OCR GCSE Eng Lit Component 01: Never Let Me Go

Lessons introducing Edusites English Scheme of Work for Kazuo Ishiguro Never Let me Go

How the Unit is Assessed

J352/01 Exploring modern and literary heritage texts

Assessment Overview: 50% of GCSE

• 80 marks
• 2 hours written paper

Content Overview:

For this component, learners study one modern prose or drama text and one C19th novel. The focus is on learners engaging with their reading through exploring key themes, ideas and issues, characterisation and settings in order to build confidence in their skills of critical evaluation. Study of a modern text is enhanced through comparative study with unseen modern prose.

Assessment Objectives

Assessment objectives (AOs) are set by Ofqual and are the same across all GCSE English Literature specifications and all exam boards. The exams will measure how students have achieved the following assessment objectives.

• AO1: Read, understand and respond to texts. Students should be able to:

  maintain a critical style and develop an informed personal response

  use textual references, including quotations, to support and illustrate interpretations.

• AO2: Analyse the language, form and structure used by a writer to create meanings and effects, using relevant subject terminology where appropriate.
• AO3: Show understanding of the relationships between texts and the contexts in which they were written.
• AO4: Use a range of vocabulary and sentence structures for clarity, purpose and effect, with accurate spelling and punctuation. A04 is assessed in Section A of the paper only.

And for part (a) of Section One of this paper candidates are assessed on their ability to:

Critically compare and contrast texts, referring where relevant to theme, characterisation, context (where known), style and literary quality.

Important Information

Our study of Never Let Me Go is a Section One Text and therefore the Assessment Strand in Italics applies to part (a) of the question you will be set on this text.

Your response will be marked “holistically” that is, on its merits as a response to the task as a whole. Nonetheless it is important to understand the proportions of the 25 % of the GCSE Award that it will contribute. They are:

• Part (a): AO1: 5%; AO2: 2.5%; AO3: 5% = 12.5%
• Part (b): AO1: 6.25%; AO2: 6.25% = 12.5%

So you are not being assessed for AO4 here: this comes in Section Two, the C19th prose text. You should note too, that AO3 “context” is assessed only in part (a). We will work on what this is and what its implications are throughout our study of the text.

Skills Development

1. Centres study one set text from the five 19th century prose set texts that include a range of classics. Reflect critically and evaluative on their reading. Learners are expected to respond to some of the following:

• themes, ideas and issues
• atmosphere and emotion
• plot development
• characters and relationships
• language
• relevant social, historical or cultural contexts, or literary contexts such as genres.