The Road to External Assessment by Whitney

Unit 4 begins

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Explore the Unit objectives, which drive the content focus, assessment objectives and ways of reading the text.

How to annotate your text

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This is a vital step in knowing your text well. Students can NOT bring any resource material into their external assessment. Instead, student are encouraged to know the text well enough to write flexibly.

The texts

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The Study guide

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Understanding the Text

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Understanding the Text (part 2)

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Understanding the Text

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The Senior English Course page, which can be accessed from class pages, contains a range of resources in Unit 4, to support your understanding of Macbeth. Resources include scene summaries, theme summaries and comprehension activities.

Getting ready to write

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In weeks 5-6, Term 3, as students prepared to sit a sample question, the focus was on the skills of writing, paraphrasing for substantiation and question deconstruction.

Understanding the Text

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During the first half of Term 3, the expectation was that students were reading, researching and developing an understanding of the message of Othello and the manner in which it was conveyed.

The Texts

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Students are issued with a bookroom copy of the text, as well as a printed version of the attached PDF file. Students were encouraged to annotate widely on the paper version. identifying key terms, flagging areas of uncertainty and developing their own understanding of Shakespeare's intent.

The Questions

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The example questions were written for Year 12 Literature students, but the advice and process is the same for general English students.

Paraphrasing for the external assessment

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Students do NOT have access to quotes, notes or their texts in the external exam. They are expected to know the text well enough to write flexibly about any element of the text.

Writing an Analytical essay

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In week 9, all General English and Literature students will sit a mock External Assessment, and will be marked against an External Assessment Marking Guide (EAMG). The response, worth 55 marks, requires sustained control of knowledge, organisational features and textual features, to explicitly answer the question. (The focaliser identified in the 'Essay Question styles' document, directs students to answer a broad question with reference to a specific character or feature, thus discouraging students from learning a prepared essay off by heart.

Teaching Analytical Essay writing

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This document was produced for Literature students in Unit 3. It breaks down Introduction, Argumentation and Conclusion in explicit detail. Although it includes instructions for the teaching of the skills involved, students are welcome to access it and use it to guide their preparation.

Understanding the EAMG

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Students did not see the EAMG prior to attempting their sample questions, just as they will not see it in their External Assessment. Students do need to understand how the document can be used to guide their revision time, direct their teacher's feedback and improve the quality of their External Assessment response. Attached is an annotated version of the EAMG, which students can use to understand what markers are looking for in student responses.

Feedback from Mock Exams

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Once students have completed their Mock external Assessment in Week 9, feedback will be collated and shared with the cohort as a whole, as well as individually.

Aesthetic Features, Stylistic Devices and Analytical Essays

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What the syllabus has to say

Character Analysis

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Understanding Literary Devices

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Preparing for External Assessment- Terminology for Text analysis-Othello

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Preparing for External Assessment- Terminology for Text analysis- King Lear

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Writing your Analytical Essay

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Countdown to External Assessment

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