Candidates found the paper challenging and candidates need to be made explicitly aware of examination requirements, especially the requirement to write coherent essays of a minimum of 800 words. They need to possess critical and evaluative skills to a high level. Those with facility and skill in using the English language generally perform well; they possess clever and original ways of expressing themselves – often with wit and humour – and show thinking about their texts, about literary theory and reader response. They present their own ideas about the world they live in, its relationship to the past and how the present transcends that past, and how modern media and literary texts can engage / provoke / challenge / enthuse. The best candidates invariably produce legible scripts allowing markers to focus on the response.
The best performing candidates most commonly demonstrated the following skills and / or knowledge:
• the ability to write engaging structured essays with strong introductions and conclusions which often left the reader with something to think about.
• the ability to use and control the conventions of academic writing to high levels
• the ability to pace their work across the whole paper.
• the ability to make judicious question choices and follow the directions given
• the ability to analyse texts and the ways in which they are crafted
•the ability to “think on their feet”
•the ability to demonstrate critical knowledge and evident enjoyment of a wide range of texts.
Candidates who did NOT achieve scholarship lacked some or all of the skills and knowledge above and in addition they:
• lacked the ability to pace themselves across the whole paper, spending too much time on A and C
• too often failed to respond to the actual topic / question and redirected materials to pre-worked arguments and essays
• did not show breadth and depth in synthesising comments
• did not develop a consistent thesis or evaluative response, choosing instead to “dump information” about their texts in an uncritical response to the question
• failed to demonstrate independent thinking and resorted to description when argument was required.
scholarship@cc 