Every year new students have to read 19th Century (1800 – 1900) books, poems, and plays for the G.C.S.E. exams in the UK. If English is not your first language you might be thinking “What the actual flip has 150 year old English got to do with anything?”, and frankly I agree with you. However, I am not the big boss when it comes to what’s going to be in your G.C.S.E. exams, so I can’t make that decision. That’s probably a good thing too, because I would make you memorise the name of every species of wild cat, and then force you to write poems about them.

Part of your exam might be reading a bit of 19th century English that you have never seen before. How do you prepare for that? Well, you get reading as much 19th century English as you can before you get to that exam. This will help you:

·         Learn old English vocabulary and it’s meanings.

·         Understand the context of old stories and the times in which they were written.

·         Get used to not understanding every single word, but still understanding general meanings.

·         Get used to old English grammar.

I recommend the H.G. Well’s Novel “The War of the Worlds” available for free at the Project Gutenberg website.

The War of the Worlds is an excellent novel full of old-fashioned science fiction, interesting predictions about the future, exciting action, moral decisions, in depth descriptions, and most importantly a lot of literary techniques like personification, pathetic fallacy, and more.

Not everything has to cost a fortune. Have a look at War of the Worlds and see if this is something you would like to get your teeth into, and get used to more old fashioned English for your exams.