English Literature

Assessment

Component 1 – Literary Genres: Aspects of Tragedy Literary Genres: Aspects of Tragedy is an externally-assessed written paper (2 hours and 30 minutes). It represents 40% of the overall qualification. The examination is closed book and made up of three sections (with the same text studied for Sections A and B). - Section A: A passage based question on Othello - Section B: An essay question on Othello - Section C: An essay question linking together a second drama text (Death of a Salesman) with one other text from a prescribed list (Keats' poetry). Component 2 – Elements of Political and Social Protest Writing Elements of Political and Social Protest Writing is an externally-assessed written paper (3 hours). It represents 40% of the overall qualification. The examination is open book (unannotated copies) and is made up of three sections. Students must study three texts, including one pre-1900 text (Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience), one post-2000 prose text (The Kite Runner) and one further text (The Handmaid’s Tale). There is also a question on an unseen passage (which will display recognisable features and conventions of political and social protest writing). - Section A: Compulsory question on an unseen passage - Section B: An essay question focusing on one of the three texts studied - Section C: An essay question that allows for connections to be made between the other two texts studied. Component 3 – NEA: Theory and Independence This is an internally assessed NEA (non-examined assessment) unit. It is comprised of two separate tasks and represents 20% of the marks for the overall A Level. The word count for each task's associated essay is 1500 words. One essay must be focused on a poetry text and the other on a prose text, with independence regarding text choices and associated study encouraged. A critical anthology will be studied alongside the focus texts and students will be required to apply their understanding of a different critical theory to each of their selected independent study texts in their responses. Some examples of the critical approaches that can be considered are ‘Narrative Theory’, ‘Feminist Criticism’, ‘Marxist Criticism’ and ‘Post-Colonial Criticism’.