A/L Literature

Examination Guidance

Candidates rarely fail A/L Literature for lack of reading. They fail for choosing the wrong question, or for running out of time on the right one.

The first ten minutes

Read every question before choosing
All of them. The question you would have answered best is often not the one that catches your eye first.
Choose for evidence, not for enthusiasm
Ask of each candidate question: can I name three specific moments in the text that bear on this? If you cannot, do not choose it, however interesting it looks. Enthusiasm without evidence produces a thin essay.
Beware the question that flatters your prepared material
If a question looks like your revision notes, read it twice more. It is usually asking something slightly different, and answering the prepared question instead of the set one is the single most expensive error at this level.
Write your finishing times in the margin
Actual clock times, not durations. Divide the working time in proportion to the marks, and reserve ten minutes at the end.
Plan each essay in five lines
Thesis, then one line per paragraph. Do this for all your essays before writing any of them if the paper allows — later planning is always rushed.

A thesis that could be disagreed with, stated early and held to.
Precise evidence, quoted briefly or referred to exactly.
Analysis of effect — what the writing does to a reader or audience, and why.
Structural observation — comment on placing, order, form and proportion. Rare, and highly valued.
Genuine engagement with an objection to your own case.
Discrimination — noticing that this instance differs from that one, rather than treating all examples as equivalent.
A conclusion that decides something.

Narrative. Retelling the text. The examiner knows it.
Prepared essays delivered regardless of the question set.
Device-spotting without effects attached.
Unsupported assertion — claims with no evidence behind them.
Invented material — a fabricated quotation, date or critic. This forfeits an examiner's confidence in everything else you have written.
Running out of time. Three complete essays always outscore two polished ones and a fragment.

Do not write more. Check, in this order.

Have I written the required number of answers?
Does each essay have an introduction with a position and a conclusion that judges?
Are my answer numbers clear and correct?
Are the quotations accurate as far as I can be sure? If a quotation is doubtful, convert it to a reference rather than leave it wrong.
Have I used the present tense throughout for what happens in the texts?
Are the writers' and characters' names spelt correctly? Misspelling them repeatedly is a poor impression cheaply made.
Have I written anything I am not certain is true? Cross it out — an invented detail costs more than a missing one.
Is my handwriting legible in the final essay, when I was hurrying?

In the final fortnight

Revise your own corrected essays, not new study guides.
Rewrite one weak paragraph a day. Fifteen minutes, and it compounds.
Do one unseen a week, timed, and note the one observation you missed.
Recite your quotations aloud. Silently-learnt quotations come out approximate.
Do not start a new critical book. It will make you anxious and cannot be absorbed in time.