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AQA English Literature Paper 2 explained
4 minutes · captions available
The modern text, the poetry anthology and the unseen poems: the questions, the timing and how they are marked.
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Introduction
English Literature Paper 2 is the longest of your four English exams: two hours and fifteen minutes, ninety-six marks, and sixty per cent of your Literature GCSE. It has three sections: a modern play or novel, the poetry anthology, and unseen poetry. Here's how each one works. Section A is your modern play or novel, such as An Inspector Calls. You choose one of two questions, and there's no extract, so everything comes from memory. It's worth thirty-four marks: thirty for your answer and four for spelling, punctuation and grammar. Spend a few minutes choosing the question you can argue best. Then plan an argument across the whole text: beginning, middle and end. Modern texts often have two dates that matter. An Inspector Calls is set in 1912 and was first performed in 1945. The characters can't know what's coming, but Priestley's first audiences had lived through two world wars. Writing about both dates, and the gap between them, is one of the clearest ways to show context working for your argument. Section B is the poetry anthology you've studied, such as Power and Conflict. You get one named poem printed on the paper, and you compare it with another poem of your choice from the same cluster. Thirty marks, about forty-five minutes. So choose your second poem before the exam for each likely theme: power, conflict, memory, identity, nature. Know a few short quotations from it, because that poem won't be printed. Comparing by theme gets you started. Comparing by method gets you marks. In Ozymandias, Shelley lets a broken statue boast: Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair. In London, Blake hears mind-forg'd manacles in every voice. Both are about power. The comparison that earns marks is how: Shelley gives power one voice and lets the desert answer it, while Blake makes power everywhere and invisible. Compare the methods, then the meaning. One easy win: titles. You can get a whole paragraph out of a title. Think about Exposure. Who is being exposed, and to what? The weather, the enemy, or the truth about the war? Questions like that get you into the poem's meaning straight away. Section C gives you two poems you've never seen. Question 28.1 asks about the first poem on its own, for twenty-four marks. Question 28.2 asks you to compare the methods the two poets use, for eight marks. Read both poems before you start writing. They've been chosen to go together, so if you're unsure what the first one means, the second will often help. And in 28.2, every sentence should compare how the poets do something, whether that's an image, the form or the way each poem ends. Meaning on its own won't score there. With two hours and fifteen minutes, a sensible split is about forty-five minutes on Section A, forty-five on Section B, and forty-five on Section C, with roughly thirty-five minutes for 28.1 and ten for 28.2. Keep an eye on the clock. The unseen section comes last, and it's easy to run out of time when it's worth thirty-two marks. So: choose your Section A question carefully and plan across the whole text. Prepare your comparison poems before the exam. Compare methods as well as meanings. Read both unseen poems first. And watch the clock. Free revision and every past question since 2017 are at btl.education.
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