English Combined Language & Literature - A Level

English Combined Language and Literature is an enjoyable, challenging and highly successful course at the college. Students learn to analyse and compare a wide variety of texts from poetry, drama and novels to journalism and non-literary texts. They acquire a detailed linguistic and literary vocabulary and knowledge of the contexts in which texts are written and received.

AS Level
AS Component 1 will cover:
• The study of a poetry anthology;
• The analysis of unseen texts in a variety of genres with a view to developing the skills of comparison;
• Creative writing in a variety of genres, together with developing the skills to write commentaries.

AS Component 2 will cover:
• The detailed study of one drama text;
• The detailed study of one non-literary text.

A2 Level
A2 Component 3 will cover:
• A Shakespeare text. The two-hour examination requires a detailed analysis of an extract as well as an extended essay.

A2 Component 4 will cover:
• Study of unseen texts of different types and periods, including spoken texts; and
• The detailed study of a prose text. Assessment is in the form of a two-hour written examination.

A2 Component 5 requires the submission of:
• Two pieces of coursework, comprising an essay of 1500-2000 words and
a piece of creative writing of 1000-1500 words.