Any tips for GCSE English Unit 1 (Of Mice and Men + Unseen Poetry) (higher tier)? Advice (from those who have scored B and over) would be much appreciated. :3

Well, I am just about to sit this exam (just finished the higher tier language today) so I thought i'd share a few brief tips with you that help me when doing mocks on english lit paper 1(yeah it is very boring, I know your pain :c). I however have the poetry in a separate exam, and although I find this in fact alot easier than the novel based paper, I can't really think of any tips on that except to follow a strict structure when writing your answers, then as long as your content is understandable you are pretty much guaranteed a good mark.

Of Mice and Men:
- Refer to almost everything as false hope, the examiners love that stuff, e.g. the the lamp in crook's room may signify false hope, as its artificial blah blah blah...
- When speaking about a character in a question, refer to their, well, 'stereotypical behaviour' or their 'themes' if you like, e.g. 'Curleys wife is portrayed as slutty, wearing red garments throughout the novel' and then develop this simply by using symbolism, like 'her red garments could foreshadow danger for lenny blah blah blah', then go onto another point about her stereotypical behaviour, or even about the times prejudice towards the character, such as the ever present differences between the genders during the times that novel is based.
- Try to contrast and compare alot of things when writing your paragraphs, this helped me alot to gain those extra marks in my mocks, and this can be one of the easiest ways to deal with those questions that bring up any scenery or nature and not just the characters.

Apart from that I can't think of much else, so I hope this helped at least a little bit (I know I didn't write much, sorry about that my brain is very tired after my exam today XD), so good luck in your exam(s) aster!