AQA A-Level English Literature A Component 1: Love through the ages overview quiz quiz

AO1 (informed personal response) and AO2 (analysis of method)

AO3 (historical context) and AO4 (connections between texts)

AO4 (connections between texts) and AO5 (differing interpretations)

AO2 (analysis of method) and AO5 (critical interpretations)

Memorising the exact publication dates of every single set text and reciting them in the correct order

Reading love as a cluster of changing conventions and tracing continuity and change across periods

Studying only the most recent modern love poetry

Ranking the set texts from the very best to the worst

The unseen poetry comparison

The pre-1900 poetry analysis

The Shakespeare study

The prose set-text comparison

It reliably tells you the poem's exact date of composition

It conclusively identifies the poet who wrote it

It completely removes any need to analyse the poem's language and imagery in close detail at all

It is the structural turn where the poem reframes its attitude, a high-value AO2 point

Context integrated so it changes how a specific moment in the text reads

A separate, freestanding paragraph that simply summarises the whole period's history

The author's full biography listed at the very end

Naming as many separate historical facts as you possibly can

It quotes far too much

It names techniques without explaining their effect on meaning

It is organised into paragraphs

It mentions the poet's name and the title of the poem too often throughout

Writing about each of the two texts in a completely separate half of the essay

Comparing only the basic plots

Moving between both texts within paragraphs around shared ideas

Discussing one text in full and ignoring the other

Free indirect discourse

Stanza form

Chapter headings

Soliloquy

Narrative method: voice, perspective and structure

The metre and the rhyme scheme

The total number of named characters

The length of each chapter and the size of the print on the page

Naming as many different named critics as you possibly can in the time available

Using a defensible interpretation to develop your own argument

Summarising the plot of the play

Ignoring all alternative critical readings

Because older texts are always considered to be of a far higher literary quality than any newer ones

Because modern texts are banned from the course entirely

To ensure the study of love spans different periods and supports comparison across time

To make the written exam noticeably shorter

AO3 (context) and AO5 (interpretations) above all else

AO1 only

AO3 (context) only

AO2 (method) and AO4 (comparison)