What Critical study of literature asks of you in the 2024 English Advanced syllabus

Model answer. To study a text critically is to make and defend judgements about how it works and what it is worth, rather than to report what happens. A critical study asks how the composer's choices create meaning, whether they succeed, and what kinds of reading the text supports or resists.

Marking spine.

• 1 mark: contrasts critical study with summary.
• 1 mark: mentions judgement or evaluation of construction.
• 1 mark: clear, concise expression.

Model answer. 'By withholding the central character's own voice until the final third, [Text] argues that selfhood is something others construct before we can claim it, and its structure makes the reader complicit in that construction.' The original thesis only praised the text and named a topic. The new thesis makes a claim about meaning, ties it to a structural choice, and could be disputed.

Marking spine.

• 2 marks: a thesis that argues something specific about meaning.
• 1 mark: links the claim to a construction choice.
• 1 mark: a clear explanation of what changed (specific, arguable).

Model answer. 'Sustained' means your argument and understanding extend across the whole text rather than resting on a favourite scene or an opening chapter. Two consequences: first, you need evidence from the beginning, middle and end, so that you can show how the text develops and resolves its ideas. Second, you should be able to explain how parts relate to the whole, for example how a late scene recasts an earlier image, so your response shows an understanding of the text's shape, not just its fragments.

Marking spine. 2 marks for a clear definition; 2 for a consequence about spread of evidence; 2 for a consequence about parts and whole.

Model answer (on an invented novel, The Cartographer's Daughter, to show the moves; use a real scene from your own text). In the map-burning scene of The Cartographer's Daughter, the composer combines a shift to present-tense narration with a recurring image of ink to develop the idea that knowledge is something people make and can unmake. The sudden present tense pulls the reader into the moment of destruction, so the daughter's decision feels immediate and irreversible rather than remembered. The ink, which has stained her hands since the first chapter, now runs into the fire, linking this act to every earlier scene of drawing and copying. Together the two features show that the daughter destroys her father's authority at the very moment she claims her own, and they place that act at the turning point of the whole novel rather than in a single scene.

Marking spine.

• 2 marks: a specific scene named and placed in the whole text.
• 2 marks: two precise constructional features identified accurately.
• 2 marks: an explanation of how each feature works.
• 2 marks: an argument about how the features combine to develop one idea beyond the scene.

Planning. The key terms are 'earns its place' (value), 'notice' (perception) and 'about ourselves' (human significance). Your thesis should take a position on how far the text deserves its status, and how.

Structure.

• Introduction: thesis that evaluates the claim (for example, that the text justifies it through a specific way of making readers see themselves) and outlines three constructional features.
• Body 1: a feature that directs attention (voice, structure, or a recurring image), with evidence from early in the text.
• Body 2: a feature that turns attention on the reader or on human behaviour, with evidence from the middle.
• Body 3: the last movement of the text and what it leaves us noticing, with evidence from the end. Include a consideration of how readers' context may change what they notice (this tests the 'to what extent').
• Conclusion: a judgement on the text's value.

Model body paragraph (about 160 words, on the invented The Cartographer's Daughter; use your own text). The text's final movement is where it most clearly makes readers notice something about themselves. In the closing chapters the narration returns to the opening image of the workshop, but the daughter now sees it as a place of silence rather than craft, and the reader is invited to recognise how willingly they accepted the father's authority earlier. This reversal is only possible because the novel withheld the daughter's own voice until the last third, so the reader has been trained to read through her father's eyes. The ending therefore exposes the reader's complicity as well as hers. A reader in a later age, less accustomed to such deference, may notice this more sharply, which is why the claim holds in part: the text earns its place by prompting self-recognition, but what is noticed depends on who is reading.

Marking spine. 7 marks for a sustained evaluative argument responsive to the question; 7 for precise evidence across the whole text with analysis of construction; 3 for structure and expression; 3 for critical insight, including awareness that value is judged from particular positions.

Planning. 'To what extent' asks for a judgement with a qualification. Decide how open or closed the text's language is, find the places where meaning could be read differently, and say which reading you find most persuasive and why. You do not need to quote critics, but you should show awareness that readers and contexts differ.

Structure.

• Introduction: a thesis that takes a position on the extent, with the language choices you will analyse.
• Body 1: a passage or poem whose language is deliberately open (ambiguity, irony, symbol), with two possible readings weighed.
• Body 2: a place where the language closes down meaning, and what that shows about the composer's control.
• Body 3: how context (of composition and of reading now) shapes the readings available.
• Conclusion: your considered judgement.

Marking spine. About 7 marks for understanding of the ideas and of the text's distinctive language and stylistic qualities; 7 for evaluation and analysis supported by precise evidence; 3 for structure; 3 for expression.