Exam day card · English external · Othello · share-ready

Tuesday 27 October, 9am

One essay, two questions to choose from, 15 minutes planning and 120 minutes writing, no text and no notes. Everything on this page is a thing you have already done in a full run. Nothing on it is new.

Mon
Health finishes Monday afternoon and English opens Tuesday morning. There is no version where you study English in that gap. Monday night is a sleep night. English was finished on Friday 23 October; from then on it is quote blurts only. If you are still awake at eleven on Monday, you are giving Tuesday marks away.

1The bag

  • Three pens, black or blue. Not two.
  • Water, in a clear bottle if the school asks for one.
  • Whatever ID or slip the school has told you to bring.
  • Nothing else. There is no text, no notes, no dictionary, and phones and watches go wherever the school says they go.
  • Breakfast, even a small one, and arrive with time to sit down before the room goes quiet.

2The first five minutes

  1. Read both questions once, slowly. You are not choosing yet.
  2. Run the 60-second choice, on the right. Decide. Never look back.
  3. Underline the question's exact words on the paper.
  4. On the planning paper, write a thesis skeleton: your position in one rough sentence, even a bad one.

By step 4 you are already working. The run starts with steps you execute, not a blank page you face.

3The 60-second choice

  1. Which one can I state a position on right now? Not which one I like more.
  2. Which one do my quotes actually serve? Run your strongest four in your head.
  3. Dread is information, not a verdict. Notice it, then check it against 1 and 2.
  4. Decide, and the other question no longer exists.

Both questions are marked identically. There is no harder one, only the one your quotes serve.

4The room the question is in

Every question is a door into one of three rooms. Find the room, then borrow from a second. An essay never tries to be in all three.

Trust and deceptiontrust, jealousy, proof, appearance and reality, the soliloquies
The outsiderrace, Venice and Cyprus, reputation, honour, how we view Othello
The womengender, obedience, marriage, Desdemona, Emilia, the ending

5The clock, on a 9am start

9:00 to 9:15Planthesis, three topic sentences, which quote goes where
to 9:25Introthesis, then the three arguments in order
to 9:50Body oneP, E, A1, A2, L
to 10:15Body twothe join carries the argument
to 10:40Body threeP, E, A1, A2, L
to 10:50Conclusionsays what the intro could not
to 11:00Read itnames, spelling, the question's words
to 11:15Bufferthe slack, already spent if you ran over

If the room starts at a different minute, shift every time by the same amount. Write the finish times in the margin of the planning paper before the writing time begins, then you never have to do the sum again.

6PETAL, the exam version, every paragraph

Pointa claim someone could argue with
Evidencea short quote inside your sentence
A1 Howyour T in three words, then the effect on us
A2 Valuethe belief the play runs on, one sentence
Linkthe question's own words, one step on

7If it goes wrong

  • Blank panic. Write the thesis skeleton anyway, bad is fine. Hands moving ends it.
  • A quote will not come. Describe the moment in your own words and keep the analysis. The How and the Value still score.
  • Running out of time. Stop the third paragraph with a Link and write the conclusion. A conclusion beats a fourth paragraph every time.
  • The question looks like nothing you prepared. It is a door. Find the room, then write the room's argument through the question's words.
Four full runs behind you. This is the fifth.
Learning My Way · English · learningmyway-english.pages.dev/exam-day