The NEA and skills overview quiz (AQA A-Level English Language and Literature) quiz

Making Connections

Language in Action

Telling Stories

Exploring Conflict

Two poems written by the same poet at different stages of that writer's career

A literary text with a non-literary text or material around a shared focus

Two unseen literary extracts handed out and compared under timed conditions in the exam hall

A stage play and its later film adaptation, with no other kind of text permitted at all

10 percent

40 percent

20 percent

50 percent

A narrow focus makes the finished essay much shorter and so quicker to mark

A narrow focus avoids the need for any referencing or formal academic bibliography

A narrow focus removes the need to compare the two texts directly with each other

A precise, answerable focus produces sustained analysis rather than description

A set of analytical strands applied to both texts so you compare like with like

A long list of unrelated observations about each text jotted down in no particular order

A plain summary of each text's plot and main events, set out one text after the other

A formal bibliography listing every source consulted during the whole investigation

Because the genre of a text always reliably tells you the exact date on which it was first published

Because each genre's conventions, audience and purpose shape how it represents the shared focus

Because the chosen genre of a text strictly determines the total word count you are allowed

Because only one single genre is ever allowed to appear anywhere in the whole investigation

To narrate, step by careful step, the exact order in which you wrote each section of your creative piece as a diary

To summarise the plot and main ideas of the base text you used as your model for the writing

To analyse and justify your own writing choices with linguistic concepts and link them to a model and effect

To count the words in your piece and confirm that it falls within the set word limit

Weaving the two texts closely together throughout the essay within shared strands

Using comparative connectives of similarity and difference to link the two texts

Evidencing every interpretive claim with precisely named linguistic features

Analysing one text fully and then the other in separate blocks

Named linguistic evidence, because the subject is integrated

A strongly held personal opinion alone, offered without any supporting textual detail

The overall length of the text, measured by its total number of words or pages

The author's biography on its own, used in place of close analysis of the text

About 500 words

About 2,500 to 3,000 words

About 10,000 words

There is no expected length