Pigeon English Revision Guide - Part One

Need some pearls of wisdom on how to revise Pigeon English for your GCSE exam? Well, step then read this way!

1) READ the text

Yes, you read that correctly, and it’s a blatantly obvious tip, but I’ve had many students attempt to complete essays and exams on a book they haven’t read cover-to-cover.

You need a full sense and understanding of what happens in a text before you can analyse and critique its language and themes, so get reading it.

2) Know its context

You could describe this as reading around the text. You need to know the inspiration behind as well as the social and cultural situation of any text you study, ideally while you’re reading it, rather than later on.

3) Be familiar with the text’s key themes

You need to know the main ideas the author is working with and around. In this text alone, Kelman if offering us his insight into growing up, education, family, violence, race, and so much more.

You may be asked to write an essay regarding any of these.

4) Prepare some key passages/sections

As English Literature exams are mostly ‘open book’, you should have a copy of Pigeon English in front of you on exam day. This means you don’t need to learn swathes of the text by heart.

Instead, you should be familiar with a selection of important passages/sections that you may be asked focused questions on or need to quote from as you write your response; know how to locate these at speed (perhaps learn off a list of important page numbers).