What you'll learn
How the course works and the skills examiners reward.
The three genres
- Poetry, prose (novels and short stories) and drama (plays).
- You study set texts and answer on unseen passages.
What examiners reward
- Detailed knowledge of texts and their meanings.
- Analysis of the writer's methods (language, form, structure) and their effects.
- A personal, supported response using well-chosen quotations.
Exam tips
- Always answer on the question set, not everything you know.
- Embed short quotations and analyse specific words.
Common mistakes
- Retelling the plot instead of analysing.
- Making points without textual evidence.