Quick questions on Analysing form, structure and language (AO2) - WJEC A-Level English Literature

Make the move habitual. Every time you identify a technique, ask "so what?" - what does it do to the meaning, the tone, the reader's experience? Tie the effect to the specific text, not to a generic rule, because the same device does different work in different places.

AO2 does not live alone: it proves an AO1 argument. Lead each paragraph with a claim about meaning, then support it with feature-effect analysis. This stops the answer becoming a list of techniques and keeps the analysis purposeful, because each method is brought in to support a point rather than for its own sake.

Consider one method - a shift in register - read in each form. In a novel, a narrator's diction sliding from formal to colloquial can mark a character's growing intimacy or a loss of authorial distance, an effect of narrative method. In a poem, a shift from elevated to plain diction across a volta can enact disillusion, an effect of form and language.

Reading a play as a poem or prose as drama misses the methods the form actually uses.

A catalogue of techniques with no argument reads mechanically; marshal analysis into claims about meaning.

Saying a device "creates emphasis" or "draws the reader in" without tying it to the text is empty; specify the effect here.

What is the single move that defines AO2 analysis? [2 marks]

Why must the toolkit you use change between prose, poetry and drama? [3 marks]

Explain, with examples across two forms, how to analyse the ways meanings are shaped in a text. [20 marks]