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English Literature: Summer Handbook
How to prepare for success in Year 12
Congratulations on completing your GCSE studies and welcome to A Level
English Literature at Higham Lane School. This booklet will give you an
overview of the course and give you advice and information about how to
be a successful English Literature A Level student.
Over the summer, this booklet will support you in making that transition
from GCSE to A Level English, enabling you to engage in independent study
and commence the Year 12 course with confidence.
NAME:
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Contents Transition from GCSE to A Level ................................................................................................. 3
Skills to develop to ensure you are a successful A-Level student ............................................ 3
Course Overview............................................................................................................................... 5
Year 12 ............................................................................................................................................................ 5
Year 13 ....................................................................................................................................................... 5
Terms and Concepts ........................................................................................................................ 6
Set Texts and Recommended Reading ...................................................................................... 8
Summer Independent Study Tasks ......................................................................................... 10
Terminology Toolkit .................................................................................................................... 11
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Transition from GCSE to A-Level
Essential skills to develop:
A love of learning and thirst for knowledge: Be inquisitive; ask questions and then be
motivated to find out the answers. These might not be in the first place you go to: be
prepared to read around and conduct extensive research.
Independent learning: Unlike at GCSE, you will be expected to take responsibility for
your own learning with support from your teachers who can facilitate your learning.
Think autonomously and respond personally to texts.
Perseverance and resilience: Persist with your A-Level learning even when it seems
too difficult or challenging. Nothing worth achieving ever comes easily. You also need to
be resilient and thrive on constructive criticism. It will take time to build on your skills
from GCSE to achieving the same grades or higher grades at A-Level. Welcome challenges,
be inspired by others’ successes to motivate yourself to succeed and act on the advice
given to you by your class teacher. The texts you read and the concepts and theories you
come across at A-Level will be challenging and you might find this daunting at first, but
you will learn a number of strategies to support you in accessing these texts and ways of
thinking.
Motivation and Conscientiousness: Learning requires effort and a commitment to your
studies. The more you invest in your learning, the more you will gain in terms of academic
achievement. Be proactive in your learning journey; complete follow-on tasks to improve
your skills; read widely to gain more knowledge; look up definitions in a dictionary and
concepts online or in textbooks.
Organisation and time management: The English department will expect you to
complete a minimum of 4-5 hours of independent study per week. There may also be
additional reading and revision to complete at some points in the year. It would help you
to establish a routine for your studies: consider where you will work to aid meaningful
and focused study; whether you work more effectively independently in silence or in a
study group with classmates; whether you need to access wider reading resources in the
sixth form or whether you can do some tasks, such as essay writing at home; think in
advance whether you will need to seek support from a teacher before completing an
independent study task. Being able to prioritise and work efficiently are essential skills
at A-Level.
Wider reading and research: Be prepared to read widely on an English course. You will
receive set text lists, as well as recommended reading and wider reading suggestions.
The expectation is that you will be a keen reader. You will also be expected to research
texts independently, investigating biographical details for authors and literary, social,
cultural, political and historical contexts to develop an informed reading of texts. Texts
do not exist in isolation and, as such, you should seek to gain a strong understanding of
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the contexts in which they are produced and received. Don’t rely on Wikipedia and
Google searches; use the recommended reading lists to support your research.
Become a critical, active reader: Question writers and texts. Be critical of their
representations of the world and form an educated viewpoint.
Note-taking: It is essential that you maintain detailed, well-organised and well-
presented notes. You will be given a guide to organising your course folder in your subject
handbook when you start in September. Notes will be checked, but ultimately it is your
responsibility to ensure your notes will enable you to be successful at the end of the
course. It is much better to keep on top of recording summary notes for texts read and
wider reading notes, than to try to ‘cram’ your note-taking in the final few weeks of the
unit.
Discussion and debate: You will be expected to have an opinion, an educated viewpoint
on texts you read and issues with which you will engage. You will need to be prepared to
communicate your views to others and participate in discussions and debates. You will
also need to respect the views of others.
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Course Overview: English Literature (AQA Specification B from 2015)
Year 12
Paper 2 – Texts and Genres - Elements of Political and Social Protest Writing 3 hours written examination (open book ) 40% of A-Level 75 marks Study of three texts: one post-2000 prose text; one poetry and one further text, of which one must be written pre-1900 Exam will include an unseen passage. Section A: One compulsory question on an unseen passage (25 marks) Section B: One essay question on your set text (Songs of Innocence and of Experience) (25 marks) Section C: One essay question which connects two set texts (The Handmaid’s Tale and The Kite Runner) (25 marks)
Summer Term / Summer Independent Study
Non-exam Assessment – Theory and Independence Study of two texts: one poetry and one prose text, informed by study of the Critical Anthology 20% of A-Level 50 marks Two essays of 1,250–1,500 words, each responding to a different text and linking to a different aspect of the Critical Anthology
Year 13
Paper 1 – Literary Genres – Option 1A: Aspects of Tragedy 2 hours 30 minutes written examination (closed book) in June of Y13 40% of A Level 75 marks Study of three texts: one Shakespeare text; a second drama text and one further text, of which one must be written pre-1900. Section A: Shakespeare: one passage based question on set text, Othello (25 marks) Section B: Shakespeare: one essay question on set text, Othello (25 marks) Section C: Comparing texts: one essay question linking two texts (Death of a Salesman and Tess of the D’Urbervilles) (25 marks) Paper 2 – Texts and Genres - Elements of Political and Social Protest Writing 3 hours written examination (open book) 40% of A-Level 75 marks REVISION
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Terms and Concepts
Ways of Reading
Meanings in texts are not closed and fixed but open to several interpretations. You will
explore alternative readings and be informed by the views of others.
• Reading is an active process: the reader is an active creator, not a passive recipient of
second-hand opinion – you are the ‘maker of meaning’
• It can never be an ‘innocent’ process: all readings are historically, socially and
individually specific – you bring your own personal context and experience to the text.
Meaning
For an individual reader, meaning depends as much on what is brought to the text as on
what is contained within it: your own experience will influence the way you read it.
• Meaning will not necessarily be instantly accessible; you may well need to research
difficult or obscure references and vocabulary to draw out meaning.
• Meaning will be different on different occasions, and changeable as a result of discussion
and reflection: when you reread a text, you may find your response is different from
your first reading; a critical commentary may change your response.
• Meaning can be multiple; different readings of a text can coexist – you need to be aware
that some texts are ambiguous or capable of delivering multiple meanings, and it is your
own selection of and response to textual evidence that will determine your own
personal interpretation.
Reading through a ‘lens’
You will explore texts through particular ‘lenses’ or ‘filters’.
One of these lenses will be ‘aspects of genre’. Just as meanings of texts are not fixed,
neither are definitions of genre, which frequently change and become blurred. The texts
you will study, therefore, are not necessarily classic examples of established genres.
Instead, you will explore how writers often subvert the genre in which they are writing,
just as much as you will study the conventions or typical features of a genre.
Working with genre involves looking at ways in which authors shape meanings within
their texts. It also involves thinking about a wide range of relevant contexts, some of
them to do with the production of the text at the time of its writing, some (where
possible) to do with how the text has been received over time, and most of all, contexts
to do with how the text can be interpreted by readers now.
Looking at texts as belonging to a genre involves connecting individual texts with others,
as the whole idea of genre is a connective one.
And finally, because genres and their qualities are not fixed, this means that
interpretation is not fixed, and that multiple interpretations are possible.
KEY TERM: Genre A way of categorising texts: this can be by form (e.g. prose, poetry or drama), content (e.g.
politics, social protest), types (e.g. comedy, tragedy).
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Developing ‘Critical’ Analysis What is analysis?
• Analyse = take apart an idea/concept/text in order to consider the factors it consists of.
Your answer needs to be methodical and logically organised.
• You need to identify devices or techniques used by the writer to create effects on the
reader.
• It involves exploring why the writer used the technique, what the specific effects are,
and how these effects are created.
• Throughout your analysis, you need to ensure you are responding to the question so
that your analysis is relevant.
• This is all part of close reading.
Questions to ask of a text: How does it make me feel?
Start with broadly: positive or negative? Then be more specific e.g. joyful, uncomfortable,
uplifted, depressed, amused, thoughtful, irritated, angry, anxious, curious.
Once we have identified a feeling, we can ask ourselves where and how is the writer using the
tools of their chosen genre to evoke this response / these responses in us and why they might
want to do this.
What are they saying?
How are they saying it?
What effect do they wish to have on us?
Why?
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Set Texts The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Songs of Innocence and of Experience by William Blake
Othello by William Shakespeare
Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Course Textbook English Literature B A/AS Level for AQA Student Book (Cambridge)
Recommended Wider Reading
General Literary Criticism Literary Theory: An Introduction by Terry Eagleton
Beginning Theory by Peter Barry
Introducing Critical Theory by Stuart Sim and Borin Van Loon
An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory by Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle
Tragedy
Drama
William Shakespeare: Hamlet, Antony and Cleopatra, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth,, Richard III
Christopher Marlowe: Dr Faustus
John Webster: The Duchess of Malfi
Georg Buchner: Woyzeck
Henrik Ibsen: A Doll’s House
Arthur Miller: A View from the Bridge, The Crucible, All My Sons
Tennessee Williams: A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Prose
F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby
Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights
Richard Yates: Revolutionary Road
Sebastian Faulks: Birdsong
Jean Rhys: Wide Sargasso Sea
Oscar Wilde: The Picture of Dorian Gray
John Fowles: The French Lieutenant’s Woman.
Machiavelli: The Prince
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Poetry
John Keats: ‘Lamia’, ‘Isabella or The Pot of Basil’, ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’, ‘The Eve of St.
Agnes’
Oscar Wilde: ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’
T.S. Eliot: ‘The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock’.
Literary Criticism
Tragedy: A Student Handbook by Sean McEvoy (Tony Coult and Chris Sandford) The Cambridge Introduction to Tragedy by Jennifer Wallace The New Critical Idiom: Tragedy by Martin Regal
Elements of Political and Social Protest Writing
Drama
Henrik Ibsen: A Doll’s House
Oscar Wilde: The Importance of Being Earnest
John Osborne: Look Back in Anger
Caryl Churchill: Top Girls
Alan Bennet: The History Boys
Prose
Charles Dickens: Hard Times
Elizabeth Gaskell: North and South
George Orwell: 1984
Virginia Woolf: A Room of One’s Own
Kathryn Stockett: The Help
Alan Silitoe: Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.
Jeanette Winterson: Oranges are not the only Fruit
Maya Angelou: I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings.
Alice Walker: The Color Purple
Sam Selvon: The Lonely Londoners
Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451
Aldous Huxley: Brave New World
Poetry
William Wordsworth: The Prelude
Percy Bysshe Shelley: The Masque of Anarchy
Tony Harrison: Selected Poems ‘V’, ‘National Trust’, ‘Them and [uz]’, ‘Divisions’, ‘Working’,
Benjamin Zephaniah: Too Black, Too Strong
Grace Nichols: The Fat Black Women’s Poems
Carol Ann Duffy: The World’s Wife, Feminine Gospels
Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise
T. S. Eliot: The Waste Land
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Compulsory Summer Independent Study Tasks
1. In order to prepare thoroughly for your first year, you should read the three set
texts for the first year of the course:
o The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
o The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
o Songs of Innocence and of Experience by William Blake
(We would also recommend that you read at least two further texts from the wider
reading list for aspects of tragedy or elements of political and social protest writing.)
2. You should complete notes in the wider reading journal. Your teacher will
check these notes in the first week of the new term.
3. Over the course of the two years, you will learn an extensive range of technical
terms. An introductory list of A-Level Literature terminology can be found at the
back of this booklet. Over the summer, start to build your knowledge and
understanding of these by creating a glossary in your own words. Use the
following website to help you: http://literarydevices.net/
Bring your completed summer tasks to your first English Literature
lesson in September.
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Terminology Toolkit Abstract noun
Allegory
Alliteration
Allusion
Alter Ego
Analepsis
Analogy
Anaphora
Anthropomorphism
Antithesis
Authorial Intrusion
Archetype
Assonance
Asyndeton
Bathos
Bildungsroman
Byronic Hero
Cacophony
Canon
Caesura
Catharsis
Characterisation
Conceit
Connotation
Consonance
Context
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Denotation
Diction
Doppelganger
Dramatic Irony
Dramatic
Monologue
Enjambment
Epilogue
Epithet
Epistolary Novel
Euphemism
Euphony
Fable
Fabliau
Foil
Foreshadowing
Frame Narrative
Genre
Hyperbole
Imagery
Internal Rhyme
Intertextuality
Irony
Juxtaposition
Metaphor
Metonym
Meter
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Mood
Motif
Narrator
Onomatopoeia
Omniscient
Narrator
Oxymoron
Parable
Parallelism
Paradox
Parody
Pathetic Fallacy
Personification
Point of View
Plot
Prologue
Protagonist
Pun
Register
Rhyme Scheme
Rhythm
Satire
Semantic field
Setting
Simile
Soliloquy
Stanza
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Stream of
Consciousness
Subtext
Symbol
Synecdoche
Synesthesia
Syntax
Tense
Theme
Tone
Tricolon
Vocative
Zoomorphism
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