English Literature

Assessment

At A Level, we follow the AQA Literature A specification. This involves an historicist approach to studying Literature – in the first year through a lens of love. The module is called Love through the Ages. The texts from various eras that students have studied up to this point will help as the A level students, through looking at a wide range of unseen poetry, are taken on a journey through the literary canon learning the conventions and motivations of various movements and eras. This focus on unseen poetry (a key part of the exam) is taught alongside a novel (Either The Great Gatsby or Atonement) and Othello. Students are taught the skills to approach texts critically, and through the knowledge of context and genre they have been taught, explore how writers use and subvert these conventions. Students are taught to see English literature as a series of reaction and conversations through history – an ever evolving being. Students are also taught to be confident writers of analytical essays, driven by a developed and personal argument. In the second year, students continue with an approach to Literature based closely on context but zoom more closely into one period – in this case, post-war 20th century writing. Students study A Handmaid’s Tale, A Streetcar Named Desire and the poetry collection and The Feminine Gospels. Through this study, we aim to introduce more advanced critical lenses for students to view their texts through, namely Feminist, Marxist, Post-colonial and Eco-critical. The coursework aspect of the course will use all of the skills the students have developed throughout their English literature career as they get to independently get to choose the text they compare to Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber. They also choose the focus of their analysis.