A2 LangLit - final advice for the coursework - Part 2

Coursework deadline: Wednesday March 23rd 2016
9am - 12pm; 1E3

Remember that when you submit the final essay, you must also submit:

• your first draft
• the extracts/poems you have used for your essay - these can be annotated

1. Look again at your opening paragraph. Remember how crucial this is for setting up your argument. A reminder of what AQA say about this:

Highlight your own thesis. Does it narrow  down the parameters of what you are going to explore from the question? Does it give your essay a strong direction to move on from? Does the rest of your essay actually refer back to the thesis and develop an argument? Are you using topic sentences to hold your argument together?

2. Run through your essay with 2 differently coloured highlighters, identifying the parts of your essay that are about Blake's poetry and the parts of the essay which are about Death of a Salesman. Make sure that your essay is evenly balanced between the two & that you are rotating between the two texts.

3. Run through your essay again with a highlighter - this time, identify all of the moments where you make a comparative point, even if just briefly. Look closely at any sustained parts of your essay where there are no comparisons. Have you missed any opportunities?

4. Re-read your essay, focusing on your use of terminology. Are you demonstrating a wide vocabulary? Is your use of technical terms precise and accurate? Are you using literary & linguistic terminology? Are you using discourse analysis (where appropriate)?

5. Now think about context. Remember that context is measured in all sorts of ways. Have you contextualised the extracts from DOS that you are writing about? The poems you have chosen? The quotations you have selected? Where appropriate, have you embedded social, historical and literary context within your arguments?

Finally - a reminder of what you are being assessed on: