WJEC Level 3 Advanced GCE in English Language and Literature

Learners are also given the opportunity to demonstrate their expertise and accuracy in creating a variety of texts drawing on their knowledge and understanding of how texts are created and how texts communicate for different audiences and purposes.

This unit encourages extensive wider reading of spoken and written texts from different times and provides opportunities for learners to select appropriate methods of analysis when exploring non-literary texts such as: spoken transcriptions, advertisements, autobiographies, biographies, travel writing, journalism, information texts, instructional texts, letters, reports, speeches, specialist publications.

This unit examines learners’ abilities to explore connections across a wide range of texts.

A SATIRICAL ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF A LATE FAMOUS GENERAL, Jonathan Swift (1716-1771)

GOD’S GRANDEUR, Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)

HOW DO I LOVE THEE?, Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)

KUBLA KHAN (EXTRACT), Samuel Taylor Coleridge

LEISURE, William Henry Davies (1871-1940)

ON HIS BLINDNESS, John Milton (1608-1674)

OZYMANDIAS, Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY, Lord Byron (1788-1824)

SONG, Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894)

SONNET 130, William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

SPELLBOUND, Emily Brontë (1818-1848)

THE COLLAR, George Herbert (1593-1633)

THE DARKLING THRUSH, Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

THE KRAKEN, Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

THE PASSIONATE SHEPHERD TO HIS LOVE, Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593)

THE SCHOOLBOY, William Blake (1757-1827)

THERE IS A GARDEN IN HER FACE, Thomas Campion (1567-1620)

TO AUTUMN, John Keats (1795-1821)

TO MY DEAR AND LOVING HUSBAND, Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672)

UPON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE, William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

analyse how meanings are shaped in texts, including how variations in language, form and context shape and change meanings

Candidates will be required to compare and contrast the set poem and one of the two texts, using knowledge and skills gained from the integrated study of language and literature. One of the two unseen texts will be spoken language.

demonstrate an understanding of the significance and influence of the contexts in which texts are produced and received.

explore connections between the texts

organise responses in a clear and effective academic style and register with coherent written expression.

Section A is based on the study of a selection of poems taken from the WJEC English Language and Literature Pre-1914 Poetry Anthology. The prescribed selection is printed in Appendix C.

show knowledge and understanding of relevant language levels

The anthology covers a range of poetry from the late-sixteenth century to 1914. It is designed to introduce learners to the historical development of the English language, the rich heritage of writing poetry, as well as illustrating the variation in poetic content and style over time.

The question will require candidates to produce a comparative analysis of a printed poem taken from the WJEC English Language and Literature Pre-1914 Poetry Anthology and one of two printed unseen texts. The texts will be linked in terms of content, theme or style.

use accurately a range of linguistic and literary terminology

use integrated linguistic and literary approaches as appropriate

Candidates are required to write a comparative commentary on the two texts they have produced. This commentary is designed to encourage candidates to reflect on the language choices they have made making points of comparison and contrast between them.

identify and describe how meanings and effects are created and conveyed in their own writing

In preparation for this task, learners should practise analysing and interpreting their own writing.

show knowledge and understanding of analytical approaches to the critical study of texts, drawing on linguistic and literary methodologies and concepts

support points with apt quotation.

apply creative skills in the production of engaging writing

In preparation for this question, learners should study a range of literary and non-literary texts and practise producing texts in a variety of genres.

recognise the importance of audience, form and purpose

show expertise in their use of English to communicate in different ways.

The question will be presented in three parts: two writing tasks and a commentary. For the writing tasks, candidates may draw inspiration from Texts A-C in Section A of the examination paper though they may introduce ideas of their own.

This unit is designed to engage candidates in the creative process, giving them the opportunity to demonstrate their expertise and accuracy for writing in a variety of forms and for a range of purposes. Candidates may be required to produce original writing in any genre. One of the writing tasks will require the production of a spoken language text.

This unit is internally assessed and externally moderated. It gives opportunities for learners to independently select an aspect of prose study that interests them and to study one text (chosen from a list in Appendix A) provided by WJEC within that genre. In addition, learners are given the opportunity to select wider reading to inform their studies in this unit and to reflect on the learning that has taken place. In reflecting on their studies, learners will then be required to produce original writing related to their chosen genre.

Aron Ralston: 127 Hours: Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe

E.M. Forster: A Passage to India

Jack Kerouac: On The Road

Jack London: Call of the Wild

Jon Krakauer: Into Thin Air, Into the Wild

Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness

Mark Twain: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Richard Hughes: A High Wind in Jamaica

Robert Louis Stevenson: Kidnapped, Treasure Island

Arthur Conan Doyle: Short Stories

David Guterson: Snow Falling on Cedars

Donna Tartt: The Secret History

Graham Greene: Brighton Rock

Iain Banks: The Crow Road

John Buchan: The Thirty-Nine Steps

John Le Carrë: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

Joseph Conrad: The Secret Agent

Kate Summerscale: The Suspicions of Mr Whicher

Patricia Highsmith: The Talented Mr Ripley

Raymond Chandler: Farewell, My Lovely

Wilkie Collins: The Moonstone

Aldous Huxley: Brave New World

Anthony Burgess: A Clockwork Orange

Cormac McCarthy: The Road

David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas

George Orwell: 1984

H.G. Wells: The Time Machine

Jack London: Iron Heel

Kazuo Ishiguro: Never Let Me Go

Margaret Atwood: Oryx and Crake

Phillip K Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451

William Gibson: Neuromancer

Angela Carter: The Bloody Chamber and other stories

Ann Radcliffe: The Mysteries of Udolpho

Arthur Machen: The Great God Pan

Bram Stoker: Dracula

Charlotte Bronte Jane Eyre

Daphne Du Maurier: Rebecca

Elizabeth Gaskell : Gothic Tales

Horace Walpole: The Castle of Otranto

Jane Austen: Northanger Abbey

Mary Shelley: Frankenstein

Sarah Waters: The Little Stranger

Shirley Jackson: The Haunting of Hill House

Susan Hill: The Woman in Black

Wilkie Collins: The Woman in White

Charles Dickens: A Tale of Two Cities, Bleak House

Elizabeth Gaskell: North and South

George Eliot: Middlemarch, Daniel Deronda, Romola

Hilary Mantel: Wolf Hall, Bring up the Bodies

Jeffery Eugenides: Middlesex

John Fowles: The French Lieutenant's Woman

Margaret Atwood: The Penelopiad

Margaret Forster: Lady's Maid

Sir Walter Scott: Ivanhoe

Tracy Chevalier: Fallen Angels

Tracy Chevalier: Girl with a Pearl Earring

William Makepeace Thackeray: Vanity Fair

Anne Tyler: The Accidental Tourist

Bruce Chatwin: On The Black Hill

DBC Pierre: Vernon God Little

Hari Kunzru: The Impressionist

Iain Banks: The Wasp Factory

Irvine Welsh: Trainspotting

J.D. Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye

James Joyce : Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Margaret Atwood: Surfacing

Radclyffe Hall: The Well of Loneliness

Robert Louis Stevenson: The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

William Golding: Pincher Martin

Andrew O’Hagan: The Atlantic Ocean

Barbara Ehrenreich: Going to Extremes

Eleanor Mills with Kira Cochrane (ed.): Cupcakes and Kalashnikovs: 100 Years of the Best Journalism by Women

Ian Jack: The Country Formerly Known as Great Britain

Introduction by Ian Jack: The Granta Book of Reportage

John Pilger (ed.): Tell Me No Lies

Martin Wainwright (ed.): The Bedside Guardian 2013

Ryszard Kapuscinski: The Soccer War

Alice Walker: The Same River Twice

Azar Nafisi: Reading Lolita in Tehran

Francis Spufford: The Child That Books Built

George Orwell: The Road to Wigan Pier

Gertrude Stein: The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas

Janet Frame: An Angel at my Table

Jeanette Winterson: Why be Happy when You Could be Normal

Lorna Sage: Bad Blood

Malcolm X: The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Michael Chabon: Manhood for Amateurs

Nelson Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom

Raymond Williams: Border Country

Robert Graves: Goodbye to All That

Siegfried Sassoon: Memoirs of an Infantry Officer

Sylvia Plath: The Bell Jar

Tom Bullough: The Claude Glass

Winston Churchill: My Early Life

A.S. Byatt: Possession

Audrey Niffenegger: The Time Traveler’s Wife

Bernice Rubens: I Sent A Letter To My Love

Charlotte Brontë: Villette

E. M. Forster: A Room with a View

Emily Brontë: Wuthering Heights

F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby, Tender is the Night

George Eliot: Mill on the Floss

Ian McEwan: Enduring Love, On Chesil Beach

Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion, Sense and Sensibility

Michael Ondaatje: The English Patient

Sian James: A Small Country

Thomas Hardy: Jude the Obscure

Truman Capote: Breakfast At Tiffany’s

Anthony Burgess: Inside Mr Enderby

David Lodge: Small World, Changing Places, Therapy

Evelyn Waugh: Scoop, Decline and Fall

Henry Fielding: Tom Jones

Iris Murdoch: The Sea, the Sea

Jonathan Swift: Gulliver’s Travels

Kingsley Amis: Lucky Jim

Stella Gibbons: Cold Comfort Farm

William Makepeace Thackeray: Vanity Fair

Aldous Huxley: Brave New World

China Mieville: Embassytown

Don DeLillo: Ratner’s Star

Doris Lessing: Shikasta

H.G. Wells: The War of the Worlds

Iain M Banks: Consider Phlebas

Isaac Asimov: Foundation

JG Ballard: The Drowned World

John Fowles: The Magus

Kurt Vonnegut: The Sirens of Titans

Ray Bradbury: The Illustrated Man and other short stories

Bill Bryson (any travel writing)

Charles Dickens: On Travel

Elizabeth A. Bohls (Editor), Ian Duncan (Editor):Travel Writing 1700-1830: An Anthology

Ernesto "Che" Guevara: The Motorcycle Diaries

Heinrich Harrer: Seven Years in Tibet

Ian Jack (ed.): Granta 94: On the Road Again - Where Travel Writing Went Next

Jonathan Raban: Passage To Juneau

Katherine Boo: Behind the Beautiful Forevers

Mark Twain: Innocents Abroad

P.J.O'Rourke: Holidays in Heck

Paul Theroux (any travel writing)

Salman Rushdie: The Jaguar Smile: Nicaraguan Journey

Tim Butcher: Blood River

Andrea Levy: Small Island

Ernest Hemingway: A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls

James Fennimore Cooper: The Last of the Mohicans

JG Ballard: Empire of the Sun

Joseph Heller: Catch 22

Khaled Hosseini: The Kite Runner

Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse 5

Owen Sheers: White Ravens

Pat Barker: Regeneration, The Eye in the Door, The Ghost Road

Sebastian Faulks: Birdsong

Susan Hill: Strange Meeting

Vera Brittain: Testament of Youth

analyse the ways in which meanings are shaped

apply concepts and methods from integrated linguistic and literary study, using associated terminology and coherent written expression

Learners are required to evidence their wider reading within this study. Evidence of wider reading can be demonstrated through the connections made with the detailed study of the selected prose text from Appendix A and through inclusion in the bibliography. Wider reading texts do not need to be nominated, though they must be of appropriate substance and challenge for A level study.

Learners are required to submit a 1500-2000 word study based on the reading of a prose text (selected from a prescribed list) and related wider reading from one of the following literary/non-literary prose genres: gothic; science fiction; romance; dystopia; crime; satire/comedy; historical fiction; war/conflict; adventure/journeys; life-writing; journalism; travel; identity/the outsider.

Learners must choose one genre and one text from the prescribed list in Appendix A of this specification. In addition learners must select at least one other text within the same genre for wider reading. Texts for wider reading may be drawn from this list but are not restricted to this list.

make accurate references to texts and sources.

show understanding of the ways in which texts relate to each other and to the contexts in which they are produced and received

synthesise and reflect on their knowledge and understanding of linguistic and literary concepts in the study of their genre texts

The texts provided in Appendix A have been carefully selected to reflect the richness of literary and linguistic features within the named genre.

use English appropriately and accurately and engage in a clear academic style and register

In producing the piece of writing, learners will need to demonstrate their expertise as producers of language in relation to their accuracy and control of style for audience, form and purpose. For this task, ‘creativity’ will be demonstrated through the production of original and engaging writing.

Learners will produce one piece of original writing of approximately 1000-1500 words. This piece of writing must be in the same genre as that studied in Section A and must be informed by the research and study completed for Section A.

synthesise and reflect on their knowledge and understanding of linguistic and literary concepts in the study of their genre texts.

use a range of techniques to produce texts informed by wider reading

use English appropriately, accurately and creatively to communicate in different ways

In responding to non-literary texts, learners should be able to recognise the bias, the moral outlook, the prejudices, attitudes and values of speakers and writers and to be able to analyse how these are conveyed through the use of language.

This unit is designed to introduce learners to both drama and non-literary texts. For Section A, learners will engage critically with their set text as a work of literature and explore the richness of the English language set within the context of when the text was produced and received. They will also develop their knowledge of dramatic techniques, their skills as interpreters of performance texts and their understanding of significant contextual factors throughout their studies for this unit.

analyse closely the language of the extract

analyse how meanings are shaped in their set text

demonstrate an understanding of the significance and influence of the contexts in which texts are produced and received

Diane Samuels: Kindertransport (Nick Hern Books)

Each question will be presented in two parts: part (i) is extract-based and focuses on close language study; part (ii) requires an extended response relating to the rest of the text.

Edward Albee: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Vintage Classics)

Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard: Shakespeare in Love (Faber)

organise responses in a clear and effective academic style and register with coherent written expression.

Peter Shaffer: Amadeus (Penguin Modern Classics)

Section A is based on the study of one post-1900 drama text from the list below:

show knowledge and understanding of relevant language levels

Tennessee Williams: A Streetcar Named Desire (Penguin Modern Classics)

use accurately a range of linguistic and literary terminology

use integrated linguistic and literary approaches

analyse concepts related to the writer’s craft, in particular with regard to exploring the presentation of viewpoint

Andrea Ashworth: Once in a House on Fire (Picador)

David Eggers: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (Picador)

demonstrate sound knowledge of the text through selecting supporting evidence

George Orwell: Down and Out in Paris and London (Penguin Modern Classics)

Robert Minhinnick: Watching The Fire-Eater (Seren)

Section B is based on the study of one non-literary prose text from the list below:

show understanding of the significance and influence of the contexts in which the text was written and received.

Truman Capote: In Cold Blood (Penguin Modern Classics)

analyse how meanings are shaped in their set text

Antony and Cleopatra

Candidates must study one Shakespeare play selected from the list below:

demonstrate an understanding of the significance and influence of the contexts in which texts are produced and received

In Section A, candidates will need to demonstrate their ability to read closely a key passage from the set text. The extended essay in Section B will require candidates to demonstrate knowledge of the wider play and to select appropriate supporting evidence in their response.

King Lear

Learners will need to develop their knowledge of dramatic techniques, their skills as interpreters of performance texts and their understanding of significant contextual factors throughout their studies for this unit.

Much Ado About Nothing

organise responses in a clear and effective academic style and register with coherent written expression.

Othello

show knowledge and understanding of relevant language levels

The Tempest

This unit is designed to introduce learners to the work of Shakespeare. While learners will engage critically with the text as a work of literature, this unit also offers opportunities for exploring the richness of the English language and its historical development set within the context of when the text was produced and received.

use accurately a range of linguistic and literary terminology

use integrated linguistic and literary approaches

As this specification is designed for learners in Wales, text choices include texts by Welsh writers writing in English. A Welsh author may be selected for Unit 2, Section B and Welsh authors may also be selected for the non-exam assessment unit, Unit 5, Section A.

how language choices shape meanings in texts

how linguistic and literary approaches can inform interpretations of texts

Learners are required to show knowledge of some of the different language levels below: phonetics, phonology, prosody; lexis and semantics; grammar, (including morphology at A level); pragmatics; discourse.

the significance of contextual factors in the production and reception of texts.

This specification requires learners to show knowledge and understanding of a range of spoken and written texts from different times including six substantial texts drawn from pre-1914 poetry, Shakespeare, prose, modern drama, and non-literary texts. At AS three texts are studied, and at A level a further three texts.

Through learning linguistic terminology, learners will be able to articulate more precisely their perceptions about literary and non-literary texts. This will not only enhance their appreciation of other people’s writing but will also help them to write more effectively and accurately for a wide variety of purposes.

ways in which individual texts are interpreted by different readers or listeners

ways in which texts relate to each other and to the contexts in which they are produced and received

organise responses in a clear and effective style and register with coherent written expression.

show knowledge and understanding of the different language levels

This unit encourages learners to develop their ability to read widely and engage critically with a range of texts whilst developing further learners’ techniques of analysis and evaluation.

use accurately a range of linguistic and literary terminology

use integrated linguistic and literary approaches

analyse how meanings are shaped in texts, including how variations in language, form and context shape and change meanings

Candidates will be required to compare and contrast the three texts, using knowledge and skills gained from the integrated study of language and literature. One of the three unseen texts will be spoken language.

explore connections between the three unseen texts

show knowledge and understanding of relevant language levels, including knowledge of spoken forms

The question requires candidates to produce a detailed comparative analysis of three unseen texts of different genres, chosen from a range of types and periods. The texts will be linked in terms of content, theme or style and the focus of analysis will be provided in the question.

use accurately a range of linguistic and literary terminology organise responses in a clear and effective academic style and register with coherent written expression.

use integrated linguistic and literary approaches as appropriate

Alice Walker: The Color Purple (W&N)

analyse concepts related to the writer’s craft in presenting plot, setting, characterisation, relationships, themes and style

Candidates must study one text from the list below:

Charles Dickens: Great Expectations (Penguin Classics)

demonstrate sound knowledge of the text in selecting particular episodes, conversations, images, for example, to support a coherent and detailed account of the methods a writer uses

different readers’ or listeners’ interpretations of individual texts.

Each question will require a piece of extended writing designed to allow candidates to reflect on insights gained from integrated linguistic and literary study. The questions set will not be directly linked to the prescribed texts, but will invite discussion of aspects of integrated study which will involve knowledge of the text as a whole.

importance of setting/location

In preparation for this question, candidates are required to study one prose text from a prescribed list.

influence of contextual factors in the production and reception of texts

Jane Austen: Emma (Penguin Classics)

language variation according to time, place, context

make accurate reference to texts and sources.

Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid’s Tale (Vintage)

narrative technique

presentation of characters/people

show understanding of the significance and influence of the contexts in which the text was written and received

themes e.g. family life, power, love

Thomas Hardy: Tess of the D’Urbervilles (Penguin Classics)