AQA English Literature: Cracking the AOs - Part 1

AQA is the leading exam board for English Literature, with almost six hundred thousand GCSE students taking their English GCSE exams with AQA in the June 2023 exams. Part of an AQA English article series looking at marking, writing, and exam voice, this article will break down the assessment objectives in English Literature, and how to excel at them.

AOs: What are They?

Assessment objectives, also known as AOs, are AQA’s way of quantifying the quality of any given exam paper. They can be considered to be a type of mark scheme, but more accurately marking criteria for the English exams. In some ways they are both a blessing and a curse, hard to understand and pin down, but also the direct key to succeeding at the exams.

Understanding the AOs is understanding exactly what the examiners are looking for and what they are allowed to award marks for. If you can write in a way that satisfies the assessment objectives, you can only move closer to exam success.

For English Literature, AQA has 3 assessment objectives, aptly named AO1, AO2, and AO3. This article will break down AO1 and AO3. AO2 is important enough to deserve its own space!

AO1: The Point of the Essay

AO1 is the voice or point of the essay. It can be pictured as a thread holding the essay together, smoothly moving through the point you want to make as you progress through writing the essay.

AO1 is what makes the English Literature exams accessible to all students from Grades 4-9, because it is completely open to the interpretation of the student sitting the exam.

At its most basic, AO1 is simply what you think about the question, whether you agree or disagree. If the question asks how Ebenezer Scrooge is presented in an extract and you believe that he is cruel, evil, good, or redeemed, then simply saying that creates the beginning of your essay thread. The job of AO1 is to give you a space to gain marks for creating an opinion on the text, and explaining what you think about the question.

This opens it up for the higher level, perceptive, student to take the thread to a deeper level, exploring the reasons why Scrooge might be this way. What meaning is there behind the extract or the novel as a whole that can lend itself to your opinion?

The most important part of nailing AO1 is remembering to include quotations from the text to back up your answer. The examiner is always looking for a confident, assured response that is grounded in the text as a whole. When talking about AO1, the mark scheme refers explicitly to words like assured, confident, and perceptive especially when moving up to higher grades. This makes revision for English Literature particularly important, because to sound confident you need to know the text inside and out! Confidence in tone comes from knowing what you want to say, and that means using quotes that are relevant, tailored, and effective at hammering home the point you want to make.

AO1 is worth 12 marks of your essay.

AO3: Socio-Historic Context

Socio-historic context sounds confusing, but it’s a fancy way of referring to the social and cultural context of any historic period. For example, Shakespeare’s plays were written in a time very different to the one we live in now. Kings and Queens still reigned over the land and dominated political decisions, ‘witches’ were actively hunted, and the literacy rate of the population was still very low. Because of this, people said they were going to ‘hear’ a play, rather than watch, or read one.

All of these differences in culture and social circumstance mean that the eyes with which people in Shakespeare’s time watched his plays, will be very different to the eyes that we in the modern day watch his plays with. People back then would have thought very different things about Lady Macbeth, and in the modern day we would think very different things about Romeo and his relationship with Juliet.

AO3 is the space in your essay where you get to unpack what this means for the point (AO1) you want to make. Because of the differences in influences on people in different times in history, they would all have their own very different point to make. You can pick up marks here by making it clear what kind of influences would cause people to think that way.

In the modern day for example, we have no issue understanding and supporting women’s needs to work in the public space, run for office and hold important positions in companies and governments, it’s simply a part of equality between sexes. However, this would have been unthinkable for Shakespeare’s audiences, in fact, King James II at the time was actively hunting women he believed to be witches!

Talking about these influences as reasons for why Shakespeare might write the way he did, or how our influences now may affect the way we perceive the events of the play, are crucial for unpacking and understanding AO3, and more importantly its effects on your point (AO1).

AO3 is worth 6 marks of your essay.