OCR Religious Studies A Level: 40/40 Soul, mind and body essay plans for all possible questions

These notes provide everything you need to get an 40/40 or a high A in Soul, mind and body questions. The plans are clear, easy to read and colour-coded so you can see AO1 and AO2. I’ve been tutoring OCR RS A Level for over a decade, and I have a degree in Theology from Cambridge.

These aren’t textbook-style notes explaining the thinkers. Don’t download if you don’t understand the main thinkers already! These notes cut straight to the point and give you 40/40 essays for all possible questions on soul, mind and body for the OCR A Level. As with all OCR RS topics, there are a limited number of possible questions from the specification, and this document gives you A Grade essay for all possible question, including on the tricky questions on “category error” and soul as “metaphor”.

These plans use a structure of six shortish paragraphs, with two AO1 and four AO2. You could, instead, have paragraphs that mix AO1 and AO2. Whatever you do, two thirds of your essay should be two thirds AO2 because two thirds of the marks are AO2.

There are many other strengths and weaknesses of these theories, this is just one way of writing 40/40 essays. You may have to adapt a plan to the exact wording of the question set, but in OCR RS there are a small number of possible question themes and these plans cover all those themes, if not the exact wording of every possible question.

You may get a question focusing on materialism vs dualism, Plato vs Aristotle, the mind-body problem as a “category error” and if the soul is a “metaphor”. These four plans cover all these possible questions to A* standard.