Assessment

The task and the marks

A single comparative essay on two prose texts by different authors, one pre-2000 (the fixed set text, The Bloody Chamber) and one post-2000 (the student’s choice of novel). Guided length 3,000 to 3,500 words, within a specification advisory of 2,500 to 3,500, and the count includes quotations but excludes footnotes and bibliography. It is internally assessed and externally moderated, and is worth 20% of the A level. The published weighting, out of 80 marks, is:

Objective	Marks	What it looks like for this comparison
AO1	20	An informed, personal and creative response argued in the candidate’s own voice, fluent and accurate, with secure terminology used to make a point rather than to label.
AO2	20	Analysis of the ways meaning is shaped: narration and voice, structure and form, imagery and symbol, in Carter’s compressed tales and in the sustained novel alike.
AO3	20	Contexts of production and reception, woven into the argument for both texts: feminism and the Gothic beside migration, faith, class or postcolonial history.
AO4	10	Sustained, two-way connections between the texts, point by point, not a text-by-text account.
AO5	10	Different interpretations, opened up through the critics and the candidate’s own alternative readings.

Total 80 marks. Mark against the current published grid.

Where this NEA is decided

Although AO4 and AO5 carry ten marks each, AO3 and AO4 are where a comparative NEA is won or lost. Context is a fifth of the marks, so it cannot sit in a paragraph of its own; and a real comparison lives in AO4, in the two-way conversation between the texts.

• AO4, comparison: the essay should read both texts together in every point, using discourse markers of comparison and contrast to weigh rather than to list. Carter’s patterned short forms against a novel’s sustained narrative is itself a productive contrast of method.
• AO3, context: the strongest scripts let context change how a passage is read, so that second-wave feminism, the Gothic, migration or faith is doing analytical work inside a point, not decorating its edges.
• AO5, interpretation: this is where the critics earn their place. Named critics and the candidate’s own counter-readings should open a moment to more than one meaning, rather than being quoted to agree with. Encourage brief, attributed critical reference.
• AO2 across two forms: reward analysis that is alert to how differently meaning is shaped in a compressed tale and in a full-length novel, not method-spotting in either.

Authentication and integrity

Component 4 is coursework: the candidate authenticates the essay as their own work and references any AI tools used at any stage. Teacher feedback is given within the limits the specification allows, on a plan and on drafts as the rules permit. This is the reason the student site carries no AI marking tool: automated feedback on a candidate’s actual draft would sit on the wrong side of the authentication line. The site prepares candidates; the essay remains theirs. The planning materials it points to are generic rather than exemplar essays.

Examiner pitfalls to teach against

• Thin or bolted-on comparison: two texts handled side by side, or compared only in the introduction and conclusion. Insist on a two-way connection in every point.
• Context as decoration: a paragraph of history or biography detached from the analysis. Context should change how a passage is read, or it is not earning AO3.
• Retelling: narration of plot in place of argument. Every paragraph should analyse method and effect, not recount events, and quotations should stay short so they serve AO2.
• Unbalanced coverage: one text carried in depth while the other is visited briefly. The two texts should be weighted evenly, with the fixed collection and the chosen novel each fully present in the argument.
• A single reading asserted: no sense that a text can be read more than one way. Build in alternative interpretations and named criticism for AO5.