A 50 page revision booklet on Of Mice and Men

The booklet includes sample essays, mostly on extracts, which could be very useful for your revision. The question styles are a little bit different to those that you are doing but reading through them will help you revise the novel.

The essays are on the first 30 or so pages.  It also includes a brief overview of the main characters and pages of useful quotes for each of them and some of their main characteristics.  Don't try to learn all the quotations off by heart, just read through them, some of them will stick for the exam.

Remember, that you will use more really close reference to text in the extract response part of the exam.

Of Mice and Men - Section B type responses

The samples below are not exactly written in 20 minutes... They are from years gone by when the Of Mice and Men question was 45 minutes or an hour long for just one essay.  They are useful for revising the various topics / themes though.

Community in Of Mice and Men
Inevitability of the Ending

Short Extract Response followed by section B type response to Crooks

Plot and Structure in Of Mice and Men

Significance of the setting in the first 12 pages

Hope's essay on attitudes to the vulnerable in the novel

Of Mice and Men ~Sample answers

Section A Samples - Extract Responses - from a past class

Candy


Curley's Wife Plan for Curley's Wife response Slim

Poetry of place: Compare the way that poets show that places provide people with connections to the past in Blackbird and one other poem

Each of the sample answers below compares to a different poem.

Isabelle's compares Blackbird with Cold Knap Lake, Aliyah's compares with Wild Swans, Joe compares with Below the Green Corrie and Orli with Hard Water.  My sample compares with Neighbours.

Q1 Mock Feedback and samples

In general, not too bad on this question.  However, some of you need to get better at structuring your answers.  You should not just state what the article tells you through quoting.  You should make a comment in your own words about what you understand about the issue and then back up through quotation.  Inference in this question was generally better than for Q3.

Here are some successful responses:

Firstly Joe:

 

Secondly, Sophie:

Both of these answers make sufficent points and inferences.  Sophie's is crystal clear (as is Joe's but his handwriting a little more difficult to read!)

Q2 Mock feedback and sample answers

What was interesting about the answers to this question were that there were some really strong responses to why and how the headline was effective and weaker responses to the effectiveness of the picture and yet, really, one could argue that the analysis of the picture should be much easier.

Here are some examples of where the analysis of one part or both parts of the question were very strong.

Don't forget that you are aiming for three examples and piece of analysis about the effectiveness of EACH thing (headline and picture).  Also, don't forget to link each thing that you say to what is said in the article, this is to show the relevance of the headline or picture to the article itself.

A few of you still persist in linking the picture to the headline.  Why????? The question does not ask you to do this, so there are no marks for doing it!!!

Here's Daniel D on the headline:

This is a very strong analysis of the headline.  Daniel needed to make the connections to the text more regular.

Hope's response:

Hope's answer does exactly what it is supposed to.  3 different reasons analysed for both the headline and picture are effective and always linked to the text.  This response is crystal clear all the way through and is a masterclass on how the question should be tackled.

Another really clear response is Orli's:

Q3 Mock question feedback

What you are doing very well now is identifying the various thoughts and feelings experienced by the writer.

What you are not doing well enough is interpreting those thoughts and feelings, ie INFERING.

Here are some examples of more successful responses from the class:

First of all, James' response:

Why was this successful?  James introduces inference straight away and therefore shows the examiner that he is interpreting the thoughts and feelings observed in the piece.  He is also quite perceptive about these interpretations; he does not just reiterate what is said in the quotation which is what some of you have done. Look specifically for a really interesting comment on pg 2, paragraph 2 where he discusses the writer's reaction to the gorilla He presents a wide range of thoughts and feelings from throughout the source.

Sophie's response: 

Like James' response, Sophie's identifies a wide range of thoughts and feelings from across the article.  She does not inclue quite enough inferences, perhaps but the ones that are there are strong enough to move her into the top band.