AQA GCSE English Literature
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Explore your topics
10 topics
Shakespeare and the 19th-century novel2 topics
Modern texts and poetry6 topics
Reading and writing skills2 topics
Assessment and exam guidance
Assessment Objectives
Read, understand and respond to texts. Maintain a critical style and develop an informed personal response; use textual references, including quotations, to support and illustrate interpretations.
Analyse the language, form and structure used by a writer to create meanings and effects, using relevant subject terminology where appropriate.
Show understanding of the relationships between texts and the contexts in which they were written.
Use a range of vocabulary and sentence structures for clarity, purpose and effect, with accurate spelling and punctuation.
Exam Structure
Paper 1: Shakespeare and the 19th-century novel
1h 45m
Duration
64
Marks
40%
Weighting
Paper 2: Modern texts and poetry
2h 15m
Duration
96
Marks
60%
Weighting
Tips and common mistakes
Common Exam Mistakes
Pitfalls to avoid in your exams
- •Error: revising only key scenes or extracts. Correction: read and revise the whole play so you can place any extract in its wider context.
- •Error: retelling the plot without analysing language, form or structure. Correction: use plot knowledge to support analysis of how Shakespeare creates meaning.
- •Error: ignoring the extract's position in the play. Correction: link the extract to events before and after it to show whole-text understanding.
- •Error: focusing only on Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Correction: also study Banquo, Macduff, the witches and Malcolm to understand the play's wider ideas.
- •Error: treating the witches as simple villains without analysing their role. Correction: explore how they create ambiguity and drive Macbeth's choices.
- •Error: ignoring the play's structure. Correction: consider how Shakespeare builds tension and meaning through the play's order of scenes.
- •Error: listing methods such as soliloquy or imagery without explaining how they create meaning. Correction: always explain the effect of a method with a concrete example, such as how the image of ambition as an overreaching rider who vaults beyond the saddle and falls reveals Macbeth's self-aware moral conflict.
- •Retelling the plot instead of analysing how Shakespeare creates effects; correction: make a method-based point first, then use the quotation as evidence.
Top Examiner Tips
Expert advice for exam success
- •Read the whole play at least once before revising key scenes in detail.
- •Create a timeline of major events and character developments to see the play as a whole.
- •When analysing an extract, ask how it fits into the play's wider patterns and themes.
- •Learn a few short, flexible quotations from different parts of the play.
- •Learn short quotations that can be used flexibly for character, theme and method questions.
- •Practise linking any extract to events before and after it in the play.
- •Revise the play's context, but only include it when it illuminates your analysis.
- •Plan essays around a clear argument about Shakespeare's ideas and methods.
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