Revision: MEST1 exam re-sit

Your MEST1 exam re-sit is on Thursday 18 May at 9.00am.

You need to be revising EVERYTHING you've learned in Media over TWO years - that should give you loads of confidence going in to this exam! 

These PowerPoints from Year 12 Media this year may also help you:

Film Language unit

MIGRAIN Introduction to Media unit

MEST1 Section B - British Film Industry / Ill Manors / A Field In England unit

There's also plenty of other revision you need to be doing:

Check your old MEST1 Section B index and revise all the work you've done on Ill Manors, A Field In England and your completed independent case study.

There are MEST1 Section B past questions to revise, plan and practice here.

This is a revision PowerPoint summarising key theories and terminology for the MEST1 exam. 

One of the key lessons from last year's exam was the quality of notetaking and whether students made specific reference to the clip using media terminology and textual analysis skills. The Examiner's Report from last summer's exam contains more details on this. You also need to be writing enough for each question in Section A: a minimum of THREE well-developed paragraphs for EACH question in Section A. 

Finally, remember the most important thing for BOTH Section A and Section B:

READ AND ANSWER THE QUESTION!

Good luck with your revision - you will do SO much better with another year of Media behind you and remember that all the theories and examples we've learned in Year 13 can be used in the MEST1 exam if relevant. Good luck! 

MEST3 Section A: revision task

The key to top performance in Section A of the MEST3 exam is a wide variety of examples from across the media.

Although Q1 will always test your textual analysis skills with the media texts in the exam, Q2 and Q3 increasingly focus on wider issues and debates in the media. These will be related to the two Year 13 exam topics: Identities and the Media and New/Digital Media.

You need a wide selection of examples for BOTH these topics that you can call upon depending on the nature of the questions on the day. Assuming you need four well developed paragraphs at the very least for these 12-mark questions, you’ll therefore be needing an absolute minimum of three of these wider examples for each question.

Section A revision task

You need to look over your blog work, class notes and collection of NDM stories from the whole of Year 13 in order to put together a list of examples for Q2 and Q3 in Section A.

Task 1: List 10 stories/debates/examples that you could use for the Identities and the Media question. 

E.g. fourth wave of feminism (#everydaysexism); gender identity issues (e.g. Caitlyn Jenner; Chelsea Manning, North Carolina LGBT law etc.) If you’re not confident enough to use all 10 in an exam situation then research, revise and create notes/revision cards until your knowledge is sufficient.

Task 2: List 10 stories/debates/examples that you could use for the New/Digital Media question.

Here, there’s no question you’ll have enough examples (your two NDM case studies are perfectly acceptable here) so it’s more about quality. Choose your 10 strongest examples to prepare for exam use – e.g. Citizen journalism and the #blacklivesmatter campaign against US police brutality; social media impact on TV news and newspapers; streaming services and changes in the music industry etc. Again, if you’re not confident enough to use all 10 in an exam situation then research, revise and create notes/revision cards until your knowledge is sufficient.

If you complete all 10 on your blog, create revision cards for each example with the key details, statistics and quotes. 

If you don’t complete 10 examples for each topic on your blog, you MUST finish for homework as part of your ongoing MEST3 revision.

MEST3 PPE - Learner Response

You've now completed a full MEST3 PPE - vital preparation for the real thing in June.

The most important aspect of any mock exam is making mistakes and learning from them. You need to closely analyse your performance across each question and identify specific ways you will improve for the MEST3 exam in the summer. Complete the following learner response tasks in a new blogpost on your MEST3 Exam Blog called 'MEST3 PPE learner response':


1) Type up your feedback in full (you do not need to write mark/grade if you do not wish to).

2) Did you succeed in meeting or exceeding your target grade for A2 Media? If not, how many additional marks do you need across Section A and Section B to achieve your target grade?

Grade boundaries for complete paper (out of 80): 

A* = 75; A = 65; B = 55; C = 45; D = 36; E = 25.

3) Read through the mark scheme. Pay particular attention to pages 6-8 that have suggested content for each of the questions in Section A. How many of these potential points did you make? Did you successfully answer the questions? The original question paper is here if that is helpful.

4) Which was your strongest question in Section A? Why did you do better in that particular question? Note the number of marks each question is worth.


5) Which was your weakest question in Section A? Again, try and identify why this happened. Did you misinterpret the question? Did you run out of time? 

6) Now look at pages 11-12 of the mark scheme for Section B - New/Digital Media paying particular attention to the suggested essay content on page 12. How many of the broad areas suggested by AQA did you cover in your Section B essay? Did you successfully answer the question?

7) Read the Examiner's Report in full. For each question your answered, would you classify your response as one of the stronger answers or one of the weaker answers the Chief Examiner discusses? Why? What could you do differently next time? Write a reflection for EACH question in the paper: Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q6 OR Q7.

8) Choose your weakest question in Section A and re-write an answer in full based on the suggested content from the Examiner's Report. This answer needs to be comprehensive and meet the criteria for Level 4 of the mark scheme. This will be somewhere between 3-6 well-developed paragraphs (depending on the question/number of marks available).

Work on this during the lesson you are given your paper back but you may need to complete for homework.

Coursework deadline: Wednesday 19 April

Your A Level Media coursework deadline is Wednesday 19 April.

You need to submit the following before you leave:

• A completed candidate record form to send to the exam board. You will be given this to complete in class.
• A printed copy of your Critical Investigation, fully referenced with footnotes and including a complete bibliography. It must be 1.5 line spaced with your name in the header.
• An electronic copy of your Critical Investigation submitted to Ms Quinn as a Word document. Save this to your folder in Media Shared and email Ms Quinn (A Quinn) with the file name she needs to collect
• A further electronic copy of your Critical Investigation posted to your blog.
• You must also submit your Linked Production to Ms Quinn. For video productions, an exported video file needs to submitted to Ms Quinn electronically (through Media Shared as above). If you have completed a print project, you need to print each page on A4 and submit with your Critical Investigation AND submit electronic PDF copies to Ms Quinn. Make sure your name is in the file name for each PDF.

You will have your first Media lessons after Easter to submit this work or can attend Media at lunchtime, after school or during free periods.

IMPORTANT: Do NOT miss lessons in any other subject in order to work in Media. This will never be requested or sanctioned by the Media department.

Good luck - there is an impressive standard across both classes already and this could be the best set of grades yet!