Hamlet Help!

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Were told yesterday that our Mocks are starting on the 23rd of Janurary and our English teacher has yet to compare our texts so we will not be revising Hamlet for the Mocks.

Hence, I made this thread looking for advice regarding Hamlet and how to approach questions etc.

What is the best way to study for the Single text? Ive read through the play a fair few times and have consulted past exam papers but it apperars the question choice is quite erratic and difficult to predict!

So any predictions, study hints etc. If you could post them here I'd be very grateful!

Thanks
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Superbus

Make summaries of Hamlet, Claudius and 'Women', with points about them and quotes.

Likewise pick out recurring theme questions (revenge is a biggie, betrayal, relationships) and do points on them with quotes.

Quotes are the key to As. Make your point, back it up with a quote, expand on it for a bit and get out of there as fast as you can.

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Superbus wrote: »

Make summaries of Hamlet, Claudius and 'Women', with points about them and quotes.

Likewise pick out recurring theme questions (revenge is a biggie, betrayal, relationships) and do points on them with quotes.

Quotes are the key to As. Make your point, back it up with a quote, expand on it for a bit and get out of there as fast as you can.

Thanks! I wonder if Love is an important enough theme to learn an answer for? Have you done any question about love in the play?

harrythehat

It's hard enough to predict questions accurately.

As the above poster said, know your characters well, and the plot. Learn a few quotes off by heart too, not too many, ones you can draw in to almost anything.

When you have a good general idea of the play, it should be easy to give a general answer no matter what comes up.

Don't worry too much, it's just the mocks, and they seem to be very early this year.

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harrythehat wrote: »

It's hard enough to predict questions accurately.

As the above poster said, know your characters well, and the plot. Learn a few quotes off by heart too, not too many, ones you can draw in to almost anything.

When you have a good general idea of the play, it should be easy to give a general answer no matter what comes up.

Don't worry too much, it's just the mocks, and they seem to be very early this year.

I have a general question on the "Characterisation of women in the play" I think I may learn that one off! They are very early though I think. The school beside ours doesn't start theres until around the 27th of February!!

Any other advice?

lorcan122

What I do is pick out really important quotes and make sure that you can use them for or two themes, as this reduces you the amount of learning you have to do. When asked the question for mocks, it has normally has two parts, make sure you discuss the two parts of the question as well, otherwise you will lose a lot of marks. Make sure you do a lot of analyses, and don't get wrapped up in telling the story.

If you want to listen to some good podcast about answering hamlet questions, try sccenglish , it is a very good blog and helped me a lot to formulate my answers.