AQA A-Level English Literature A: exam and essay skills overview quiz quiz

Five

Three

Four

Six

AO1 (a coherent and accurate informed personal response to the text)

AO2 (analysis of how form, structure and language shape meaning)

AO3 (historical and social context)

AO4 (connections across texts)

Plot, character and setting

Author, date of writing and genre

Form, structure and language

Beginning, middle and ending

Naming as many more separate features in the passage as you can possibly manage to find

Quoting a longer and longer passage from the text

Clearly stating the poet's full name

Explaining the effect of the method on meaning and linking it to the argument

A genuine connection and a difference, plus the line of argument

Only a single point of similarity between the two texts and nothing else at all

The total number of set texts

The relevant exam board

It is noticeably shorter overall

It compares both texts within each paragraph, making connections explicit

It avoids using any direct quotations from either of the two texts at all

It discusses only one of the texts

Whether the point is historically accurate

Whether it concerns the author's own life and personal biography in some way or other

Whether removing it would weaken your reading of a specific moment in the text

Whether it is simply interesting

Naming as many critics as possible

Asserting that absolutely every possible reading of the text is exactly as valid as every other one

Avoiding any mention of other readings

Deploying a defensible interpretation to develop your argument and testing it against the evidence

Naming a technique without explaining what it does to meaning

Choosing the most significant methods in the passage to analyse in real depth

Comparing two different texts

Quoting from the text accurately

AO3 and AO4

AO1 and AO2

AO4 and AO5

AO2 and AO3

By firmly concluding that every one of the readings is equally valid

By simply listing the readings without judgement

By arguing for the most persuasive reading on the evidence

By choosing one of the readings at random

As two completely separate, bolted-on sections placed right at the end

Only in the essay's introduction

Never at all, in order to save space

Integrated into the comparison so each supports the argument