OCR A-Level English Language and Literature: reading as a writer (Component 03 Section A) overview quiz quiz

A timed essay analysing the imagery and form of a set anthology poem under closed-text conditions

An essay on narrative method in a set prose text (32 marks), assessing AO1, AO2 and AO3, closed text

A sustained comparison of two non-fiction texts judged mainly on the quality of the comparison itself

A single original creative piece only, with no accompanying analytical essay or written commentary at all

From writing short factual answers to writing one long, fully developed essay response instead

From the study of poetry in the earlier units across to the study of prose fiction in this one

From analysing what happens (the tale) to analysing how it is narrated (the telling)

From a focus on the historical context of the novel across to a close focus on its plot events

Direct speech reported between quotation marks, attributed to a named character by the narrator each time

A sustained first-person diary form in which the character themselves records their own private thoughts, feelings and daily events

A bracketed stage direction inserted into prose to tell the reader how a line of speech should be delivered

The blending of the narrator's third-person past-tense report with the character's idiom and thought, without quotation marks

It controls whose perspective the narration adopts and so what the reader can know

It fixes the typeface and page layout that the published novel will eventually appear in

It simply counts and numbers the chapters so the reader can keep track of their progress

It has no real effect at all on how the story is told or on what the reader comes to know

By the cover illustration on the front of the book, which fixes how the reader pictures the figure

Through narration: the narrator's evaluative lexis, transitivity, access to thought, and speech presentation

By the title of the novel alone, which announces in advance who its central character is going to be

By the total page count of the book alone, since the longest novels naturally produce the deepest characters

Counting the number of pages that are devoted to each separate event in order to measure its relative importance

Reading the events strictly in the order they happen, ignoring any rearrangement the writer has imposed

Reading the handling of order (flashback, flash-forward) and pace (scene versus summary) as deliberate method

Ignoring the structure of the novel entirely and treating its events purely as raw plot to be summarised

Because the plot of the novel is entirely irrelevant to the essay and should be left out of any revision map you build for the examination

Because OCR formally requires every candidate to submit a revision map alongside the essay as part of the assessed coursework folder

To avoid having to use any direct quotations from the novel, since a method map can replace textual evidence in the essay altogether

The component's focus is how the novel is told, so a method-focused map lets you analyse any passage as an instance of the novel's method

It only ever helps with Section A, since the analytical essay is the single place command of the novel matters

The same mapped command powers the Section A essay and the Section B recreation of a known episode

It only ever helps with Section B, since the recreative writing is the only place knowledge of the novel is used

It is not actually needed for either section, because both tasks can be done well without command of the novel

How is this done?

What happens next?

Who is the author?

When was it written?

It does not link them at all, since the analytical essay and the recreative writing are entirely separate skills that share nothing

It is the analytical stance Section A rewards and the craft awareness Section B requires; the analysis feeds the writing

It links them only through the shared historical context of the set text, and in no other way across the two sections

It links them only through the requirement to embed direct quotations from the novel, and through nothing else besides

They tend to use unusually long and difficult words throughout, so the reader cannot fully follow what they are saying

They narrate the story entirely in the third person rather than speaking about themselves directly

Their telling is partial or self-deceiving, creating a gap between what is reported and what the reader infers

They never actually appear in the story, remaining wholly absent from every scene and event described

As a standalone paragraph of the author's own biography, simply dropped into the essay separately from any close analysis of the text itself

Omitted from the essay entirely, on the grounds that AO3 carries no weight at all in the marking of the prose essay

As a bare list of dates and historical events placed at the start of the essay before the analysis begins in earnest

Read into narrative features: the period's conventions, the tradition and the writer's concerns that make a narrative choice meaningful