Your future – Your choices!

English A-

Level Taster

What can we offer you?

Your future – Your choices

• Experienced, passionate and enthusiastic a level English

teachers with a range of specialisms

• Resources to enable you to fulfil your potential

• Some of the best English literature results in the county

Literature

Your future – Your choices

Think of some texts that qualify as literature…

Chaucer

Timeline Activity

◦ Which writers from the list have you heard of ?

◦ Try to plot the writers onto the timeline:

George Orwell, Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare and Tennessee Williams

Timeline…

1300

1600 2015

1700

1400 1800

1500 1900

William Shakespeare - (1564-1616)

Tennessee Williams (1911 – 1983)

Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400?) George Orwell (1903-1950)

Can you remember any of the writers from your

GCSE course?

See if you can plot the writers you remember

onto the timeline too.

Task One

◦Watch a clip of the film ‘Atonement’ based on the novel by Ian

McEwan.

◦When and where does the narrative appear to be set?

◦What does the narrative appear to be about?

◦Which themes are suggested by the trailer?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6yIIaXj2Zg

Task Two

A streetcar named desire

The play takes place right after World War II, in New Orleans, Louisiana. The

Kowalski apartment is in a poor but charming neighborhood in the French

Quarter. Stella, twenty-five years old and pregnant, lives with her blue collar

husband Stanley Kowalski. At the start of the play Stella's sister blanche comes

to visit.

Read the extract from the opening of the play. What doe the

stage directions suggest about the character of Stanley?

How does Williams use language and dramatic techniques to

reflect this character?

Task Three

Havisham by Carol Anne Duffy – first line

Beloved sweetheart bastard. Not a day since then

I haven’t wished him dead.

What might have happened to the speaker?

How does she appear to be feeling?

Havisham by Carol Anne Duffy – additional lines

Beloved sweetheart bastard. Not a day since then

I haven’t wished him dead.

Spinster. I stink and remember. Whole days

in bed cawing Nooooo at the wall; the dress

yellowing, trembling if I open the wardrobe;

the slewed mirror, full-length, her, myself, who did this to me?

Bang. I stabbed at a wedding cake.

Don’t think it’s only the heart that b-b-b-breaks.

How is your understanding of the narrative developed?

What themes are suggested?

What is suggested about the speaker’s state of mind?

A level English language

‘She sells sea shells on the sea shore…’

◦How many tongue twisters do you know? What makes

these texts difficult to say?

Ever thought about

words?

Here is your

chance to find out

more…

http://www.ocr.org.uk/qualifications/as-a-level-gce-english-

language-h070-h470-from-2015/

Examples of topics you might study…

Gender

Power

Your future – Your choices

How is gender represented in the media

and in other texts?

◦Watch the following clip and write down any

language/images that may be seen as gender bias…

◦ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwYCvTpYMCA

◦Share your ideas…

◦ What did you find interesting about the texts?

◦ Can you think of any other examples of gender

bias in texts that you have read or seen recently?

Power

◦Words can be powerful – how have words and images

been used here to be powerful???

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5OCqBt2RdI