An extensive guide for writing your English Lit A level coursework:
So a lot of people seemed to want this, this is my guide to writing a near perfect English lit essay for your coursework. This guide is a combination of what Iâve learnt and what my instincts told me to do and I ended up loosing only four marks in my coursework!
In my opinion planning is the most important part to any essay, especially coursework. Once you have a clear idea of what youâre saying, writing it down is so easy.
Read your essay question twice, three times, as many as it takes for you to understand it fully and to start getting ideasâ highlight words which you think are the crux of the question.
Pick out any quotations in your texts you think are relevant. I would recommend having a PDF version of your text and searching it for key words (you can do this by pressing cmd F on a mac and I think by searching a search bar in windows)
Decide what each quotation you have picked it saying and how it is saying it. What techniques does the writer use? What are they trying to convey to their reader/audience? How does it prove what you are trying to say? How is it relevant to your question?
Find academic criticisms that you can cite in your work that also comment on your points. This will take hours to find, be patient. The search tool (cmd F) is your best friend with this step.
(This is the hardest part) Link your quotations/ points together. Try and match them up so that you have two quotations from different texts that have both similar and different things about them. (For example they may be saying the same thing, but by using different techniques; alternatively, they may both be using the same technique to say different points of view on the same subject)
Order your plan so you points seem to grow naturally. If you are unsure where to start, label your strongest point as first, then see what would work best following this point, and label that as your second point, and repeat until you have labelled everything.
I am not familiar with the new syllabus or other boards, but In A level AQA English Lit you have four assessment objectives with a certain proportion of marks awarded to each. In order to ensure you receive as many marks from each assessment objective, try to hit each one in every paragraph. I will be explaining them and how to get into a top band in each one in my own words because I found translating them into my own words was much easier than trying to understand the fancy academic language.
AO1: Use of language, academic style, way of explaining your points
I would say the best way to hit the top band for this is ensuring you use relevant academic language that is varied, are concise with what you are saying (avoid waffling for pages). Double, triple check your grammar, punctuation and spelling as if you make mistakes on this it is extremely difficult to get into the top band. Embed your quotes as well!! You can do this is several ways, as shown below;
âThe writer highlights the importance of this character through his dialogue; â[insert quote here]ââ.
âThe writerâs point of view, as can be seen through their use of metaphor â[insert quote here]â, is unusual for the time in which they were writingâ.
If you read a lot you may find that this comes naturally, and if you donât read a lot then I advise you to become a reader as quickly as possible because English lit is A LOT of reading.
Do into as much detail as you can in as precise a way as you can. I follow a pretty rigid way of analysing texts by asking myself the following questions:
What is the writer literally saying?
Does this mean anything deeper?
What does the reader/audience understand from this?
Does this have an political implications? Would this have influenced the society to change? Did it reflect the society
How does this shape the way in which the reader/audience understands the rest of the text?
(In older texts) How would the way in which a reader of the time would have felt about this differ from the way in which a modern reader would feel about this?
You may notice that these questions force me to embed context which is AO4, which means that my inclusion of context feels more natural and my analysis comes off as more academic.
Also make sure you talk about Form, Structure and Language fairly evenly. Language analysis is the easiest in my experience, essentially look at the words and what they are saying. Itâs all pretty self explanatory so I wonât go into too much detail on this.
When analysing Structure, look at the shape of the text, are the paragraphs short or long or mixed? Why? How many lines in each stanza of a poem? Why is one character speaking in long monologues while the other gives one line answers? Look at the length of sentences, look at the structures.
Form is probably the hardest to talk about, for this you must ask yourself why the writer chose to write in the form they did? If they wrote in verseâ why? Look at the kind of verse it is? For example, many people write sonnets about love, however you may be analysing a war poem written in a style of a sonnet. This may therefore be ironic. If they wrote a playâ why? What did having a text performed do? Perhaps it may have been due to the number of people who were illiterate, perhaps for another reason. If they wrote proseâ why? Have they written an epistolatory novel? Is it a diary? Â Did they write in first or third person? Do they use lots of description? etc.
AO3: Comparisons made and external criticism
Once you have analysed a quotation, you may want to compare it to another quotation from a different text or you may want to bring in what another writer has said about it (or you may indeed want to do both).
In order to bring in another quotation to compare, I would recommend you use a connecting sentence to link the two points together, for example;
âwhile writer A uses the gloomy surroundings to represent the loneliness of character A, writer B uses first person narrative to say exactly how lonely character B feels; â[insert quote]â.â
This would then give you a chance to talk about why the writers may have used different techniques to portray the same emotions.
The best way to include external criticism is to use it when analysing, a way to introduce it may be;
âOn the other hand, John Smith writes â[insert quote here]â about this textâŚ.â.
Commenting on and arguing with external criticism will get you into the top band so if you donât agree with what you find, include it and then rip it to shreds!
I have already spoken about context a bit in AO2. My best advice for context is do your research! Research:
their background, where they grew up, look for any comments they have made on their work, read other works of theirs to get a better picture of their views
The time it was writtenâ
First look at the general time period, if the text is Victorian, the industrial revolution, the revolutions in Europe, the introduction of communism, the time of enlightenment may have been influencing factors into the text. Then look at the specific year the text was written, see if any events or books published may have been relevant
Research into politics, art movements, trends, medicine, mortality rates, anything could be relevant and the more you know about the context of when a book is written, the better.
Make sure the whole way through your essay you keep everything relevant to the question. No point in wasting words and time on something that adds nothing to your essay.
Finally, end by writing your intro and your conclusion. You will likely want to keep these pretty short (mine where 150 or so words each). You want your introduction to introduce your thoughts on the texts you will be discussing and you want it to flow nicely into your first paragraph.
Your conclusion will strengthen your points and wrap everything up. Revisit your points, bring in the question once more, make sure the examiner knows that you know your stuff.
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