The attached scheme of work and resources will be particularly useful to those teaching AQA Literature specification B Unit 1 Aspects of Narrative but also, I hope, to those teaching the novel elsewhere for either AS or A2 literature where the novel may appear as part of a coursework unit, as wider reading or as a specified text for The Modern Novel.

Teaching the novel has its own peculiar difficulties simply because of the size of the text and always seems to present a number of questions:

• Should I ask the students to read the novel before...

1. Introduction
2. AQA Specific Section: Assessment Objectives, etc.
3. A Critical Vocabulary
4. Tips for Improving Exam Grades
5. Guide to Narrative: Narrative Frameworks
6. Guide to Narrative: Narrative Concepts
7. Focalisation and Diegesis
8. Mimesis
9. Narrative Forms and Structures
10. AQA Specific Exam Tips
11. Help with Exam Revision
12. Analysis of Cousin Kate, poem by Christina Rossetti

Introduction

Storytelling is often associated with childhood or novels – and yet, as a means of communicating thoughts,...

1. Introduction
2. AQA Specific Section: Assessment Objectives, etc.
3. A Critical Vocabulary
4. Tips for Improving Exam Grades
5. Guide to Narrative: Narrative Frameworks
6. Guide to Narrative: Narrative Concepts
7. Focalisation and Diegesis
8. Mimesis
9. Narrative Forms and Structures
10. AQA Specific Exam Tips
11. Help with Exam Revision
12. Analysis of Cousin Kate, poem by Christina Rossetti

The ‘Storyworld’

A very useful idea to grasp is that of the ‘storyworld’. It’s an idea taken from the field of...

1. Introduction
2. AQA Specific Section: Assessment Objectives, etc.
3. A Critical Vocabulary
4. Tips for Improving Exam Grades
5. Guide to Narrative: Narrative Frameworks
6. Guide to Narrative: Narrative Concepts
7. Focalisation and Diegesis
8. Mimesis
9. Narrative Forms and Structures
10. AQA Specific Exam Tips
11. Help with Exam Revision
12. Analysis of Cousin Kate, poem by Christina Rossetti

If your exam board is AQA, you will have been introduced to various ways of analysing narratives using analytical...

1. Introduction
2. AQA Specific Section: Assessment Objectives, etc.
3. A Critical Vocabulary
4. Tips for Improving Exam Grades
5. Guide to Narrative: Narrative Frameworks
6. Guide to Narrative: Narrative Concepts
7. Focalisation and Diegesis
8. Mimesis
9. Narrative Forms and Structures
10. AQA Specific Exam Tips
11. Help with Exam Revision
12. Analysis of Cousin Kate, poem by Christina Rossetti

AO1

Articulate creative, informed and relevant responses to literary texts, using appropriate terminology and concepts, and...

1. Introduction
2. AQA Specific Section: Assessment Objectives, etc.
3. A Critical Vocabulary
4. Tips for Improving Exam Grades
5. Guide to Narrative: Narrative Frameworks
6. Guide to Narrative: Narrative Concepts
7. Focalisation and Diegesis
8. Mimesis
9. Narrative Forms and Structures
10. AQA Specific Exam Tips
11. Help with Exam Revision
12. Analysis of Cousin Kate, poem by Christina Rossetti

• Stories have been told since time immemorial and have, over that time, developed in very conventional ways, that is, they...

1. Introduction
2. AQA Specific Section: Assessment Objectives, etc.
3. A Critical Vocabulary
4. Tips for Improving Exam Grades
5. Guide to Narrative: Narrative Frameworks
6. Guide to Narrative: Narrative Concepts
7. Focalisation and Diegesis
8. Mimesis
9. Narrative Forms and Structures
10. AQA Specific Exam Tips
11. Help with Exam Revision
12. Analysis of Cousin Kate, poem by Christina Rossetti

In the vast majority of fictional stories, the narrator, characters, settings and actions are most often painstakingly...

1. Introduction
2. AQA Specific Section: Assessment Objectives, etc.
3. A Critical Vocabulary
4. Tips for Improving Exam Grades
5. Guide to Narrative: Narrative Frameworks
6. Guide to Narrative: Narrative Concepts
7. Focalisation and Diegesis
8. Mimesis
9. Narrative Forms and Structures
10. AQA Specific Exam Tips
11. Help with Exam Revision
12. Analysis of Cousin Kate, poem by Christina Rossetti

Focalisation

A fictional story has to have a ‘teller’ in the form of the voice of a narrator, an equivalent of the...

1. Introduction
2. AQA Specific Section: Assessment Objectives, etc.
3. A Critical Vocabulary
4. Tips for Improving Exam Grades
5. Guide to Narrative: Narrative Frameworks
6. Guide to Narrative: Narrative Concepts
7. Focalisation and Diegesis
8. Mimesis
9. Narrative Forms and Structures
10. AQA Specific Exam Tips
11. Help with Exam Revision
12. Analysis of Cousin Kate, poem by Christina Rossetti

To meet your assessment objectives, whatever exam board your school is using, you are asked to use an appropriate critical...

1. Introduction
2. AQA Specific Section: Assessment Objectives, etc.
3. A Critical Vocabulary
4. Tips for Improving Exam Grades
5. Guide to Narrative: Narrative Frameworks
6. Guide to Narrative: Narrative Concepts
7. Focalisation and Diegesis
8. Mimesis
9. Narrative Forms and Structures
10. AQA Specific Exam Tips
11. Help with Exam Revision
12. Analysis of Cousin Kate, poem by Christina Rossetti

Note | This first section apples to AQA students only. In Section A of the exam paper, the ‘odd numbered’ parts of each...

1. Introduction
2. AQA Specific Section: Assessment Objectives, etc.
3. A Critical Vocabulary
4. Tips for Improving Exam Grades
5. Guide to Narrative: Narrative Frameworks
6. Guide to Narrative: Narrative Concepts
7. Focalisation and Diegesis
8. Mimesis
9. Narrative Forms and Structures
10. AQA Specific Exam Tips
11. Help with Exam Revision
12. Analysis of Cousin Kate, poem by Christina Rossetti

Cousin Kate

Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)

I was a cottage maiden [1]
Hardened by sun and air,
Contented with my cottage...

1. Introduction
2. AQA Specific Section: Assessment Objectives, etc.
3. A Critical Vocabulary
4. Tips for Improving Exam Grades
5. Guide to Narrative: Narrative Frameworks
6. Guide to Narrative: Narrative Concepts
7. Focalisation and Diegesis
8. Mimesis
9. Narrative Forms and Structures
10. AQA Specific Exam Tips
11. Help with Exam Revision
12. Analysis of Cousin Kate, poem by Christina Rossetti

• Make a revision timetable from now till the exam – but avoid being too much of a goody-goody as it won’t stick....

1. Introduction
2. AQA Specific Section: Assessment Objectives, etc.
3. A Critical Vocabulary
4. Tips for Improving Exam Grades
5. Guide to Narrative: Narrative Frameworks
6. Guide to Narrative: Narrative Concepts
7. Focalisation and Diegesis
8. Mimesis
9. Narrative Forms and Structures
10. AQA Specific Exam Tips
11. Help with Exam Revision
12. Analysis of Cousin Kate, poem by Christina Rossetti

What do AQA Examiners say successful students do?

Section Aa

• Only AO2 is tested here. Students who do well write about how...

1. Introduction
2. AQA Specific Section: Assessment Objectives, etc.
3. A Critical Vocabulary
4. Tips for Improving Exam Grades
5. Guide to Narrative: Narrative Frameworks
6. Guide to Narrative: Narrative Concepts
7. Focalisation and Diegesis
8. Mimesis
9. Narrative Forms and Structures
10. AQA Specific Exam Tips
11. Help with Exam Revision
12. Analysis of Cousin Kate, poem by Christina Rossetti

• The key is to be sure your answer is based on an analysis that is objective. A story is always composed of a PLOT – that...

The following guide would be useful for AQA LITB1, Aspects of Narrative but also for many other A level (and GCSE) units, where Hardy’s poems might be studied.

• Neutral Tones
• The Darkling Thrush
• ­At Castle Boterel
• ­The Voice
• ­Drummer Hodge
• ­In Church
• ­The Oxen

To many, Hardy is a genius, worthy of the highest respect as a technician in his poetry: a poet able to move his readers deeply often by his portrayal of ordinary people and events, both rendered special by the manner of his telling; to others, his technical ability is never...

Although analysing a text at the level of narrative is a direct requirement of some English Literature courses, such as AQA’s LITB1, it is an analytical technique that can be quite generally applied across many texts – even non-fictional and media texts.

Associated Resources

A Guide to Teaching Othello

Click on the link below to download this resource.

Othello Guide Part 2 EnglishEdu.doc

Othello Guide Part 2 EnglishEdu.docx

Associated Resources

How to improve grades when writing for Othello

This EnglishEdu guide on Shakespeare’s popular A Level play, Othello, aims to supplement rather than replace other readily available Internet and printed material for the teaching of the play.

The guide explores the issues, themes and characters in the play that are particularly relevant to the current (2010) A Level Literature specifications. To add to the usefulness, and with an eye to the central AO requirement of close textual analysis of form, structure and...

Introduction

The tenth in the EnglishEdu series on ‘frameworks’ for A Level English Literature.

This guide explores how to analyse narrative viewpoint in novels, short stories or prose extracts in order to allow students access to the highest grades.

Narrative viewpoint: Atonement by Ian McEwan

The most straightforward way of demonstrating how to analyse a text closely in terms of narrative viewpoint is to exemplify it. The extract below is followed by a series of bullet points which demonstrate how to analyse closely using carefully...

Introduction

The fifteenth in the EnglishEdu series on ‘frameworks’ for A Level English Literature.

This guide explores how to analyse the genre of novels, short stories or prose extracts in order to allow students access to the highest grades.

Genre: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (gothic); Hamlet by William Shakespeare (tragedy); As You Like It by William Shakespeare (pastoral)

NB Whilst the EnglishEdu Literature Frameworks generally analyse novels, short stories or prose extracts, the specific nature of the tragic and pastoral genres...

Introduction

The fourteenth in the EnglishEdu series on ‘frameworks’ for A Level English Literature.

This guide explores how to help students analyse the context of novels, short stories or prose extracts in order to allow them access to the highest grades.

Context: On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan

The most straightforward way of demonstrating how to analyse a text closely in terms of context is to exemplify it. The extract below is followed by a series of bullet points which demonstrate how to analyse closely using carefully chosen...

Introduction

The thirteenth in the EnglishEdu series on ‘frameworks’ for A Level English Literature.

This guide explores how to analyse the symbolism in novels, short stories or prose extracts in order to allow students access to the highest grades.

Symbolism: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

The most straightforward way of demonstrating how to closely analyse a text in terms of the theme above is to exemplify it. The extract below is followed by a series of bullet points which demonstrate how to analyse closely using carefully chosen...

Introduction

This is the twelfth in the EnglishEdu series on ‘frameworks’ for A Level English Literature.

This guide explores how to analyse the narrative presentation of time in novels, short stories or prose extracts in order to allow students access to the highest grades.

Time: The Time Machine by H G Wells

The most straightforward way of demonstrating how to closely analyse a text in terms of the theme above is to exemplify it. The extract below is followed by a series of bullet points which demonstrate how to analyse closely using...

Introduction

The eleventh in the EnglishEdu series on ‘frameworks’ for A Level English Literature.

This guide explores how to analyse how authors create a convincing sense of realism or ‘verisimilitude’ in novels, short stories or prose extracts.

An analysis at a level like this is capable of revealing the kind of subtle insights that allow students access to the highest grades.

Verisimilitude: Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

The most straightforward way of demonstrating how to analyse a text closely in terms of verisimilitude is...

Introduction to the Literary ‘Frameworks’ Guides

At EnglishEdu our wish is always to try to help you, the often stressed and overworked English teacher, with something that you will feel is both very useful and – where possible – very different from what might be found elsewhere, either on the Internet or in print.

All of the guides, schemes of work and classroom materials on EnglishEdu have been written and produced by experienced and well-respected English teachers.

The guides are based on their best experience of teaching...

Introduction

The ninth in the Englishedu series on ‘frameworks’ for A Level English Literature, this guide explores and exemplifies an important requirement of many A-level English Literature teaching units, that students show how their own interpretation of a literary text is informed by their understanding that other possible interpretations exist, i.e. ‘alternative interpretations’.

‘Alternative Interpretations’: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

The most straightforward way of demonstrating how to closely analyse a text in...

Introduction

The eighth in the Englishedu series on ‘frameworks’ for A Level English Literature, this guide looks at ways of analysing an author’s use of irony in novels, short stories or prose extracts in order to allow students access to the highest grades.

Irony: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

The most straightforward way of demonstrating how to closely analyse a text in terms of the theme above is to exemplify it. The extract below is followed by a series of bullet points which demonstrate how to analyse closely using...

Introduction

The seventh in the Englishedu series on ‘frameworks’ for A Level English Literature, this guide explores how to analyse an author’s use of description, imagery and figurative language in novels, short stories or prose extracts in order to allow students access to the highest grades.

Description, imagery, figurative language: Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

The most straightforward way of demonstrating how to closely analyse a text in terms of the theme above is to exemplify it. The extract below is followed...

Introduction

The sixth in the Englishedu series on ‘frameworks’ for A Level English Literature, this guide explores how to analyse the dialogue in novels, short stories or prose extracts in order to allow students access to the highest grades.

Dialogue: Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

The most straightforward way of demonstrating how to closely analyse a text in terms of the theme above is to exemplify it. The extract below is followed by a series of bullet points which demonstrate how to analyse closely using carefully chosen...

Introduction

The fifth in the Englishedu series on ‘frameworks’ for A Level English Literature, this guide explores and exemplifies ways of analysing aspects and uses of atmosphere, mood, tone and foreshadowing in novels, short stories or prose extracts in order to allow students access to the highest grades.

Atmosphere, mood, tone and foreshadowing: Lord of the Flies by William Golding

The most straightforward way of demonstrating how to closely analyse a text in terms of the theme above is to exemplify it. The extract below is...

Introduction

The fourth in the Englishedu series on ‘frameworks’ for A Level English Literature, this guide explores how to analyse authors’ uses of setting in novels, short stories or prose extracts in order to allow students access to the highest grades.

Setting, places and scenes: Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

The most straightforward way of demonstrating how to closely analyse a text in terms of the theme above is to exemplify it. The extract below is followed by a series of bullet points which demonstrate how to analyse...

Introduction

The third in the Englishedu ‘literary frameworks’ series for A Level English Literature, this guide explores and exemplifies ways of analysing an author’s creation and presentation of characters in novels, short stories or prose extracts in order to allow students access to the highest grades.

Characters and characterisation: Lord of the Flies by William Golding

The most straightforward way of demonstrating how to closely analyse a text in terms of the theme above is to exemplify it. The extract below is followed by a...

Introduction

This is the second in the Englishedu series on ‘analytical frameworks’ aimed, primarily, at A Level English Literature teachers.

The guides are loosely based on the English Language A level idea of ‘analytical frameworks’ – a way that allows students a more methodical way of viewing texts at various analytical levels to help them create subtler and thus better commentaries and discussions on any text under study.

Each ‘framework’ is covered in detail and its use is exemplified using textual examples chosen...

Introduction

At EnglishEdu our aim is to help the overworked English teacher (including this writer!) with something that you will feel is both very useful and – where possible – very different from what might be found elsewhere, either on the Internet or in print.

All of the guides, schemes of work and classroom materials on Englishedu have been produced by experienced and well-respected English teachers. The guides are based on their best experience of teaching particular units of work.

This new guide is something a little unusual....