English

AQA offers two distinct A-Level English Literature specifications. Literature A (7712) is organised around the study of love through the ages and texts in shared contexts, while Literature B (7717) works through literary genres — tragedy and comedy, and political and social protest writing. AQA also offers English Language (7702) and English Language and Literature (7707), and schools choose between them for quite different reasons.

Whichever route a student takes, the assessment objectives are the same and AO3 — context — is where marks are most often lost. Weaker essays treat context as biographical background bolted onto the introduction; stronger ones use it to explain why a text makes the choices it does. All routes include a non-examined assessment of around 2,500 words on texts chosen with the teacher.