How do I start to approach the ELAT?

The ELAT is an unsual test for one main reason: it has no questions. Instead you are faced with six poems or extracts from texts, which all have a shared theme. Themes in the past have included Journeys and Murder. Here I will quickly break the ELAT down into some basic steps. 1) Read all of the extracts. Do not read and annotate - simply read. You must only answer on two or three texts, so annotating all six wastes precious time. 2)  Choose your texts. There will be some texts you will instinctively not want to tackle; immediately discard those from the pool. Likewise there may be a couple you feel more comfortable with, so pick those ones. If you are looking for that third one though, and are choosing between two, look at the mediums of the texts. Is one a radio-play, rather than an extract from a novel? Would this potentially be more interesting to contrast with the ones you have already chosen? Once you make your choices, move on to step three. 3) Annotate and analyse. This is a crucial step. Start by drawing up basic similarities and differences between the texts. Perhaps the authors present different opinions but use the same techniques, or have the same opinions but very different styles. Maybe they both use pathetic fallacy, but convey different moods. Don't just stop at observations, but then think, why. What do these different techniques do? What purpose do they serve? Once you have these thoughts, you can begin to start planning. 4) Finding your focus. What this step does is give you a shape for the essay you are about to write. You aren't given a question, so you have to come up with a focus of your own. Say the theme is Murder. You may have chosen three in which the murder always takes place between either a married couple or lovers. Perhaps one extract is a man murdering his wife, while the other two it is the women murdering the men. Your focus could be on how gender effects the author's portrayal of the murders, especially if say, the women are much more sympathetically portrayed than the man is. 5) Writing. The introduction should be brief; don't make an overly sweeping and broad statement, but also avoid narrowing the field too much. You want focus without it being limited. If we go through a past paper together, I can show you exactly how to do this. When writing the body of the essay, don't worry if you feel like you are making obvious points; just because something is obvious, that doesn't mean that it is invalid. Follow each point through, treating each paragraph like an hourglass: make the point, then hone into the detail, presenting the evidence for the point, then widen out again, tying the point into the wider focus of the theme. If you have time, finish with a conclusion, but it is not absolutely necessary if you don't have time. Ideally leave five minutes at the end of the exam to check over your essay for any mistakes.