How do you do well on the paper 1 and paper 2 English literature A-level exam?

In order to do well in the exam, the first thing is to figure out the AOs, or the Assessment Objectives required in each question of your paper.  Many students make the mistake of not remembering the AOs required for their question, and they end up wasting precious time in crafting a response that is intelligent and thoughtful, but their efforts  are not rewarded due to the fact that the responses do not match the AOs of the question.  Once you understand which AOs you are being assessed on, you will be able to obtain a higher mark just by understanding what the question is assessing you to do.  For example, normally in the A- Level exam there will be a close reading section of a passage. These questions predeominantly assess on  AO2 and AO1, with AO2 covering 75% of the mark scheme (this is for the OCR exam, the markscheme may change for AQA). So even if your AO3 response is rather insightful in the close reading exam, it is difficult for the markers to award you marks. Other questions may ask for more AO3s or AO4s, so knowing the markscheme and the AOs is crucial for revision and doing well on the exam.