English Language and Literature

Course summary

OCR’s English Language and Literature (EMC) is a unique and distinctive qualification produced in partnership with the English & Media Centre. Together, the English team at OCR and EMC have developed a new A Level that prepares you for university study, and engages and enthuses aspiring students and teachers alike. By A Level, English students are cultivating their own critical responses and engaging with the richness of language and literature. Our English A Levels enable depth and breadth of study, with flexible content that supports independence, wide reading, and creativity. This course will enable you to explore language and literature in depth and to become confident readers and producers of texts. The non-examined assessment tasks build on the work of the whole course and give you the opportunity to develop your own particular interests. All students will choose a 21st-century text as one of their two non-exam assessment texts, giving an interesting and important emphasis on contemporary language and literature. The A Level in English Language and Literature is a two-year course with examinations and coursework completed at the end of the second year. There are three examined components and one non-exam assessment component. The first component focuses on non-fiction spoken and written texts from an OCR/EMC anthology. You will compare an anthology text with a short unseen text that is clearly linked by, for example, theme, purpose, or mode. The second component explores poetry and drama. The third component involves the study of narrative fiction, from a choice of six prose texts. Students explore narrative methods and techniques in their chosen text and then apply their knowledge and understanding in the production of their own opening to a narrative. The non-exam assessment comprises two tasks – an analytical essay comparing a non-fiction text with a free choice text from any genre and the production of a non-fiction original writing piece