Students studying the subject at A Level follow the AQA specification which draws on the academic field of Stylistics in order to create an integrated English Language and Literature course bringing together literary and non-literary discourses. During the course the following topics are covered:

Paper 1 -Telling Stories

The aim of this part of the subject content is to allow students to learn about how and why stories of different kinds are told. The term ‘telling’ in the title is deliberately chosen to reflect the twin aspects of how stories are told, and why stories are ‘telling’, or valuable, within societies.

Remembered Places

Students study the AQA Anthology: Paris. The anthology includes a wide range of text types with a particular emphasis on non-fiction and non-literary material.

In this part of the subject content, students explore speech and other genres. They study a wide range of linguistic and generic features, as well as related issues around questions of representation and viewpoint in texts taken from a range of time periods. The anthology offers opportunities for detailed exploration of the ubiquitous nature of narrative and systematic study of the representation of place.

Imagined Worlds

In this part of the subject content, students explore the imagined worlds of Mary Shelley’s  Frankenstein which is characterised by unusual narratives, narrators and events. Students also consider key aspects of the texts which place them in particular contexts of production and reception. Students analyse the language choices made by writers in order to study the following:

• point of view
• characterisation
• presentation of time and space/placenarrative structure.

Poetic Voices

Students study poems from one of four poets within the AQA Poetic Voices Anthology:

• John Donne
• Robert Browning
• Carol Ann Duffy
• Seamus Heaney

This part of the subject content is concerned with the nature and function of poetic voice in the telling of events and the presentation of people. In studying the role of language in the construction of perspective, students explore and analyse:

• the presentation of time: understanding the past, reviewing past experiences, the manipulation of time

• the importance of place: locations and memories, the ways in which these are captured in voice(s), and their effect on individuals how people and their relationships are realised through point of view, attitude, specific registers, physical descriptions, speech and thought

• the presentation of events through the poet’s selection of material, the use of narrative frames and other poetic techniques.

Paper 2 – Exploring Conflict

This part of the subject content focuses on how language choices help to construct ideas of conflict between people, and between people and their societies. Drawing both on their everyday experiences of interaction in different modes and on published texts, students learn about how the language choices writers make are used to express relationships, drive narrative, and construct views about the nature of different societies. They apply their knowledge to the study of texts about individuals in situations of conflict.

Writing about Society

In this part of the subject content, students study ‘The Kite Runner’ by Khaled Hosseini

Students explore the ways that writers:

• present people, their points of view and their relationships with others
• shape the narrative structure and present events/time/places
• reveal the speech and thought processes of the characters and narrator(s)
• use situations of conflict to express ideas about societies and their values.

In addition, students develop the skills to adapt and shape the original material (the base text) to respond to different re-creative tasks.

Drawing on their studies in 'Writing about Society', students learn how to write a critical commentary to evaluate their writing. They explain their own language choices and analyse their intentions in reshaping the writer’s original material.