A Level English Literature
EXAM BOARD: Pearson Edexcel
A two-year literature course exploring drama, prose and poetry – eight literary texts plus unseen poetry – through close reading, comparison, context and critical debate.
Every unit develops the skills at the heart of the qualification – informed personal response, analysis of language, form and structure, contextual understanding, comparison and engagement with critical interpretations. Students learn to read as critics and write as essayists, building from confident analysis of single texts towards sophisticated comparative argument. The aim is for every student to leave with a lasting love of literature and the analytical skills demanded by top universities.
Year 12
| Term & Topic | Unit overview | |
|---|---|---|
| AutumnShakespearean Tragedy – Othello | The course opens with baseline assessment and an introduction to the conventions of tragedy, before an in-depth study of Shakespeare’s Othello. Students explore the tragic arc, Iago’s manipulation, and the play’s treatment of race, jealousy and outsiderhood, while beginning work with the Shakespeare: A Critical Anthology – Tragedy – learning to weigh critics’ views against their own and to write analytical essays with an assured critical voice. | |
| AutumnModern Tragedy – A Streetcar Named Desire | Tragedy moves from Renaissance Venice to post-war New Orleans with Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. Students analyse plastic theatre, symbolism and stagecraft, the collision of Old South and new America, and the presentation of Blanche as a modern tragic protagonist – drawing comparisons with Othello to deepen their understanding of the genre across time. | |
| SpringScience & Society – Frankenstein | The prose theme of Science and Society begins with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Students examine the Gothic and Romantic contexts of the novel, its frame narrative and epistolary structure, and its urgent questions about creation, responsibility and the limits of scientific ambition – building the contextual knowledge (AO3) that anchors the comparative essay. | |
| SpringScience & Society – The Handmaid’s Tale | Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale completes the prose pairing. Students analyse dystopian conventions, narrative voice and the politics of language and the body, then learn to construct genuinely comparative essays – moving fluently between the two novels around shared ideas of control, knowledge and resistance rather than treating each text in isolation. | |
| SummerContemporary Poetry & the Unseen | A unit on modern voices built around Poems of the Decade. Students study the specified post-2000 poems in depth and develop a reliable toolkit for approaching unseen poetry – voice, form, imagery, structure and tone – before practising the comparative unseen task that opens Paper 3. Coursework text options are also introduced ready for independent summer reading. | |
| SummerMock Exams |
Mock Exams The year ends with full mock papers on the drama, prose and poetry studied so far, with detailed feedback against the assessment objectives – so every student knows exactly where they stand and what to target in Year 13. |
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Year 13
| Term & Topic | Unit overview | |
|---|---|---|
| AutumnThe Romantics | The specified poetry movement: Romanticism. Students study the selected poems of Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley and Keats, exploring the movement’s revolutionary contexts and its preoccupations with nature, imagination, childhood and the sublime – completing their preparation for both sections of the Poetry paper. | |
| AutumnCoursework (NEA) | Students research, plan and draft their non-examination assessment: an extended comparative essay of 2,500-3,000 words on two texts of their own choice, supervised through one-to-one tutorials. This is each student’s chance to pursue a genuine personal interest – and to produce a piece of writing of near-undergraduate standard. | |
| AutumnCritical Voices & Revision | A synoptic unit revisiting all examined texts through the lens of critical interpretation. Students return to the Critical Anthology, apply feminist, Marxist, postcolonial and psychoanalytic readings to Othello and Streetcar, sharpen comparative planning for the Prose paper, and refine timed-essay technique across all three papers. | |
| SpringExam Practice |
Exam Practice & Official A Level Exams Coursework is finalised and submitted, followed by rounds of full mock papers and personalised feedback in Drama, Prose and Poetry, leading into the official A Level examinations in the summer. |
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The A Level Assessment – Three exam papers and one coursework essay
All three written papers are sat in May/June of Year 13 and are open book – students take clean copies of their texts into the exam. Across the course students study eight literary texts plus unseen poetry.
Paper 1: Drama
2h 15mDuration
30%of A Level
60Marks
- Section A: one essay on the Shakespeare play (Othello), informed by the ideas in the Critical Anthology
- Section B: one essay on the other drama text (A Streetcar Named Desire)
- Open book – clean copies of the plays allowed; the Critical Anthology may not be taken in
Paper 2: Prose
1h 15mDuration
20%of A Level
40Marks
- One comparative essay on the two studied novels from the Science and Society theme
- At least one of the two texts is pre-1900 (Frankenstein, paired with The Handmaid’s Tale)
- Rewards sustained comparison of themes, methods and contexts across both texts
Paper 3: Poetry
2h 15mDuration
30%of A Level
60Marks
- Section A: compare an unseen post-2000 poem with a named poem from Poems of the Decade
- Section B: one essay on the specified poetic movement – the Romantics
- Open book – clean copies of the poetry texts allowed
Coursework (NEA)
20%of A Level
1Essay
3,000Words max
- One extended comparative essay of 2,500-3,000 words on two texts of the student’s own choice
- Texts are chosen freely, guided by the teacher, and must not repeat the examined texts
- Internally assessed and externally moderated by Pearson