheme here so you can just see the very very top i've taken out all the the lower marks it's out of 40 to get 20 marks for each assessment objective so if we look down the bottom at level five so for our top answers you know 33 to 40 assured knowledge understanding of the text so that means you're able to draw from loads of different examples or not necessarily lots of different examples but you're able to draw from examples and in detail and your your answer shows that you know the text very very well so there's no quick fix there guys for that to have assured knowledge you need to know the text well now the great thing about advice of men is that compared to quite a lot of other gcc texts it's actually quite short so if you can i would recommend reading it at least twice for your revision just to make sure you know it really well another great thing though is that the the film of bison men is is mostly loyal to the book okay so actually watching the film if that's a slightly more relaxing way to revise that's also advised but at the end of the day the book is where where is that if we look at the second bullet point the response shows assured personal engagement and a perceptive critical style for me the important word here is perceptive so if they're asking you a question about authority you're not necessarily giving the most obvious answer you're showing that you've thought about the concept of authority from lots of different angles and that you are you're not just following the crowd and uh you know saying the first thing you think of you're actually really taking a step back and and looking at it from all angles we're going to take an example of that understanding of the relationship between text and context is integrated convincingly into the response so that means that actually every with everything when you're answering the question you're always thinking about what is john steinbeck trying to say about society and you understand uh throughout the essay you kind of you link um each individual point you make to the overall understanding of context and discriminator use of relevant examples in support so i think the word discriminating there is basically saying you know you're not just throwing in example after example you're not just listing then lenny did this then george did this and then curly's wife did this you're picking really really good examples and you're just picking the absolute best ones and explaining them really really really well so when we talk about informed personal engagement and critical thinking this is the wording in ao1 which is 50 of the marks this is looking at your ability to make clear and sophisticated arguments and points about the text the examiner needs to see that you've thought about an issue from multiple perspectives and that is going to be the difference between a level seven or six and a level eight and nine or grade eight and nine okay it's going to be those people that have the more sophisticated arguments and that means that it's it's literally how you word things and it's uh showing that you've thought about things from multiple angles so as i say in every video and i'm obviously going to say in this video with every single thing we do with advice of men we must link it back to this question what is john steinbeck trying to say about society in 90s and 1930s america so if the question is about crooks what's he trying to say about racism in 1930s america if the question is about loneliness what could john steinbeck be trying to say maybe about the amount of migrants in america or migrant workers in 1930s america or if it's about loneliness what's perhaps he's saying about women being pushed back into the home using curly's wife and as you can see we've got loads of different examples here of what your question could be on you'll get a choice of two and you could get a question on how animals are presented you could have george lenny dreams power crooks companionship candy curly's wife disappointment curly loneliness slim and many more you need to make sure whichever question you pick you have got a point of view and you've got something to say i'm gonna look at an example coming up so when you've picked your question then think mind about all the separate points you could make to link to the question then take a metaphorical setback and think overall what was john steinbeck trying to say so for example if the question was on how the idea of companionship is represented the overall idea might be that steinbeck presents the themes of companionship and loneliness in advice and men to illustrate how the economic situation of the great depression was isolating many vulnerable people in society and then you would take individual points to kind of prove that from within the text but your overall it's kind of the big picture what's john steinbeck saying about society so then for your structure first of all you need a killer introduction because 50 of the marks here for critical thinking and informed personal engagement you can you can show both these things immediately uh in your introduction and obviously it's so important guys like the examiners will be marking hundreds of exams if you can in an introduction already wow them they're gonna sit up straight and go okay right i need to really make sure i've got my best pen in my hand because this is someone i need to watch out um so it's i can't i cannot emphasize enough how important that intro is so clear and concise introduction that expresses an overall point so for example if the question is how does john simon present companionship you might say stein represents presents the themes of companionship and loneliness in of mice and men to illustrate how the economic situation of the great depression was isolating many vulnerable people in society now if i was the examiner i'd be thinking wow first of all they have made a a big point they've not already started talking about specific characters they're making an overall point and also tick tick tick they have linked already to context they've already talked about the great depression in their first sentence so already the examiner is going to be thinking okay this is someone that i'm going to be probably looking at the kind of top levels for for this answer okay so once you've done your amazing introduction you need to move on to your the main body of your of your essay and your argument so every year i have students come up to me and ask miss how many exact paragraphs do i need to write to get a grade seven a grade eight a grade nine there's no perfect answer okay because it's about your overall argument it's about your overall writing style and how critical you are and how clear you are um so there isn't a right answer to that uh but i would say for most people you really should aim for at least three if you have fewer than that possibly you haven't been able to uh kind of explore the issue from as many angles as you need to to make your point clearly if you um if that's a struggle for you now then timing is something you need to work on okay and one way to practice that would be take some of the examples from the previous paragraph from the previous slide here and try mind mapping um perhaps some of your ideas for each one so that in the exam you've already got lots of ideas prepared um when you when you start the question so for example paragraph one um if i was gonna write about candy and his dog my point would be how um candy is isolated because of his age and his dog the fact his dog is killed um because it's not valuable anymore to society because it's old emphasizes how candy uh is isolated and has no companionship because of um the way that society values people for what they contribute because of capitalism so that would be my kind of point for paragraph one paragraph two i might talk about curly's wife is obviously symbolizes isolation because she's the only woman on the ranch so i would link that maybe to context talking about how because of the great depression women are being pushed back into the home um and curly's wife emphasizes that that isolation there and then paragraph three i would talk about george and lenny perhaps i'd link it to the context of migrant workers moving around all the time but george and lenny are different i would you know look there's some good quotes i could use that there when george and lenny are talking about their dream however because at the end of the text uh lenny is killed by george that's perhaps symbolic of steinbeck saying that um you know these ranch hands are doomed to be alone because george even george and lenny's companionship can't keep going so then for your conclusion you want to make sure that you're again mentioning those key words that were in the question so for this question it's companionship and you recap your original point um from the introduction which if you've written a good introduction you could write your conclusion in 30 seconds and still get a grade nine for this question every video i make i always come back to this for of my submen what is john steinbeck trying to say about society in 1930s america so i really would encourage you as i said to go back pause the video and have a think for all those different topics what is john steinbeck trying to say about society in 1930s america you need to be able to articulate your point of view clearly you need to be able to link all your mini points to your overall main point and you must be able to link to context now one thing i'm going to do in this video is in the description down below i'm going to link some resources that will help you to revise context so if you've not if you feel that you're not that confident on context have a look at the resources below as always any questions you've got please post them below or any comments that you have and i'll make sure i address them in future videos