Consult a teacher or professor about which works of literature to read in order to prepare for higher English and which areas to study. In college, your English classes will cover a range of genres and time periods such as American Literature, Children's Literature and Postmodern Literature. If you know which area of English you want to specialize in, focus your studies on that particular area and works of literature that fall into that category.
Read some of the classic works of literature that fall into the canon of Western Literature; Shakespeare's plays, "Great Expectations," "Jane Eyre," and "Middlemarch" all fall into the canon. Reading or at least familiarizing yourself with these classic texts will help you as your pursue higher English.
Take detailed notes about the works you read in class; pay close attention to the characters, themes and other literary elements of the work in addition to plot details. Writing down the information will help you remember it; the more you write about the works, the more you will be able to recall later in the classroom or in grad school.
Make a habit of writing outlines for papers; this will help you learn the basic structure of writing critical essays and research papers, which you will have to write often when taking higher English classes. Outlines will also help you organize your papers so that your paragraphs flow together logically; this will also help you learn to support your thesis with strong details from the text.
Find a Graduate Record Examination, or GRE, guide for the English examination. If you are planning to pursue English in grad school, you may need to take the GRE Subject Test in English. This test will help assess your knowledge of the Western canon and of the various literary elements and forms, including poetic forms. Obtaining a practice test will help you study for the GRE and higher English classes.