A Level English Language and Literature Tutors

Leading Tuition provides specialist one-to-one tutoring for A Level English Language and Literature, the combined course that AQA examines as 7707, Eduqas as A710QS, OCR as H474 and Pearson Edexcel as 9EL0. Each board sets a non-exam assessment worth 20% of the A level, and AQA 7707 and Edexcel 9EL0 each add two written papers of 40%. 91% of our students achieve their desired grades.

Our tutors begin with the board and the set texts the school has chosen, because one title leads to four sets of papers. Lessons then train what a single-subject A level does not ask: reading literary and non-literary texts with one linguistic toolkit, writing creatively and explaining the choices, and completing a self-directed investigation or portfolio.

Which board's course does your school teach?

A Level English Language and Literature is four specifications, not one. The table lists what each board's own documents say about its structure, and the sections below take each part in turn. First award is the year of the first A level results under each specification: 2017 at all four boards.

The AQA figures come from its specification at a glance, Eduqas's from its qualification page and specification, OCR's from its specification at a glance, and Edexcel's from the Pearson qualification page. WJEC publishes its own version for Wales, and its specification says the qualification is "not available to centres in England".

Every board marks against the same five assessment objectives. AQA's specification says Ofqual sets them and that they are the same across all A-level English Language and Literature specifications and all exam boards. What differs is where each board places the marks, and that is the reason our first call is about the code printed on the exam entry. A student who tells us "AQA" and one who tells us "Eduqas" start on different materials from the first lesson.

What do the papers ask of a student, and how do we prepare for them?

The table sets the components side by side. The marks and weightings are the figures printed in each specification; they decide how a tutor divides revision time, because a 120-mark component at one board and a 32-mark component at another cannot be prepared in the same way.

Eduqas A710QS: two heavy components and a spoken-language paper

Components 1 and 2 carry 30% each and 120 marks apiece, so most of the marks sit in these two papers. Eduqas describes Component 2 as closed-book for both the Shakespeare section and the post-1900 drama section, and says Section A accounts for 60% of that component's marks and Section B for 40%. In Eduqas's January 2019 specification the Shakespeare list is Antony and Cleopatra, King Lear, Much Ado About Nothing, Othello and The Tempest. Our tutors therefore build quotation recall early for Component 2, and train the extract-based close reading that the Shakespeare section starts from.

Component 3 is the paper that is least like a literature A level: 80 marks, 20%, with comparative analysis of three unseen spoken-language texts alongside a non-literary text study. Students who have only analysed written prose need sustained practice with transcripts before this paper feels routine, and that practice is where tutoring helps most.

OCR H474: a short first paper and two long ones

OCR's component 01 is one hour and 32 marks, 16% of the A level, taken as a closed text on an OCR anthology of twenty spoken and written non-fiction texts. Component 02 is closed text too: one poetry collection from a choice of six, each with 15 poems identified for study, and one drama text from a choice of six. Component 03 is an open text, with a prose text from a choice of six and a creative writing task of 500 words with a 250-word commentary. OCR says it reviews the set texts after three years and tells centres one year in advance of changes, so a student should confirm the list with their teacher rather than rely on an older revision guide.

Pearson Edexcel 9EL0: themes decide the second paper

Edexcel's Paper 1 is 50 marks of 25 and 25: a comparative essay on one unseen extract and one anthology text, then a question on a chosen drama text. Paper 2 is built around a theme chosen from Society and the Individual, Love and Loss, Encounters, or Crossing Boundaries. The student reads non-fiction on that theme for an unseen text question worth 20 marks, then answers a 30-mark question on two literary texts from the same theme, one of them a compulsory prose anchor text chosen from two. Paper 1 allows a clean copy of the drama text into the exam, and Paper 2 allows clean copies of the prescribed texts. Edexcel's raw marks (50, 50 and 60) are not proportional to its weights (40%, 40% and 20%), so a student should revise by the weights, not by the raw marks. Our tutors pick the theme with the school and build the non-fiction reading list around it, because Paper 2 rewards a student who has met several texts on the theme before the unseen one arrives.

How does the combined course differ from the single-subject A levels?

The table compares AQA's combined course (7707) with two of its other English A levels, 7702 and 7712, using AQA's own at-a-glance pages. Our guides to the separate subjects are A Level English Language and A Level English Literature; this page deals only with what the combined course asks.

All three qualifications give 40% to each paper and 20% to the non-exam assessment, so the weighting alone does not separate them. The difference is in what the marks reward. On 7707 the non-exam assessment is a personal investigation that sets a literary text against non-literary material, and AQA's wording is that it "explores a specific technique or theme in both literary and non-literary discourse". On 7702 the 3,500 words divide into a language investigation of 2,000 words and an original writing piece with commentary of 1,500 words. On 7712 the non-exam assessment is a comparative critical study of two texts, at least one written pre-1900, with a bibliography.

AQA also says 7707 differs from specifications focused primarily on literature by extending coverage beyond literature to compare literary texts with others, and from language-focused ones by bringing literary discourse into sharper view. In practice this means a 7707 student is asked to use linguistic terms on a novel and literary judgement on a transcript or a travel piece, sometimes inside the same answer. The creative marks are also built into the papers: Paper 2 of 7707 contains 25 marks of re-creative writing and 30 marks of critical commentary on it, and its AO5 weighting of 12% sits only there.

A student choosing between the three therefore does well to ask what the weekly work will feel like, not which is easier. The combined course suits someone who wants to analyse a text closely and then write one of their own; the single-subject courses suit a student who wants the whole course to be about one of those. If a student is already on 7707, we do not ask them to switch; we plan the tutoring around the 7707 papers below.

What does each AQA 7707 question ask, and how do we prepare students for it?

AQA's specification, which you can read on its subject content pages, describes the course as drawing on stylistics to create an integrated course bringing together literary and non-literary discourses. The qualification is linear: a student must complete all exams in May/June in a single year, and all assessments must be taken in the same series. Papers 1 and 2 are marked out of 100 each and the non-exam assessment out of 50, giving a total scaled mark of 250.

Paper 1: Telling stories (3 hours, 100 marks, 40%)

Section A is a compulsory question on the AQA Anthology: Paris, worth 40 marks and closed book, which means students cannot take the anthology into the exam. AQA says the anthology includes a wide range of text types with a particular emphasis on non-fiction and non-literary material. It is the largest single question on the paper, so we treat it as its own project: students learn each text well enough to cite from memory, and we practise the representation of place across the anthology so that any question can be answered with a chosen pair of texts.

Section B, Imagined worlds, is a choice of two questions on one prose text, worth 35 marks and open book. The four texts are Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Dracula by Bram Stoker, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood and The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. Section C, Poetic voices, is worth 25 marks, again with a choice of two questions, on one of four poets: John Donne, Robert Browning, Carol Ann Duffy or Seamus Heaney. In both sections students may take unannotated copies of the text into the exam, so we coach students to find evidence quickly in the book rather than to memorise whole poems. AQA's assessment objective weights for this paper are AO1 16%, AO2 8%, AO3 12% and AO4 4%, which tells a tutor that contextual understanding (AO3) carries more of the paper than close analysis of meaning (AO2).

Paper 2: Exploring conflict (2 hours 30 minutes, 100 marks, 40%)

Section A, Writing about society, asks for one piece of re-creative writing using the set text (25 marks) and a critical commentary on it (30 marks). The four texts are Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. AQA describes re-creative work as finding an absent or underplayed perspective in the base text, such as the voice of a marginal character, and the commentary as explaining the what, the how and the why of the new text. These are two linked skills, and students who write the piece well but cannot explain their decisions lose most of the 30 commentary marks. Our tutors set a short re-creation, then ask the student to annotate their own choices against the original, which is the exercise AQA's wording points toward.

Section B, Dramatic encounters, is a choice of two questions on one drama text, worth 45 marks and open book. The choices are Othello by William Shakespeare, All My Sons by Arthur Miller, A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams and The Herd by Rory Kinnear. AQA says students analyse how playwrights represent natural speech features, create distinctive characters and show characters asserting power through language. The paper's AO5 weighting is 12%, which is all of the AO5 on the whole qualification.

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How is the 20% non-exam assessment set at each board?

The non-exam assessment is where a tutor can change a result most, because the work is done over months and is marked on criteria the student can read. It is also where the boards differ most in form, as the table shows.

AQA: a four-part structure with word guidance

AQA's specification gives guidance on how the investigation divides: an introduction and aims of 750 words, a review of secondary sources of 300-500 words, an analysis of 1,250 words, and conclusions of 200-500 words. The texts prescribed for the examined units may not be chosen, though further texts by the same authors are acceptable. AQA lists possible explorations, for example a comparison of openings in a novel and an autobiography. The task is assessed by teachers and moderated by AQA, and AQA describes it as synoptic, since it requires the student to make connections across the whole course.

We use these proportions as a planning grid. The analysis section is the longest by AQA's word guidance, so a tutor checks in a first outline that the introduction has not grown past 750 words and squeezed it. The submitted work is always the student's own; we teach the method of choosing material, planning the sections and reading the marking criteria.

Eduqas, OCR and Edexcel: what the student chooses

At Eduqas the student studies a prose genre and one text from a list that Eduqas provides, then produces creative writing informed by that study. At OCR task 1 pairs a non-fiction text from a list of twelve with a free-choice second text, and at least one of the two must have been published post-2000; task 2 is a piece of original non-fiction writing. At Edexcel the student chooses a topic and studies two texts relating to it, one fiction and one non-fiction, then writes the creative pieces and a commentary on them. OCR's list of twelve non-fiction texts is revised for first teaching from 2026 with examination from 2028, which is the list for a student who begins the course in 2026; it includes Educated by Tara Westover and Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe, and OCR notes that every title on it was first published post-2000.

Where do the boards' set-text lists overlap?

A text chosen at the start of the course fixes months of work, and a tutor who has taught the same text for another board can start from context and language features straight away. The table lists set texts on more than one board's examined list, plus the poets who have named collections or selections at two or more boards. It excludes the non-exam assessment, where AQA, OCR and Edexcel each describe their own choice rules (set out above). The lists are those in AQA's specification (version 1.4, 8 December 2021), Eduqas's January 2019 specification, OCR's October 2026 specification and Pearson's Issue 6 specification (August 2024).

A shared text does not mean a shared question. On AQA, Othello sits in a 45-mark open-book drama question about conflict and dramatic discourse. On Eduqas it is one of five Shakespeare plays in a closed-book component in which Section A takes 60% of the marks. On OCR it is one of six plays studied through dramatic and stylistic analysis in a 64-mark paper. On Edexcel it is one of the drama choices under a theme. For a student whose school switches boards, or who is revising a text already taught elsewhere, we reuse the context and language notes but rebuild the practice questions and the amount of quotation memorised for the new board, because those are what each paper rewards.

The poets show the same caution. Donne and Blake each appear at three boards, Duffy and Heaney at two, but the lists name different selections or collections, so poems studied for one board cannot be assumed to be on another's list. Check the exact collection before a student buys a book.

Lists also change. AQA's specification PDF (version 1.4, 8 December 2021) says its texts are reviewed each year and that it will give at least 9 months' notice of any change before first teaching of a two-year course; OCR says it reviews its set texts after three years and tells centres one year in advance. Edition rules vary by section. Edexcel prescribes editions only for texts used for extract-based questions and for poetry anthologies. Eduqas allows any edition of its Shakespeare plays but allows only the prescribed editions of the Component 1 prose fiction texts into the exam. Copy rules vary too: AQA's open-book sections take clean, unannotated copies, Eduqas Component 2 and OCR components 01 and 02 are closed text, and Edexcel Paper 1 allows a clean copy of the drama text only. We confirm the edition and the copy rules with the school before the first lesson on a text, because a wrong edition can cost a student their open-book advantage.

Where does each board put the marks across the five assessment objectives?

AQA's specification sets out the five assessment objectives in its scheme of assessment. AO1 is applying concepts and methods from integrated linguistic and literary study; AO2 is analysing how meanings are shaped; AO3 is understanding the significance of contexts; AO4 is exploring connections across texts; and AO5 is demonstrating expertise and creativity in the use of English. The overall weightings at each board are below.

The boards agree on the objectives and disagree on the proportions. Edexcel gives equal weight, 25% each, to AO1, AO2 and AO3, so contextual understanding is as heavy there as analysis; OCR and Eduqas both give AO2 30%. Eduqas puts AO3 at 22%, the highest of the three non-Edexcel boards, and AQA and OCR both hold AO3 at 20%.

The AO5 figures are the distinctive ones, because they are the marks for creative writing. AQA has all 12% in Paper 2. Eduqas has its 10% in Component 4, the non-exam assessment. OCR splits its 13% between component 03 (7%) and component 04 (6%). Edexcel puts its 12% in the non-exam assessment, with the 36 marks for original writing. A tutor reading these figures knows where creative work must be marked and rehearsed: for AQA in a timed paper, for Edexcel and Eduqas in drafts completed over months, and for OCR in both.

AQA also splits the objectives by component. In the non-exam assessment, AO1 and AO2 are each 6%, and AO3 and AO4 each 4%. That is why a strong investigation needs secondary reading, which is part of AO1 in AQA's marking criteria, as well as close analysis: neither is optional.

Questions students and parents ask about this A level

Reviewed October 2026 against the AQA, Eduqas, OCR and Pearson specifications and qualification pages cited above: AQA 7707, Eduqas, OCR and Pearson Edexcel.