Coursework Guide

English literature explores the human experience through language — words painting pictures of life.

The Non-Exam Assessment (NEA) component of A-Level English Literature allows students to undertake independent critical study. It is worth 20% of the total qualification across AQA, Edexcel, and OCR, though the specific requirements vary by board. This section covers the structure, expectations, and strategies for producing a high-quality coursework essay.

AQA requires students to produce a 3000-word essay on two texts of their choice. The essay must be a comparative study, connecting the two texts through a shared theme, genre, or concern. Students must produce a reflective account (500 words) documenting their independent reading and critical engagement.

• Texts: One prose text published before 1900, one published after 1900. Drama is permitted but prose is preferred.
• Critical engagement: Students must reference at least one critical source per text.
• Supervision: Teachers may provide guidance but must not edit or redraft student work.

Edexcel requires a 2500-word comparative essay on two texts. The essay should demonstrate understanding of how the texts are shaped by their contexts and how they connect to each other. A critical commentary (500 words) must accompany the essay, evaluating the student’s own analytical process.

• Texts: One text from a prescribed period, one text of the student’s choice.
• Comparative focus: The essay must address similarities and differences in theme, form, or technique.
• Independent study: Students must demonstrate engagement with critical perspectives.

OCR requires a 2500-word essay on a single text or a pair of texts. The essay must demonstrate knowledge of critical interpretations and engage with at least one critical anthology text. The title is chosen by the student from a list provided by the board, or may be self-devised with teacher approval.

• Texts: Prose, poetry, or drama from any period.
• Critical anthology: Students must engage with at least one critical essay from OCR’s prescribed anthology.
• Supervision: Teachers provide formative feedback but may not read or comment on draft essays.

Check your exam board’s specification for the most current requirements, as these may be updated annually.

Select texts that:

1. Offer thematic richness: Choose texts with sufficient depth and ambiguity to sustain 2500-3000 words of analysis. Avoid texts that are too simple or too opaque for sustained critical engagement.
2. Permit genuine comparison: If the NEA is comparative, the texts must share a meaningful connection—not merely a superficial thematic link but a structural, formal, or contextual relationship that rewards analytical exploration.
3. Have available criticism: Ensure there is a range of critical material accessible for both texts. University libraries, JSTOR, and academic databases are primary sources.
4. Align with your interests: Sustained independent study requires genuine engagement. Choose texts that provoke your curiosity.

These pairings are illustrative; you are not limited to them. The key is that your pairing generates a productive analytical argument.

A strong coursework essay follows the same principles as an examination essay but with greater depth and nuance:

1. Introduction: State your argument, introduce both texts, and indicate the critical perspectives you will engage with.
2. Body paragraphs: Develop your argument across 4-6 paragraphs, each focusing on a specific analytical point. Integrate close reading, context, and critical interpretation.
3. Conclusion: Synthesise your argument, reflecting on what your comparison reveals about the texts’ shared concerns.

You must demonstrate engagement with critical perspectives. This does not mean summarising critical essays but engaging with them analytically:

• Agree with a critic: “Barthes’s concept of the “death of the author” illuminates Offred’s narrative instability; her voice resists attribution to a single, authoritative consciousness.”
• Challenge a critic: “While Gilbert and Gubar read the madwoman as Bertha’s double, this reading neglects the racialised dimensions of Brontë’s Gothic that Rhys foregrounds in Wide Sargasso Sea.”
• Develop a critic: “Said’s concept of Orientalism extends beyond Conrad’s text; Achebe’s response in Things Fall Apart demonstrates how the “African voice” can reframe the colonial narrative.”

Do not name-drop critics. Every reference to critical material must serve your analytical argument.

Effective essay titles are specific, arguable, and analytical. They should not be broad topics but focused arguments.

Weak titles:

• “Comparison of Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea”
• “The theme of gender in two novels”

Strong titles:

• “How do Brontë and Rhys use first-person narration to explore the tension between female autonomy and patriarchal constraint?”
• “In what ways do Heart of Darkness and Things Fall Apart challenge and reinforce each other’s representations of colonial encounter?”
• “Compare the ways in which Shelley and Ishiguro use scientific creation as a lens for examining ethical responsibility and human identity.”

A strong title signals your argument, not merely your topic.

A-Level English requires MLA referencing (except where the exam board specifies an alternative). The following are the essential elements:

• Single author: (Brontë 45)
• Two authors: (Gilbert and Gubar 102)
• Secondary source: (Said, drawing on Fanon 118)
• No author: (“Title of Article” 23)

Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Smith, Elder, 1847.

Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. “A Dialogue of Self and Soul: Plain Jane’s Progress.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language, vol. 14, no. 2, 1972, pp. 235-57.

Eliot, George. “The Female Novelist.” Selected Essays, edited by Newton Arvin, Faber, 1932, pp. 148-56.

• Authors surnames only in in-text citations; full names in Works Cited.
• Titles of novels and poems are italicised; titles of articles and chapters are in quotation marks.
• Page numbers for direct quotations; optional for paraphrase.
• Double-space all entries; use hanging indentation for Works Cited.

• Advise on text selection and title formulation
• Provide formative feedback on planning and structure
• Direct students to critical sources
• Discuss analytical approaches for the cases covered in this syllabus

• Read or comment on draft essays
• Edit or proofread student writing
• Suggest specific quotations or analytical points
• Provide model answers

• Come to supervision with a clear plan or question, not a blank page
• Ask for feedback on your argument’s direction, not on specific paragraphs
• Request recommendations for critical reading, not for analytical conclusions
• Treat supervision as a sounding board, not a redrafting service

The following excerpt demonstrates the quality of analysis expected at the top mark bands:

Brontë’s use of first-person narration in Jane Eyre establishes a paradox of self-presentation: Jane’s voice is simultaneously intimate and strategic, inviting the reader’s sympathy while carefully constructing a version of events that serves her rhetorical purpose. When Jane declares, “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me,” the negation performs the very autonomy it describes; she defines herself through refusal, asserting agency through what she is not (Brontë 87). Rhys’s Antoinette, by contrast, is denied this rhetorical sovereignty. Her narrative in Wide Sargasso Sea is fragmented, discontinuous, and ultimately supplanted by Rochester’s authoritative voice. Where Jane constructs a coherent self through language, Antoinette’s identity dissolves: “I saw myself in the looking-glass… I am a ghost now” (Rhys 105). This contrast reveals how both writers use narrative voice to explore the extent to which selfhood is constituted through language—and how the power to narrate one’s own story is never equally distributed.

This excerpt integrates close reading (language analysis), context (narrative theory), and comparison (both texts) within a single sustained argument.

• AO1 (20%): Demonstrate command of literary terminology and independent critical voice throughout.
• AO2 (20%): Provide sustained close reading of both texts, analysing language, form, and structure.
• AO3 (20%): Integrate historical, social, and biographical context where relevant.
• AO4 (20%): Develop a genuine comparative argument that goes beyond thematic list-making.
• AO5 (20%): Engage critically with at least one secondary source per text, demonstrating awareness of different interpretations.

Producing a descriptive comparison instead of a sustained argument: Listing what each text does separately (“Text A does X, Text B does Y”) is not a comparative essay. You need a thesis that runs through the entire essay, using both texts as evidence for a single argument. Every paragraph should advance that argument.

Treating secondary criticism as decoration rather than engagement: Dropping in a critic’s name without engaging with their argument does not demonstrate critical awareness. You must explain what the critic argues, evaluate their interpretation, and use it to develop your own reading. Disagreement with a critic is just as valid as agreement.

Neglecting structure at the essay level: A coursework essay needs an argumentative structure, not just a sequence of paragraph topics. Each section should build on the previous one, and the conclusion should synthesise rather than merely summarise. Plan the essay as an argument, not a list.

• Coursework
• A-Level English