Six tips to help you excel in your GCSE English revision

This article was first published in April 2025.

This time of year means one thing for students… revision! So if you are studying for your GCSE English Language and English Literature exams and want some extra tips to help you push up your grades, you've come to the right place!

Scroll through our useful ideas, hints and hacks about the many different ways you can revise for your English exams.

Tip one: Make the most of your time

It’s rarely useful to re-read whole texts or write out the answers to entire exam papers in one go, and this can feel overwhelming. So make the most of the time you have and prioritise the work you can do in that time:

• If you have 5 weeks left – Choose the strategies from this guide that work for you and build them into your revision timetable.
• If you have 5 days left – Prioritise the areas you feel less confident in and focus your time here.
• If you have 5 hours left – Remind yourself of key linguistic techniques and writing forms (Language) or key quotations and ideas (Literature).
• If you have 5 minutes left – Take a deep breath and remind yourself of the exam paper timings.

We have some great tips on how to relieve stress in the run-up to exams on Bitesize Study Support, so take some time to give this guide a read through.

Tip two: Make your revision varied

Why not try some of these tips to switch up your revision and make it more interesting?

• Identify your strengths– If you know you’re great at writing speeches, for example, trade your top tips with a friend who might have different strengths. This is a fun way of helping each other revise and fill any gaps in your knowledge.
• Understanding is key – Every time you read or hear an unfamiliar word, look it up or ask what it means. This will build your confidence and your vocabulary, and prepare you for ‘unseen’ texts.
• Read through past papers – Tackle any questions you're unfamiliar with. This will help you understand the style of each question, how much time you have, and how many marks are awarded for each one.

Tip three: Read more non-fiction

This tip is great for English Language revision and will help you get more familiar with the kinds of words and phrases that are used in a non-fiction piece, helping you to understand why they might have been used. Set aside 10 minutes every week to read an article from a printed or online newspaper.

As you read, think about the intended purpose and audience of the text. Make a note of any words or phrases you thought were particularly effective. As you'll be reading non-fiction more regularly, you’ll get used to the language used in the exam extracts and it’ll be easier to write about the effect on the reader.

If you want to improve your knowledge of how to analyse English Language fiction and non-fiction pieces, then take a short text you’ve used in a lesson, like a speech, and transform it into a different form, like a letter. This will help you remember the differences between forms, and show you how meanings and effects might change as a result.

Tip four: Write more fiction

This one is another English Language tip. It's super important that you get familiar with writing stories, making sure that your spelling and grammar are on point!

If you are stuck for inspiration for your story, then open the first page of a random book and see if you can continue the story from its opening line. Try and take it in an unexpected (but still sensible!) direction. This will help you when you feel stuck for how to start a piece of creative writing – you'll already know that you can create a story from a very small starting point, so you won't need to worry about that in an exam scenario.

If you feel that your spelling and grammar could do with improvement, you could ask a friend to deliberately add in mistakes to a short piece of writing. You can then correct it, and work together to check it, using a dictionary or spellchecker if necessary. You can give them some help too as sometimes it’s easier to spot mistakes that aren’t your own; practising will improve this.

Tip five: Make the most of your time

Remembering quotations is a big part of your English Literature exams, but trying to memorise hundreds of quotations could be really difficult, so instead, why not choose three or four for each text? These should be quotations that you clearly understand and that you could use for a range of different themes and/or character questions.

You can switch up your quotation revision and make it more fun by getting together with a friend:

• Name a poem and write down as many ideas and quotations from it as you can (without looking!) in two minutes.
• Share your list of ideas and quotes from the poem and add any that your friend got, but you didn’t. This reinforces your memory of the poems and can make revision less pressured as you are helping each other out and having fun. Double win.
• If you want to triple the fun, then you could listen to one of the Bitesize podcasts about poetry, we're too good to you!

Tip six: Watch and learn

Watch or listen to as many short clips of performances of your Shakespeare text as you can, and make notes on how differently the lines are performed. Think about how the meaning changes depending on emphasis, intonation, pace, and facial expressions.

Not only is it fun to watch these, but it will give you more ideas for the effect of Shakespeare’s language on the audience. Bitesize has some fun and informative podcasts on a variety of English Literature topics to help supercharge your revision. Each episode is about ten minutes long, so are easy to listen to and not too time consuming.

Another way to revise set texts is by teaching others about them. This is a form of active recall and can really help solidify the set text in your mind. This works best if the other person knows very little about the text, and is even better if they can ask you follow-up questions about anything they don’t understand. Teaching someone embeds your learning, and improves your summary skills and clarity of explanation.

Bitesize has plenty of brand new English Language and English Literature revision guides and exam-style questions you can practice ahead of your exams. There are also loads more tips from Bitesize Study Support about revision and guides to help you during your exams, so why not check them out?

If you need support

You should always tell someone about the things you’re worried about. You can tell a friend, parent, guardian, teacher, or another trusted adult. If you're struggling with your mental health, going to your GP can be a good place to start to find help. Your GP can let you know what support is available to you, suggest different types of treatment and offer regular check-ups to see how you’re doing.

If you’re in need of in-the-moment support you can contact Childline, where you can speak to a counsellor. Their lines are open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

There are more links to helpful organisations on BBC Action Line.