RBSE SS English Literature common mistakes
RBSE SS English Literature · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
When asked to summarise a prose extract, the candidate rewrites it at nearly the same length, keeps the original sentence order, and copies whole clauses verbatim instead of compressing to the required word count.
Students revise by re-reading the text, so the author's wording is the only model they have in mind; they equate 'summary' with 'reproduction' and have never practised the deletion-and-generalisation moves (cutting examples, merging details into one covering statement).
What to do instead
Practise the three-step summary drill on a 300-word passage: (1) underline only the topic sentence of each paragraph, (2) rewrite each in one clause of your own words, (3) count words and cut adjectives, examples, and repeated ideas until you hit the limit. Do this weekly and compare your draft against a model to see which details were expendable.
In poetry answers, the candidate identifies a figure of speech by name only ('there is a simile here') and stops, without quoting the exact words, without naming the two things compared, and without saying what the comparison reveals about theme or tone.
Textbooks and guides list devices in tables, so students memorise labels as ends in themselves; they do not realise examiners award marks for the explanation of effect, not the label.
What to do instead
Adopt a fixed four-part sentence pattern for every device: name it, quote it, identify the two elements, state the effect. For example: 'The simile comparing old age to a worn garment suggests decay and loss of dignity.' Apply the pattern to at least five devices per poem and check each answer contains all four parts.
When a question asks about a character's motivation or the significance of an event, the candidate retells the plot of the whole story or play instead of answering the question, often spending most of the answer on events before the relevant moment.
Narrative recall is easier than analysis, and under time pressure students write what they remember rather than what is asked; many have never been taught to convert a question into a focus word before writing.
What to do instead
Before writing, underline the key word in the question (e.g. 'motivation', 'significance', 'contrast') and write a one-sentence thesis that uses that word. Then allow only evidence that supports the thesis: two or three short quotations with a sentence of comment each. Discard any sentence that merely reports what happened next.
In drama answers, the candidate discusses characters as if they were real people and ignores stagecraft - stage directions, entrances and exits, soliloquy, aside, dramatic irony, and the effect of scene structure - even when the question is about how tension is created.
Plays are studied as printed stories in class, and students read the dialogue while skipping bracketed stage directions; they have little practice visualising performance.
What to do instead
Annotate the prescribed scenes by marking every stage direction, aside, and soliloquy in the margin, and write one line beside each on what the audience sees or knows that a character does not. When answering, cite at least one stage direction or structural feature per paragraph alongside the dialogue.
The candidate writes a formal letter or application using informal contractions, slang, and SMS abbreviations, omits the sender's address, date, subject line, or complimentary close, and mixes up the order of the receiver's address and the salutation.
Students draft letters the way they message friends and have not internalised the fixed layout as a checklist; they also lose marks because layout errors are the easiest to avoid but the least rehearsed.
What to do instead
Memorise one layout skeleton and reproduce it in every practice: sender's address, date, receiver's address, subject, salutation, body paragraphs, complimentary close, signature. Write three full letters under timed conditions per week, then mark your own against the skeleton and circle every contraction to replace with full forms.
On comprehension passages, the candidate lifts a long stretch of the original text as the answer, or answers in a single word or phrase when the question begins with 'Why' or 'How', so the response lacks the required explanation and does not match the mark allocation.
Students believe quoting guarantees correctness; they also fail to notice that the number of marks signals the number of points needed, and they answer in note form because it feels faster.
What to do instead
Answer in complete sentences that begin by echoing the question, then add the reason. Match length to marks: a two-mark question needs two distinct points. Before writing, number the marks in the margin and tick off each point you supply. Practise by converting five one-line answers into full explanatory sentences.
In composition, the candidate produces a narrative with no clear controlling idea: events are listed chronologically with 'and then' links, paragraphs are undivided blocks, and the piece ends abruptly or with a moral tacked on rather than a resolved ending.
Students plan only the sequence of events, not the point of the story or the shape of paragraphs; under exam pressure they start writing immediately to save time, which paradoxically costs organisation marks.
What to do instead
Spend three minutes on a five-line plan before writing: one line for the controlling idea, three for the beginning, climax, and resolution, one for the closing image. Then write with a visible paragraph break for each stage. Practise opening with a specific scene rather than a general statement, and end on the consequence of the climax, not a moral.
The candidate confuses figures of speech that are easily mixed up - metonymy with synecdoche, simile with metaphor, personification with apostrophe - and mislabels the metre or rhyme scheme of a poem by counting lines rather than stresses or rhyme sounds.
Definitions are learned as isolated one-line glosses without contrasting examples, and scansion is rarely practised aloud, so the distinction between 'like' and 'is', or between part-for-whole and associated object, collapses under exam pressure.
What to do instead
Build a contrast table with two of your own examples per device, side by side, and recite them. For metre and rhyme, mark stressed syllables with a slash and unstressed with a cross on three poems, and label the rhyme scheme letter by letter (abab, aabb) before writing your answer; verify each label against a second example from the same poem.
Asked to paraphrase a stanza, the candidate either translates it into flat modern prose that drops the imagery entirely, or simply repeats the lines with one or two words swapped, so the paraphrase is neither faithful nor genuinely reworded.
Students do not distinguish paraphrase (same meaning, new wording, meaning preserved line by line) from summary (compressed) or commentary (interpretation added); they also fear that rewording will lose marks, so they cling to the original phrasing.
What to do instead
Paraphrase line by line, keeping the same number of sentences as the stanza, and change both vocabulary and sentence structure while preserving every image. Then check: does each original line have a corresponding sentence, and have you added no interpretation? Compare a summary and a paraphrase of the same stanza side by side to feel the difference.
The candidate quotes from memory inaccurately - misattributing a line to the wrong poem, altering a word that carries the meaning, or inventing a quotation - and gives no context for the quotation when it is embedded in an answer.
Revision relies on recalling the gist of lines rather than exact wording, and students assume the examiner will accept an approximate quotation; they also embed quotations without saying who speaks or when.
What to do instead
Keep a quotation bank of eight to ten short, exact lines per prescribed text, each written with speaker, act or stanza, and the situation. Test yourself by covering the quotation and writing it from the cue. In answers, introduce each quotation with its context in the same sentence, and never use a line you cannot reproduce exactly - paraphrase instead.