AS and A Level English Literature


The aim of the English Liter­at­ure course is to enable you to develop as an informed, inde­pend­ent reader and confid­ent critic of liter­ary texts.

You will develop care­ful and close read­ing strategies that provides you with appro­pri­ate and specific evid­ence to support your own opin­ion. You will consider and under­stand other possible read­ings and research into the contexts of both read­ing and writing.

The wider read­ing require­ment of the course, beyond the set texts, provides an oppor­tun­ity to explore your own interests in a vari­ety of genres. A detailed Read­ing Log will provide a useful revi­sion tool.

We visit the theatre to enhance the study of drama texts.

Specific­a­tion: AQA AS 1741 A level 2741. We follow the AQA English Liter­at­ure Specific­a­tion A.
Click here to down­load the current specific­a­tion for this A Level course.

AS - AQA English Liter­at­ure A: World War One Literature

Unit 1: LTA1B Texts in Context
The aim of this unit is to encourage:

Wide read­ing across all three genres, across time and across genders.
Close read­ing of a poetry text.

The exam­in­a­tion will take the form of a two hour paper. The paper will consist of two sections and candid­ates will answer one ques­tion in each section.

Candid­ates may bring their poetry text into the exam­in­a­tion room but it should be clean and free from annotation.

This unit counts as 60% of AS or 30% of A Level

Unit 2: LITA2 Creat­ive Study - course­work
Two texts are chosen, one prose, one drama. For example ‘Bird­song’ by Sebastian Faulks, and ‘Journey’s End’ by R C Sherriff.

In this unit, candid­ates will have oppor­tun­it­ies for the explor­a­tion of creat­ive inter­pret­a­tions, for trans­form­a­tional writ­ing and for tracing connec­tions between texts.

This unit is assessed by means of course­work. The folder will contain two pieces of writ­ing, 2000 – 2500 words in total

This unit counts as 40% of AS or 20% of A Level

A2 - AQA English Liter­at­ure A

At A2, the course builds on the AS found­a­tion and both widens and deep­ens students’ liter­ary stud­ies by:

Moving from a defined area of study to the whole of English Liter­at­ure from Chau­cer to the present day.
Devel­op­ing the informed, autonom­ous reader by provid­ing oppor­tun­it­ies for choice and the devel­op­ment of students’ own interests.

Unit 3: LITA3 Read­ing for Mean­ing
This unit has the theme of ‘Love through the Ages’ and counts for 30% of the A level.

It is assessed by a 2½ hour closed book writ­ten exam­in­a­tion with 2 ques­tions involving unpre­pared extracts and wider read­ing on the unit theme of Love Through the Ages.

Unit 4: LITA4 Exten­ded Essay and Shakespeare Study - course­work
Candid­ates select 3 texts with a shared theme. One text will be a Shakespeare play; the other two texts will be under read­ing texts of any genre. Candid­ates will write an exten­ded compar­at­ive essay of 3,000 words on the three texts.

This unit counts for 20% of the A level.