During the last fifteen years, I have marked hundreds of pieces of A Level coursework. Earlier this year, I wrote a Twitter thread containing some advice for students about how to write an outstanding answer.
This blog post is an expanded version of that thread and, in the main, concerns the longer, discursive coursework essays rather than those that offer close-readings of individual poems.
Some of this advice will be quite obvious and I hope that most of it has already been communicated to you by your teachers. It should prove useful to you nonetheless.
(I'm not sure how many teachers call it the 'non-exam assessment' so I will use the old-fashioned word 'coursework' throughout.)
1. Complete all relevant research before you plan your essay, particularly the reading of literary criticism and research into relevant socio-historical context. Make sure that you have taken thorough notes. With this approach, you avoid having to re-arrange your essay-structure to accommodate a detail which you discovered while you were writing it.
This additional reading is likely to take a minimum of several hours spread over several days.
2. For a mark in the top band, you should spend several hours planning your essay. This will be tiring and may involve a few false-starts. Persevere, however: getting this right makes writing the essay much easier.
Your plan should not be a mind-map, but a step-by-step guide as to how to organise your argument in a logical way. Don't rush the planning stage and don't just start typing your essay onto a blank-screen with no plan to guide you.
3. Your plan needs to include a summary of the content of each paragraph including your argument, supporting evidence, reference to critical debates and relevant contextual factors. Make it as detailed as possible.
4. As with any essay, you need to have a clear argument. Your opening paragraph needs to establish what you intend to prove and signpost the subtopics that you'll be exploring.
Given the length of a coursework essay, your argument is likely to be more detailed than in an essay that you would write in exam conditions.
Planning your argument is likely to be taxing, possibly frustrating, and, as I have said, will involve some false-starts. However, expending some intellectual energy on this task is worth your while. Prioritise articulating an argument that is clear, detailed, logical and precise.
Treat the essay as an opportunity to present your best ideas about the texts you have studied. Don't choose to make a simpler argument just because it's easier to do so. I've marked answers from students who, for the sake of short-term convenience, haven't risen to the challenge of articulating their subtlest or most developed ideas. Inevitably, these answers score mediocre marks.
Equally, don't choose to make your argument so detailed that it far exceeds the word-limit that you have been set. There's a balance to strike here so let the word-count be your guide.
5. Your essay is a personal response to a particular question so use the opportunity to explore what interests you about the texts you're studying. Demonstrating independent critical thought allows you to access the top band.
It's always refreshing to see that a student has taken time to conduct some independent research online or in a library, rather than relying solely on material provided to the whole class by their teacher.
6. Use class discussions and written exercises to develop your ideas. If a teacher praises a point that you make in class, make a note of it and see if it can be integrated into your essay.
Too many students forget or discard the excellent points that they make in class. A few years ago, one of my students made a superb point about the ending of 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' - potentially the basis for a publishable essay - which he forgot to include when writing his final piece.
7. Beware of repeating distinctive phrases used by teachers or by other students in class discussions. It's easily done but examiners sometimes complain that the students from the same class produce essays which are quite similar in their tone and content.
Educational software is increasingly good at picking up on plagiarised work and I have known exam boards be strict in their attitude to work which they suspect might not be original. Make sure that you are using your own words.
8. Ensure that you have the essay title and the relevant assessment objectives (AOs) to hand when you're writing the essay. Keep referring to them to make sure that your essay is meeting these criteria.
If you don't understand what the AOs mean, ask your teacher. It's vital that you know how you're being assessed.
9. If AO4 is being tested, make sure that all your arguments involve drawing connections between the texts. Don't be tempted to write at length about one text then the other as you won't fulfil this AO to a high standard.
Identifying very broad similarities between the texts does not constitute exploring connections between them. If I read an essay that makes regular use of the word 'similarly', I can be fairly sure that its writer needs to explore the connections between the texts with more precision and detail, commenting precisely on the subtle differences between them.
10. Footnotes and a bibliography are essential elements to any coursework essay. They allow the reader access to your source material and thus allow the intellectual dialogue (of which your essay is a part) to continue.
Maintain a detailed set of footnotes and a bibliography as you write the essay. If unsure as to how to footnote, look up the Oxford Referencing system. Don't leave this task to the end.
Victoria Univeristy, Melbourne, has provided some useful examples here –https://libraryguides.vu.edu.au/oxford-referencing.
11. Don't be tempted to use critical quotations to 'decorate' your work. You are only fulfilling AO5 if you evaluate the critical debates that your texts generate so explain the extent to which you agree with any critical opinion that you cite.
12. The highest-scoring essays will be approximately as long as the suggested word-count. An examiner once told me that shorter essays often make their points reasonably well but exude a sense that their writer didn't really want to explore the topic at greater length and this is reflected in a lower mark.
If, say, your suggested word-count is 2000 words, a piece of 1720 words would almost certainly benefit from some further development of its ideas.
Don't worry too much about exceeding the word-count by a sentence or two. Exam boards aren't as strict about this as they once were.
13. Finish the essay well in advance of the deadline. Put your essay away for a few days, then read it again. If you've planned thoroughly, any changes that you will make at this stage will be quite minor.
14. Try to enjoy the task and don't treat it as a chore. An essay that engages critically with your studied texts is a pleasure for examiners and, potentially, a pleasure to write.
I hope that you have found this advice useful.
If you would like to book any tuition, please contact me at swlondontutor@yahoo.com.
Comments