A-Level English Literature: building a comparative argument

Most marks lost at A-Level are not lost through ignorance of the texts. They are lost in the writing: an opening that announces a topic instead of making a claim, a paragraph that retells what happens, a quotation that sits beside the argument rather than inside it, a critic's name used as a full stop. This set examines that, and every question prints the sentence being judged rather than asking for a definition of a thesis statement.

Some of the twelve are about evidence. A candidate claims that Keats presents the nightingale as a symbol of eternal beauty, and four short quotations follow — only one of which supports that claim as worded, the others being about the speaker's state rather than the bird's. Another candidate argues that the love in Wuthering Heights is a matter of identity rather than affection, and the choice is between Catherine's whole speech in a block and three words from it: not that she loves him but that "I am Heathcliff". The three words win, because the argument can then work on the verb.

Others are about the difference between noticing and analysing. "Tennyson uses alliteration here" is true of the line about immemorial elms and innumerable bees, and true of ten thousand other lines; the sentence that earns marks says which sounds, and that they run unbroken across the line ending, and that the ear is made drowsy before the sense arrives. Similarly with comparison: saying that Jane and Elizabeth are both independent compares what happens in two novels, while the essay that is wanted compares how each novelist builds that independence.

And some are about intellectual honesty — what a strong essay does with the evidence that cuts against it, and why a paragraph that ends on a critic's name has usually stopped thinking one sentence too early. The critic in that example says almost exactly what the candidate has just said, which is the giveaway.

Every quotation used as material is out of copyright; the candidates' sentences are written for this exercise. Nothing is taken from any exam board's specification, mark scheme or past paper.

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• Tell an arguable thesis from a sentence that only announces a topic
• Convert a sentence of plot summary into analysis by naming a choice and its effect
• Choose the quotation that supports a claim as it is actually worded
• Prefer a short integrated quotation to a block, and build the analysis on a particular word
• Weave a quotation into the grammar of your own sentence
• Compare how two writers work rather than what happens in their books
• Take a technique beyond identification to its effect, and avoid over-reading a single detail
• Use a counter-example to refine an argument, link a second text conceptually, and use a critic to open rather than close a paragraph

Quoted material is out of copyright; the candidates' sentences are written for this exercise. From the bank: a candidate argues that the love in Wuthering Heights is a matter of identity rather than affection, and the evidence offered is three words — Catherine does not say that she loves him but that "I am Heathcliff". The question is whether those three words or her whole speech serve the argument better.