1. NEA NEA Non exam Assessment 20% of A-level
2500 word essay written independently
Two texts by two different authors
Marked by us, moderated externally by AQA

2. Rubric for the NEA
One text must be pre-1900 and can be poetry, prose or drama. If you choose short stories, you must write about at least 2 of them in some detail. A novella such as The Yellow Wallpaper is fine but only alongside a more substantial text.
Your second text can be from any period – but if you choose a text written at a similar time (within 30 years of each other for example), it is wise to choose a different genre ( e.g poetry / prose/ drama). It is a good idea to choose your second text from a different historical period. Longer narrative poems are preferably to a collection of shorter ones.
It is a historicist study which means you are not just ‘comparing a theme’ but your essay is a study of how the context of production (when it was written and ideology of the time) as well as context of reception ( how critics have received it differently across time) leads us to draw conclusions about literary representation.
For example, “Compare how the assertive characteristics of Gwendoline Harcourt in Daniel Deronda (1876) and Amy Dunne in Gone Girl (2012) are presented. To what extent is each woman’s assertiveness demonised as unnatural?

3. 1. Embrace the freedom and own your literary study
We will teach the novella The Yellow Wallpaper with an ‘AO approach’ so skills are transferable to other text choices. The purpose of these lessons is a) teach the novella for those using it, and b) to learn how to approach your second text which you will do independently. For those students who often achieved an A grade during the AS course, we strongly encourage you to choose your own two texts.
Be curious - read biographies / watch film adaptations/ read other texts by your authors / read other texts written at a similar time / go on a literary pilgrimage / find some factoids about your authors and texts / buy some merchandise ( Jane Eyre earrings? Thomas Hardy tote bag) . Commit and enrich!

4. 2. Get organised
Keep all your all your notes organised (lever arch/ electronic/ ex.book? ) . This is your chance to purchase delicious stationery.
Decide how you will keep your notes: by chapter or theme for primary texts? By AO? (context of production / reception / critical interpretation?) Use dividers and loose A4 paper perhaps?
Make sure all your notes are referenced with a consistent system (text/ author/ page reference) so that when you revisit them you know the source and can check meaning.

5. 3. Essay planning
Your essay should start with a flourish and the confidence of a writer who already knows the answer. You can only achieve this and drive forward a line of argument if you have planned it effectively. It must feel balanced , complete and sensitive in its ordering of points. The argument must cumulatively build and progress towards an evaluative conclusion. We can help you with this by providing exemplar essays, planning models and personal learning checklists so you know what needs to be included. But before you plan your essay you need to have a) read your texts b) made notes /quote banks on your texts c) read secondary critical reading for both texts d) researched context for both texts. So essay planning probably happens after 60% of the work has been completed . We will put all resources on the shared area. We are unable to print documents. We advise you keep an electronic copy you can access at home.

6. 4. Redrafting
You need to understand that you may need to redraft sections of your essay- if not the whole essay – maybe more than 5 times. It is naïve to think otherwise and should be seen as a rewarding labour of love. You are birthing an NEA child. Redrafting means: changing vocabulary using a thesaurus / adding a semi- colon/ rephrasing ideas for clarity/ editing for concision / detailing ideas for fuller meaning / removing whole sections when you realise they drift from the argument / starting again / proofreading / re-paragraphing to avoid congestion / rephrasing topic sentences so signpost argument / embedding quotes/ editing quotes/ removing quotes

7. 5. Features of academic writing
Provide a bibliography – a record of your secondary reading/viewing
Use Harvard referencing – to cite sources of ideas/quotes taken from secondary sources. This protects you from plagiarising – failure to do this can result in a mark of zero and disciplinary action. This is true at undergraduate study too.
Print and complete a cover sheet – AQA/ English Lit A / All assessment resources/ Component three Independent Critical Study Candidate Record Form 2018
Give a cumulative word count on each page – if you can’t work out how to do this, ask in CR3
Meet all deadlines – this is essential preparation for future life.

8. Deadlines and managing your expectations for feedback, according to AQA rules.
Your class teacher will collect in your detailed plan or first draft (attached to your detailed plan) in the FIRST LESSON BACK IN SEPTEMBER. We will advise you this term on what constitutes a ‘detailed plan’.
During lesson time in the first two weeks of September, you will have a 10 minute supervision meeting to discuss your submitted plan/draft. We can advise on AO coverage and identify gaps but we are not able to give content rich feedback. You will then have two weeks to write your draft.
YOU MUST HAND IN YOUR FIRST (OR SECOND DRAFT DEPENDENT ON HOW YOU USED THE SEPTEMBER DEADLINE) ON OCTOBER 2ND
You will receive another 10 minute supervision meeting between 9th and 19th October in lesson time.
YOUR DEADLINE FOR YOUR FINAL DRAFT IS FRIDAY 3RD NOVEMBER between 1:30 and 2pm in the English office. You must submit your NEA with cover sheet/ bibliography/ references/ cumulative word count/ page numbers. We would appreciate 1 ½ line spacing.

9. Womanhood / Masculinity
Possible themes for historicist study – how have representations of the following changed across time?
Desire
Marriage
Womanhood / Masculinity
Social class
Race & ethnicity

10. Sexuality & desire Marriage Women Men Social Class Ethnicity
HOW MANY OF THESE HAVE YOU HEARD OF OR EVEN READ?
Sexuality & desire
Dracula (Stoker 1897) Bloody Chamber (1979) The Canterbury Tales (Chaucer) Vanity Fair ( Thackeray) Adam Bede ( Eliot 1859)
Marriage
Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey (Jane Austen 1814), Gone Girl (2014) The Time Traveller’s Wife (Niffenegger 2003), Madame Bovary (Flaubert 1856), Middle march (George Eliot 1871)
Women
Villette (Charlotte Bronte 1853), Game of Thrones ( George R R Martin 1997) Daniel Deronda (George Eliot 1876) The Scarlet Letter ( Hawthorne 1950) The Bloody Chamber ( Angela Carter 1979)
Men
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde (Stephenson 1886) James Bond novels . Melvyn Bragg podcast. East of Eden (Steinbeck ) DH Lawrence , Hamlet, A Doll’s House
Social Class
North and South (Elizabeth Gaskell 1855) Howard’s End (Forster 1910) The White Tiger (Adiga 2008)
Ethnicity
The Buddha of Suburbia ( 1990 Kureishi) , Small Island (Levy) Heart of Darkness (1899 Conrad)
Struggle for identity
All books in one way of another. Particularly: Gulliver’s Travels (Swift 1726), The Trial (Kafka 1925), Brave New World (Huxley 1932), 1984 (Orwell 1949) Hard Times ( Dickens 1854)
Minds under stress
The Bell Jar ( Plath 1963) Mrs Dalloway (1925 Woolf) The Hours ( Cunningham 1999)
War and conflict
Catch 22 ( Heller 1961) The Red Badge of Courage (Crane 1895) Journey’s End (1928 Sheriff)
Morality
The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde 1890), Dr Faustus (Christopher Marlowe 1588), Portrait of the Artist as a young Man ( James Joyce 1916), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Hunter Thompson 1972)

11. Other ways to approach the task other than ‘thematically’
By A02 method
Compare and contrast the presentation of women in Keats’ narrative poems 'Lamia', 'Isabella' and 'The Eve of St Agnes' with that of Anne Brontë's in her novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.In what ways do you think the Gothic settings of these texts help the writers to shape their presentation of heroines in peril?
By genre:
Sarah Waters has argued that the Victorian ‘sensation novel’ genre ‘was at its best when tugging at the seams of certainties and easy solutions’.Compare and contrast the presentation of Sue Trinder in Fingersmith with Marian Halcombe in The Woman in White in the light of this view.

12. Question formulation: Compare and contrast…. Examine the view that………
1. John R. Reed (1973) has suggested that the ‘unacknowledged crime’ of Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone is the colonial guilt of the British Empire for its annexation of the entire Indian sub-continent rather than the theft of a single exquisite diamond. Compare and contrast the presentation of British attitudes to race and ethnicity in The Moonstone and in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth in the light of this view 2. It has been said that ‘Writers often blur the boundary between the respectable citizen and the criminal.’ Compare and contrast the presentation of the respectable citizen and the criminal in Great Expectations and A Clockwork Orange in the light of this view 3. It has been argued that the epistolary novel is the ideal form for conveying minds under stress in literature. Compare and contrast the presentation of minds under stress in The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver in the light of this view. 4. Compare and contrast the ways in which Elizabeth Gaskell and Henrik Ibsen present the relationships between Margaret Hale and John Thornton in North and South ( ) and Nora and Torvald Helmer in A Doll’s House (1879). Examine the view that, in both texts, ‘the personal is political’.

13. Books you cannot choose as they appear as core text choices in the spec:
Jane Eyre
Persuasion
Wuthering Heights
The Awakening
Tess of the Durbervilles
The Great Gatsby
A Room with a View
The Go Between
Rebecca
Atonement
Othello
The Taming of the Shrew
Measure for Measure
The Winter's Tale
Regeneration
Birdsong
Oh What A lovely war
Journey’s End
Up the Line to Death
Scars upon my Heart
The Return of the Soldier
All Quiet on the Western Front
Stange Meeting
Farewell to Arms
Goodbye to All That
A long, long way
The First Casualty
Life Class
The Accrington Pals
Blackadder Goes Forth
My boy Jack
Waterland
Streetcar Named Desire

14. Further texts you cannot choose as they already appear on the spec.

15. How well have you listened?
7. Name three ways of presenting & organising your notes
8. Name 5 ways you can re-draft
9. When are your deadlines ?
10. How much feedback can you expect?
11. Which two sentences make up the question?
12. What are you going to do with these slides on the blog?
What is the word count?
Can you choose two texts by the same author?
What must you include in your final submission to meet academic writing requirements?
When must at least one of your texts been written?
Do you have to choose two different genres?
How can you enrich and commit?