Over the course of the year, you will probably have been going through the set text in terms of themes, and while it’s impossible to predict what the exact question will be on the paper it will probably draw on one of these topic areas you’ve been studying. It can be useful to begin by going through your own class notes and compiling a list of these themes, then checking them against past papers to see if the areas you’re considering are the ones that are being examined, and that you haven’t missed any out. You can then take different sheets of paper and head each of them with your topic area, and then sift through the text and find the quotations that seem to be directly concerned with each topic, and write them under the heading. You can also begin to think in more detail about the kind of close analysis you’d like to draw on in relation to the quotations you’ve picked, and also to include under the heading any critical responses or contextual information which might be related to each theme.
Having collected and considered the quotations, the contextual information and critical responses, you can then begin to think about potential arguments based around these themes. It’s important to have either multiple arguments within the general topic area or to have one argument which can be kept flexible- as you of course need to adjust it to the specific question asked in the exam, rather than merely reciting a pre-formed argument unrelated to the demands of the question! You can then memorise the quotations, the contextual and critical information, and the rough plans of a few arguments, so that in the exam you have a wealth of material to draw on but also to adapt dependent on the question!
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