AS ENGLISH LITERATURE SKILLS - INTRODUCTION
Hello and welcome to a series of videos focused on helping you achieve the best grades possible
at AS and A2 English Literature.
Whatever the Exam Board and A level when we get to A2, is broken down into four units.
The first two units are found in AS, where you have a unit that’s based on coursework
activities and a unit that’s based on final examination.
The AS English Literature and A2 English Literature are broken down into two units each.
As you can see, the AS has a unit of coursework and a terminal examination.
Coursework, which we’ll come onto at a later day, is broken down into different types of
activities depending on the type of Exam Board that you are following, and the same is true
of the A2, which again is broken down into normally an extended essay and then a final
closed book examination but again, they do vary from Exam Board to Exam Board.
You can be examined in January – take the exam early, or June, or both.
You can re-sit after taking in January if you’re exam result isn’t good enough.
For the A2 all of the units here become 25% of the whole mark, so everything is added
together for the A2.
Now, the exams are assessed in coursework and final examination, creative pieces and
coursework comparison pieces, synoptic pieces whereby all of your knowledge is tested in
the last year of the A2 exam.
They all are based on a framework of assessment objectives and as you can see from this quotation
from the Welsh Boards Examiner, it said ‘the strongest answers were those where candidates
addressed the AOs with confidence’.
The only time that you have confidence and do well is when you have knowledge and that’s
what this little section is all about; understanding the AOs, brief overview and the following
videos on this will look at each AO in turn and look at responses that use those AOs well.
Now there are five exam syllabuses available; the AQA, Edexcel, OCR, the Welsh Board and
the Northern Irish Board.
Each Board applies the AOs in different ways according to their syllabus.
Some have short answers like Edexcel and AQA, some have extended essays, some have creative
writing pieces, some have open book and closed book exams and so it’s important that you
understand the syllabus of your particular A level.
By understanding the AOs, you can understand what the Examiners are looking for, you can
understand how it’s actually linked to the literature you’re reading and understanding
and analysing, the ways in which you can write and adopt the different knowledge you have
learned in your coursework and in your examinations and also you are able to break down the responses
and how they’re marked according to the different assessment, objective, focuses.
A brief run over then of what they are:
Firstly, AO1 – this focuses really on your writing skills and your actual ability to
manipulate English in expressing your point of view and using technical language from
English Literature or even language to analyse effectively what you have read and show the
Examiner that you understand what you have read and you present a sophisticated argument.
AO2 – this shows your ability to analyse, to say how and why a specific type of writing
or what the author’s intentions were and also look in more depth at form, language
and structure of a text and say how they are working, often comparing them, which again
brings us on to AO3.
AO3 – is looking at ways of comparing connecting texts.
OK and that can be through the way they’re written, their form, the AO2 form, structure,
language and so on but it can also be through their contextual factors.
How and when they’re written.
Are they similar?
Why aren’t they similar?
Do they follow a similar theme?
And so on.
AO4 – looks at your ability to understand when those texts were written, the context.
What influences the writers in their writing?
Who were they reacting to?
What was the purpose of their writing linked to the social, political, historical factors
of the day?
There are many benefits from understanding the assessment focuses and how they’re applied
in GCE English Literature.
That’s the point, it’ll give you an understanding of the whole course, what you’re required
to do, what you should be reading, the ideas you should be developing, where you need to
focus your research and how you can put together ideas to get the best marks.
It’ll enable you to respond to assessment tasks and examination questions effectively
because you’ll understand the areas that you’ll need to cover and the things that
you’ll need to analyse and explain and explore.
It’ll give you confidence if you understand the assessment objectives when you’re constructing
written pieces, whether they are re-creative writing or commentaries or essays that compare
or analyse across a range of texts and we can also use the assessment objectives to
help us build knowledge that will construct A* answers and in the next series of videos,
as we look at AO1, 2, 3 and 4, you will see A* responses linked to each of those assessment
focuses.
Thank you.
2