A-LEVEL
ENGLISH LITERATURE B
LITB1/Unit 1 Aspects of Narrative
Report on the Examination
2745
June 14
Version: 1.0
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REPORT ON THE EXAMINATION – A-LEVEL ENGLISH LITERATURE B – 2745 – JUNE 2014
Introduction
Again this summer some excellent work was seen by those students who understood that they
were writing about narratives, who knew their set texts well and could make good choices in
relation to the tasks. It has been said before but when teachers are placing narrative at the heart
of their teaching they are clearly serving their students well. The specific texts are the lenses
through which narrative should be studied. When texts are taught simply as independent entities,
students are less likely to engage with the unit’s central concern.
When students are performing well they are usually demonstrating an ability to think confidently
and independently. It is not good policy for all students from a centre to answer the same question
for Section A with all using the same parts of texts for both the odd numbered questions and
Section B. When this happens, very rarely is there genuine engagement and students are often
writing about things that they do not understand or which feel second hand.
Central to this paper are the stories writers tell, how those stories are told and how readers find
meanings in them. Some students still do not seem to know what a story is and this clearly puts
them at a disadvantage.
This year the report will focus first on Section B. This is largely to raise its profile and to help
schools and colleges to think about how they can best teach it. There is a feeling amongst
examiners that Section B is neglected in terms of teaching time. Given that Section B carries half
of the paper’s marks, students certainly need to be prepared carefully for the questions. The
central concern of Section B questions is always on a specific aspect of narrative (AO2) which
needs to be discussed in relation to the wider stories. Students also need to see how this aspect
works across three texts (the connection strand of AO3) and then write about its significance (the
interpretation strand of AO3). Many students this summer did not connect the given aspect to the
wider stories and this limited their marks.
Question 37: Symbols and motifs
This was the more popular choice but presented more difficulties for the average student. Since
symbols and motifs are so important in narratives, it is surprising that many students did not know
what they are.
Many students conflated the symbols and motifs along with imagery and some thought that
anything that appeared in the text might count (characters, ideas, methods, single words). Thus
students wrote rather randomly about: themes (death and love, for example); words that recur
(‘the’, ‘and’ and ‘I’ being favourites); and rhyme schemes, meter and punctuation. All were claimed
to be symbolic or motifs. When symbols and motifs were accurately chosen, many students
thought that identification was all that was required and just listed symbols without saying what
they represented.
Those who fared a little better were able to say what the symbols or motifs might signify, though
too many students extracted the symbol from the story and just wrote about what it might mean in
an abstract way without thinking about the story to which it belongs.
However, there were many students who knew exactly what symbols and motifs were, selected
well and debated their significance in terms of the specific part of the story in which they appear
and then related them to the wider story. This was what the question asked and it demonstrated
the importance of students’ reading questions carefully in all their details.
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When students selected well, they could easily secure marks. Two texts illustrated the strengths
and weakness of student selection. “Roses, roses” was picked out as a symbol in ‘The Patriot’, but
then little further identification or discussion followed and there was little contact with the story.
The Kite Runner, however, offered a wealth of symbols and not a few motifs. Excellent answers
were seen when the symbols of kites and blood were discussed. Other good choices included the
motif of the refrain in ‘Mariana’, the symbol of the green light in The Great Gatsby and the back
pedal brake in ‘Miss Gee’. Some students managed some impressive analysis of motifs and
symbols in Great Expectations, offering some sharp debate about when and why they recur. Some
good work was also seen on Birdsong where students wrote about the symbolic value of birds and
colour (the Red Room) and related their comments to the overall narrative. Both Barry and
McCarthy were also fruitful texts for students to use to explore meanings, with the ‘river’ and ‘roses’
in The Secret Scripture demonstrating the link between the two narratives, and the ‘fire’ in The
Road.
On the whole students made better selections and wrote stronger responses on the prose texts
than the poetry which was surprising. All poetry texts contain symbols (for example, the ace of
spades in ‘Victor’, the portrait of the duchess in ‘My Last Duchess’, the albatross in ‘The Rime of
the Ancient Mariner, the snake in ‘Lamia’, the fruits in ‘Goblin Market’, the wedded eagles of
Godiva’s belt in ‘Godiva’, and the buzz saw in ‘Out, out – ’) and writing about these could have led
to interesting discussion. Students simply needed to stand back from their texts and think rather
than launching straight in and trying to make learned material fit the question. Those who did well
were able to investigate meanings and in the best answers students found detailed structural links
and explored significance in depth.
Question 38: Opening sentences
This question was less problematic in some ways than Question 37 although it did reveal a
significant issue which surprised examiners. Several students clearly did not know what a sentence
is. Some selected a few words only; some wrote about opening lines. Some students did not quite
grasp what ‘opening’ meant and selected any sentence or part sentence from the text and wrote
about that. A few students claimed that the opening sentence was not significant and argued that
the writer had made a mistake in choosing it and offered an alternative. Some weaker students
said something about the first line, but then drifted into the rest of the opening or the rest of the
story and so lost focus. Some also did a lot of work unpicking the first sentence and commenting
on the implications of individual words, but then didn’t explicitly connect it to the rest of the
narrative. With weaker students, there seemed almost to be a reluctance to reveal what happened
later (for instance, in The Kite Runner, many were saying the opening sentence hints at something
terrible happening in 1975, but we don’t know what).
When opening sentences were accurately identified, many did not see that they had to be
discussed in terms of the stories and just wrote about them as if they had appeared on their own
on a piece of paper as a subject for micro analysis with the story being unknown. While it is
obvious that for a first time reader the story is not known, for A-level students on this paper it is and
so students should be writing in the full knowledge of what happens later and relate the opening
sentence to those later events. Weak responses were seen by some students writing on the
opening sentence of The Great Gatsby who could not get beyond Nick’s character, his relationship
with his father and his unreliability given that he is a first person narrator.
The best answers, naturally, were by those students who did relate the opening sentence to the
story and then teased out potential meanings, linking them to the story’s structure. Some excellent
responses were seen in relation to ‘The beginning is simple to mark’ in Enduring Love, ‘I thought
I’d been to Africa’ in Small Island, the haunting opening sentence of ‘Tithonus’ and the ironic
opening sentence of Pride and Prejudice. Where Enduring Love was selected, several students
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discussed the irony of the opening sentence in relation to the complexity of events that occur and
the relationships that are developed in the novel. Some also took the opportunity to relate the
opening sentence to Joe’s self conscious narration and to McEwan’s use of metafiction. There was
also perceptive work on Small Island where students offered some interesting debate about the
opening sentence used by each of the speakers.
Moving forward
It is essential that if students are to do well in Section B, they must have a secure understanding of
the stories of their three texts. They need to know how those stories begin, how the story’s events
are sequenced and how authors choose to resolve them. In this year’s exam it was clear that some
students did not know what actually happened to the characters, so clearly time needs to be spent
helping students to have a secure understanding of plot and destination. This makes sense when
the problems of this year’s questions are taken into account. There is little point writing about the
significance of symbols and opening sentences if the story itself is absent. Discussing symbols,
motifs and opening sentences in terms of themselves has very little purpose. This is after all a
paper about narrative and the story should be informing comment.
It is also important to state that students do not need to compare in this question. Writing about
symbols in narratives across three texts demonstrates that students are connecting. Often if
students compare, comparison gets in the way. Some students, for example, tried to trace colour
symbolism in a comparative way in their texts and simply got into a muddle. Trying to show that
yellow is used in the same way for Gatsby’s car, Frost’s yellow woods and Porphyria’s hair did not
work.
Section A (odd)
Pinning the story
These questions have a very specific focus. They are about stories and how stories are told; they
require students to write about the methods authors use in their story telling. Students tended to do
well when they pinned down the story of the given poem, chapter or section of the narrative at the
start of their writing in a precise and clear way. The requirement is to be tightly focused on the
exact part of the story being told and to briefly outline the sequence of events in that story (or part
of story) so that narrative method can be written about in a meaningful way. In some texts where
the story is not eventful, such as ‘1st September 1939’ or ‘The Road Not Taken’, this task was a
challenge but it was done well by students who were thinking and who recognised the unusualness
of those stories perhaps because they had been taught to do so. Of course, if only part of a text is
the focus of the question (for example Question 5, 9 and all the novels), then students should just
pin down that particular part and not give an overview of the whole text. Once the story has been
outlined students need to select some methods to write about and connect those to that story.
Writing about narrative method
In selecting methods, students are more likely to write meaningfully about how stories begin and
end, where in the structure key events happen, where the events of the stories are located in time
and place and the voices that tell the stories than if they choose to write about punctuation and
pace, for example. Pace after all depends upon performance, whether the story is read aloud or
silently, and it is not a universal given. Clearly there are specific instances where pace seems to
quicken and slow, but very rarely did students write about specifics. They tended to simply claim
that bits are quick or slow and this did not work because the rest of the story was not linked to the
comments. It might help students if teachers were more direct in telling them the pitfalls and to
question what students are actually saying about pace. Teachers also need to question students
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when they are making up comments about rhyme schemes, for example when students say that
the ABABB rhyme scheme of ‘Porphyria’s Lover’ symbolises madness. Writing about rhyme
schemes very rarely leads to productive commenting as it often takes students in the direction of
poetry analysis or literary criticism rather than narrative method. It is especially unproductive if the
rhyme scheme is not even identified correctly. Similarly, if students are going to write about meter
– and it rarely serves them well - then they must at least be accurate about what kind of meter it is.
For some students all poetry is iambic pentameter and this is clearly inaccurate. Very few poems in
the set text list are written in iambic pentameter. Examiners did not feel that students were
suddenly inventing things for the first time in this examination and if they have been writing vague,
uncertain and made up things in their practice essays, they need to be told that it will not lead to
their gaining marks in examinations.
It is important to explain to students that they should write about some methods, not all, and
certainly they should not have a list of methods pre-selected. Students need to judge what will lead
to the most interesting discussion about the ways the writer has crafted his or her story. It is
unlikely to be the effects of single words or the effects of punctuation. In general terms it is more
likely that writing about voice and structure will lead to more engaged discussion than writing about
the effects of alliteration and similes especially when there is no sense of their relevance to the
story being told. Even if students manage to identify the rhythm or rhyme scheme accurately they
then have the problem of relating it to the story and many students struggle here and just make
things up. Some students seem to have a voice inside them saying that they have to comment on
the effects of rhyme schemes and for most students this is really difficult.
Many students also experienced difficulty when they were writing about line lengths and stanzas.
In this examination series many students made all kinds of suggestions about why Coleridge used
six lines in some stanzas of 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' or why Auden used nine stanzas
and eleven lines in 1st September 1939 (one student suggesting that this represented 9/11 and that
Auden had some foresight of what was to happen in America in 2001). Only a few students wrote
about stanza patterns purposefully so perhaps it is not wise for schools and colleges to spend time
agonising over why there might be four lines per stanza and not six.
Some of the weakest answers were seen by those students who simply provided a commentary of
the specified section, going through the text offering bits of interpretation, bits of context, bits of
character analysis and bits about method. This was not a good approach and students should be
told that this is not what the question asks. Questions which were least well done this summer
were Questions 1, 7 and 29.
Specific comments on commonly answered questions in Section A (odd)
Question 1: Auden
Many responses to this question showed a limited grasp of the rather odd story that is told in
Auden’s poem where the narrator sits in a dive on fifty second street, reflecting on the significance
of the day when Germany invades Poland, connecting the moment with other sub stories from
history and then coming to a muted personal conclusion. Many students favoured interpretation
and commentary, and a fair number of these showed little overall understanding of the poem, not
even mentioning war, for example. Those who saw 1st September 1939 as a personal reflection on
the outbreak of war and what led to it were few in number. For most, it was a poor choice.
Auden’s homosexuality was an obsession for many with some seeing the poem as Auden’s belief
that Hitler’s aim was to embark on ‘sexuality cleansing’. Many students spent much time
commenting on single images or words usually in an attempt to link the image to Auden’s sexual
orientation without really making convincing points. Where students did understand the narrative,
they often showed impressive sophistication and maturity.
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Question 3: Browning
This task was very well managed even by the less able students as almost everyone was able to
discuss the opening use of setting and the impact of the first person, unstable voice. Less able
students sometimes got a little caught up in why the narrator kills his lover and they then
interpreted events rather than examined method. However, more able students dealt very well with
structural features, clearly grasping that Porphyria is dead at the beginning of the narrative, and
commenting on the build up to the climax, the use of foreshadowing and the change of tense at the
end.
Question 5: Coleridge
There was also some good work on this question where students focused on the different levels of
diegesis, with sensible analysis of extradiegetic and intradiegetic narrators together with the use of
a frame narrative and this worked when it was discussed in the context of the story of Part 1. The
most able students usually moved on to characterisation and setting before discussing the climax
of the shooting of the albatross with some attention being given to intervening events. Students
were very confident about writing about part one of the poem (more so than some of the other
sections of the poem in the past). However, there were several who didn’t understand the events of
the section and only commented on the opening few verses without mentioning the voyage or the
shooting of the albatross; those students tended to get caught up with the mariner and his
‘glittering eye’. However, again there were some very insightful responses that dealt effectively
with elements of structure, voice and imagery.
Question 7: Frost
Many students struggled with this question because they did not establish the overarching – and
again rather odd - story. Instead, they offered a general commentary, often making tortuous
connections between the form of the poem and its story, with some picking out the visual
appearance of lines on the page (such as ‘looking like trees’). Such comments were of limited
value and were not related to the story. Similarly, students who counted syllables in lines struggled
to make meaningful connections with a speaker reflecting on a decision made. Sometimes weaker
students got rather caught up with the metaphorical nature of the ‘two roads’ and did not go much
beyond this. However, for those who understood they were writing about narrative, it was pleasing
to see a number of students making relevant choices about methods to discuss with many
exploring the time shift at the end.
Question 9: Keats
A small number of students undertook this question. Some of the weaker students seemed a little
confused about exactly what happens in this section with several referring in detail to other
sections or making very generic comments about voice and form. However, more able students
explored a range of aspects of narrative and were especially adept at commenting on structural
features and the shift in narrative voice at the start.
Question 11: Rossetti
Students who wrote about ‘The Round Tower . . .’ tended to do well because they were able to
identify all the elements of the story. The best answers were seen by students who showed an
ability to evaluate aspects of structure and voice (particularly the use of dialogue, the mirroring of
the couples’ utterances and the use of the intrusive narrative voice). These students could also
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analyse detail such as the initial animalistic imagery. Even weaker students were generally able to
pin down the story and comment on features of language with an awareness of the build up to their
deaths. Some students, however, did not seem to know what the story was about.
Question 13: Tennyson
This was a popular question and the best responses were seen by those who engaged with the
poem in terms of its being an anti-story, a story which goes nowhere. Many aptly commented on its
being a story of depression and fruitless waiting and the refrain was discussed as evidence of
Mariana’s unchanging state. Some made contrasts between the opening refrain and the final one
but on the whole there was not enough close attention given to the details of her story that precede
the refrain. Most were able to comment on the setting and the imagery Tennyson uses. Weaker
students got bogged down with symbolism (with a lot on the phallic nature of the poplar tree) and
as a result, often didn’t go beyond language or necessarily pin down the story; a number included
quite a bit of extraneous material about Measure for Measure.
Question 21: The Kite Runner
This question seemed to attract fewer responses than might be expected from schools and
colleges that studied The Kite Runner, perhaps because students were thinking about Section B in
advance and realised how productive the novel could be in terms of symbol and motif. If this was
the case then a really good choice was being made. The use of a letter and different voices were
popular aspects to consider, and the cliff-hanger ending also drew attention. Whilst some students
struggled to pin the story down in this chapter and included a lot of material about what had
occurred elsewhere, particularly in the previous chapter, others managed very well. There were
astute comments on the use of different voices (particularly in terms of Hassan’s letter and the
effect this created), insightful structural points concerning the reference to past events and the
sense of the building up to a climax at the end of the chapter. This question was generally well
handled by a range of students.
Question 27: The Road
This was a very popular question although responses were mixed. A lot of weaker students didn’t
deal with the whole of the extract. There was a lot about the dream sequence, (with some
confusion as to who the woman being described was), and about the coke can, but many did not
go beyond this. There were also quite a few rather generic responses with a lot of comments about
the presentation of the post-apocalyptic world, the lack of names and lack of speech marks that
could have been about any section of the novel and were not explicitly connected to the story in
this part.
Question 29: The Great Gatsby
This was another very popular question with some superb answers that explored both narrative
voice and aspects of structure and style particularly in relation to the end of the chapter. However,
a lot of students didn’t pin down the story of this chapter and many barely made it past the first
couple of pages with a lot of comments about Nick as the narrator, the reliability of his voice and
his initial comments on Gatsby, though with no mention of his visit to the Buchanans.
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Question 33: ‘Pride and Prejudice’
This was quite a popular question and was generally managed very well with in-depth discussions
on the narrative voice, the passage of time and the use of dialogue. Weaker students sometimes
focused on Elizabeth’s character and there was occasional confusion with the location and who the
narrator was (Elizabeth, Austen or an omniscient voice).
Section A: the even numbered questions
Answers in this section require argument, a key strand of AO1. All questions set up debates or
invite students to think about interpretations and the students who write the best answers have
clear independent voices. To hit AO3, students really need to engage with ‘how far’, ‘to what
extent’ and ‘significance’. The best answers were written by students who were clearly thinking
about the text in relation to the question, maintaining focus and often challenging the premises set
up.
There is an expectation that since this is an open book examination, that the text is well used to
support the arguments that students posit. Good answers were seen on all questions but some
particularly impressive ones were seen in responses to Questions 12, 14 and 22. Questions 8, and
30 were generally answered less well though there were several excellent responses also. There
are still some schools and colleges teaching general biographical and historical background, and
some students think that they must shoehorn in references to Auden's homosexuality, the
American Dream and the terrible suppression of all women in times past. Rarely is historical
context treated well or made relevant when it is as general as ‘women didn’t have any freedom in
Victorian times’.
Specific comments on commonly answered questions in Section A (even)
Question 2: Auden
Responses here were mixed with some weaker students simply saying that there was love in some
poems and not in others. However, more able students did tackle centrality and there was
particularly good debate around ‘As I Walked Out One Evening’ and the dominance of time over
love, as well as discussion of different kinds of love and whether or not love is central in poems
such as ‘James Honeyman’ and ‘Victor.’ Again Auden’s homosexuality was brought in by several
students even if not strictly relevant to their argument.
Question 4:Browning
There were many focused discussions on Browning and some good answers were seen by those
who placed conflict at the centre of their answers and then debated the causes of this conflict.
Selection of material was key to success here. Those who chose ‘Porphyria’s Lover’, ‘My Last
Duchess’, ‘The Laboratory’ and ‘The Pied Piper’ often did better than those who made other
choices. The word ‘always’ was at the heart of the answers of the very best students and many
suggested that rather than social status, jealousy and possessiveness were often stronger causes.
Some students struggled with the task because they had an insecure grasp of social status and did
not know the poems well enough to make sensible observations. Some did not know that there is
social division in ‘Porphyria’s Lover’ or ‘My Last Duchess’. Several who chose ‘The Patriot’
attempted to see the conflict as one caused by divisions in social status and read the narrator as a
government figure, which was often rather tenuous. Some answers narrowed the question purely
to the social status of women and these answers did not achieve the highest marks.
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Question 6: Coleridge
This question met with some interesting debate by most students, ranging from high level analysis
to modest understanding, with many seeing the Wedding Guest’s interjections as a sign of the
importance of his function. Challenges were made to “simply being a listener” which often took the
line that as a listener he reflects the reader’s position. It would have been encouraging if more
students had seen that reading and listening is not a passive activity. Strangely, a number of
answers ignored “one of three” and throughout referred to “wedding guests” and “they”. The best
answers made links with the moral of the story and with the Wedding Guest leaving a sadder and
wiser man.
Question 8: Frost
Some students did not take care in reading this question, and wrote about settings rather than
‘rural’ settings. Some did not appear to know what ‘rural’ meant which was surprising given that
they were writing about Frost. Some of those who did know could not find any significance and in
this respect the question was a surprising choice, though for many students this choice seemed to
have been pre-selected since whole schools and colleges were writing on the same task.
Some weaker students got embroiled with the metaphorical nature of the poem and the imagery of
the ‘yellow woods’ and ‘two roads’ and did not get much beyond this. Some also tried to talk about
rural settings in other poems such as ‘Out – out’ which was obviously not relevant to the task. In
better answers some really interesting points were made about the isolating effects of the settings
and the significance of nature being presented as untouched in comparison to the human
characters.
Question 10: Keats
This question unfortunately led some students to write in detail about Keats’ love for Fanny
Brawne, so much so that in a few cases his poetry was virtually forgotten. The best students
suggested that ‘The Eve of St Agnes’ possibly offers a different view about love rather than being
one of ‘grievous torment’. Although it seemed that weaker students were not sure on the meaning
of ‘grievous torment’, they were still able to address the ‘agony of love’ and effectively answer the
question. Many wrote very well about ‘La Belle Dame’ and the knight’s anguish as well as using
‘The Eve of St Agnes’ as both a counter view and to support the idea of love creating pain given
Madeline’s potential rape and entrapment. Students were slightly less confident when dealing with
‘Lamia’, but a range of points were still made and were often well supported.
Question 12: Rossetti
On the whole this was very well handled with students often drawing on a number of different
poems and adopting original positions including discussing the way characters such as the narrator
in ‘Cousin Kate’ faced the death of love with courage. Very often the most able students
challenged the terms of the question arguing that whilst some characters faced death with
‘courage’ this was not the same as acceptance. It was surprising that a number of students did not
use ‘The Round Tower’ despite its being the focus of the previous question and an obvious choice.
Some students often wanted to write about their ‘favourite’ poems, which was not a good strategy.
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Question 14:Tennyson
Many examiners felt that this was the best answered question on the paper. Students genuinely
seemed to enjoy arguing their views here and there were some really good answers. Many agreed
with the proposition set up in the question but there were some who challenged it offering some
insightful discussion of Mariana as a victim of clinical depression and simply unable to help herself.
Question 22: The Kite Runner
This question also met with some lively debate. Many challenged the view set up, and argued that
Amir is himself a victim of his father and of his culture. Those students who gained the best marks
ranged widely across the text often focusing on the rape scene, Amir’s treatment of his sick father
and the possibility that he could be regarded as culpable for Sohrab’s attempted suicide. Those
who simply concentrated on the rescue of Sohrab were less able to construct a convincing
argument.
Question 24: Enduring Love
The openness of this question encouraged a variety of approaches, and there was interesting work
that compared the coldness of scientific theory and analysis with the experiences of Joe Rose,
Clarissa and Jed Parry. Some struggled to say much about the appendix, preferring to return to the
main novel. Others recognised the structural issue of the three endings and its link to the postmodern novel.
Question 28: The Road
Again there were a range of responses to this question with very able students often making
insightful points about McCarthy’s poetic style of writing that creates a kind of beauty, as well as
the relationship between the father and son. However, there was a lot of generalisation with
students often commenting on the post-apocalyptic world that had no hope and was colourless, but
without pinning down any specific moments of terror or examples of beauty. Some found it easier
to find examples of ‘terror’ than ‘beauty’.
Question 30:The Great Gatsby
A lot of students really struggled with this task. Several did not seem to know what ‘decent’ meant
despite the context of the question with many interpreting it as ‘being wealthy’ or happy. However,
more struggled with ‘affirming’ and could not see that the novel on the whole offers a way of
considering morality and decency. Many were able to pinpoint where characters behave in a moral
or immoral way, but then couldn’t connect this to the question of whether the novel does or does
not affirm the virtues of living a moral life. Several tried to argue that Nick encourages morality, but
couldn’t see the broader debate that the novel opens up and often seemed to be interpreting
characters as if they were real rather than discussing the message that Fitzgerald offers. There
were, however, some perceptive responses where students saw that the portrayal of immorality
could still affirm morality and many saw the fate of Gatsby and Myrtle to be a judgement and a
punishment. Consumerism and materialism were also considered in moral terms, especially in
relation to Tom and Daisy Buchanan, who were roundly condemned for their irresponsibility.
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Question 34: Pride and Prejudice
This question was very well managed by all abilities with many students being able to refer to a
range of relationships or episodes where money is clearly a dominating factor in the decisions
characters make. Charlotte Lucas and Mrs Bennet were discussed well. Some of the strongest
answers were produced by students who were also able to see another view although generally
the only other view offered was that love is more dominant. Such arguments centred on Darcy and
Elizabeth.
Unburdening the students
Across all sections of the exam paper, it seemed that students were unnecessarily burdened with
features and ideas that they thought they should include in their answers. When students do not
have ownership of their answers or when they do not understand what they are writing about or
when they feel obliged to comment on literary devices and can only make things up, they do not
perform well. Schools and colleges need to help students to avoid these hazards. The list below
covers some of the major problem areas:
• writing about rhyme schemes
• writing about literary tropes
• writing about rhythm, meter and line lengths
• writing about punctuation
• writing about pace
• writing about unreliable narrators
• writing about general historical and biographical contextual ideas
• citing critics gratuitously.
AO1
As has been pointed out in previous reports, how students themselves write about literature is an
important factor in how well they perform in terms of marks. AO1 is explicitly tested in Section A
(the even numbered questions) and in B, though as is stated on the front of the examination paper,
students are expected to ‘use good English’, ‘organise information clearly’ and ‘use specialist
vocabulary where appropriate’ in their whole answer. AO1 is also about students having a tight
focus on tasks and being able to structure coherent arguments. Teachers need to help students to
write and not just to read. Students need to take pride in their writing, producing coherent work in
clear paragraphs. Some students, of course, write in a most impressive way and such work is a
pleasure to read.
Conclusion
This is very much a skills-based paper. It is challenging, it is rewarding and many students seem to
enjoy what they are doing. It is worth noting that although certain texts are not very popular
(Lawrence's short stories, The Secret Scripture, The God of Small Things and Great Expectations)
examiners often say how well students are answering on these texts, often because they have
been so well taught. This year some excellent work was seen in Section B on The God of Small
Things, The Secret Scripture and Great Expectations.
Many schools and colleges understand and appreciate the philosophy behind the paper and,
where ‘Aspects of Narrative’ is at the heart of teaching, students are provided with a good
foundation.
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REPORT ON THE EXAMINATION – A-LEVEL ENGLISH LITERATURE B – 2745 – JUNE 2014
Mark Ranges and Award of Grades
Grade boundaries and cumulative percentage grades are available on the Results Statistics
page of the AQA Website.
Converting Marks into UMS marks
Convert raw marks into Uniform Mark Scale (UMS) marks by using the link below.
UMS conversion calculator www.aqa.org.uk/umsconversion
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