literary essay igcse

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Cambridge igcse literature in english (0475).

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Literary Heritage Mark Scheme and Model Answers ( Edexcel IGCSE English Literature )

Revision note.

English and Language Lead

Literary Heritage Mark Scheme and Model Answers

The best way to improve any essay and build your exam skills is to know how you are assessed, and what skills you are being assessed on. Find out what Edexcel IGCSE English Literature examiners are looking for in a Grade 9 essay:

Mark scheme

Example tasks

Grade 9 model answer

It is vital to plan your essay to achieve the highest marks. Examiners always stress that the best responses have a logical, well-structured argument. To achieve this in your essay, you must spend time planning your answer.

Mark Scheme

In Section B, you will be asked to write an essay question on your chosen literary heritage text.

Understanding the Edexcel IGCSE English Literature mark scheme will help you to know exactly what you are being assessed on and how to improve.

In Section B, you are assessed on three assessment objectives: AO1, AO2 and AO4. 

AO1 is worth 10 marks and asks you to develop an informed personal response while maintaining a critical style throughout. 

AO2 is worth 10 marks and asks you to analyse the language, form and structure used by the poet to create meanings and effects. 

AO4 is worth 10 marks and requires you to write about the relationship between the text and the context in which it was written.

The following model answers are based on different past papers for the Edexcel IGCSE English Literature exam (4ET1). The commentary is designed to highlight how to structure your response and integrate all aspects of the assessment objectives, so these models could be applied to any of the drama texts in the examination.

We will now explore some exemplars using examination questions from Section B. This first exemplar is based on William Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet. First, let’s read through the question below, taken from the June 2019 past paper.

Here is another example using an examination question from the June 2019 past paper. This time we will explore Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations.

With a question about character(s), or relationships between characters, it is a good idea to address your points chronologically to track their development over the course of the text. This means it’s a great idea to start your essay with how character(s) or relationships are presented at the text’s outset.

Model answer

Below you will find a full-mark Grade 9 model answer for this task. The commentary labelled in each section of the essay illustrates how and why it would be awarded Grade 9. The commentary is relevant to any question because it models how to structure an answer by incorporating the relevant assessment objectives.

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Author: Kate Lee

Kate has over 12 years of teaching experience as a Head of English and as a private tutor. Having also worked at the exam board AQA and in educational publishing, she's been writing educational resources to support learners in their exams throughout her career. She's passionate about helping students achieve their potential by developing their literacy and exam skills.

Video materials - IGCSE Literature in English 0457

Topic outline.

• Select activity Cambridge IGCSE™ / IGCSE (9-1) Literature in Engli... Cambridge IGCSE™ / IGCSE (9-1) Literature in English Videos

Important notice

We have selected a few of the Set Texts as an example of a type of activity teachers may use to engage their learners when introducing a Set Text. The content of these videos will need to be expanded on to cover what candidates are expected to know and be able to comment on in an examination.

• When you use selected quotations, and develop explanations of meaning, significance and context in your paragraphs then you are addressing AO1 and AO2
• When you use these same quotations to analyse the range of effects created by the writer’s use of language and structure devices, then you are meeting AO3
• AO4 relates to the entirety of a candidate’s response, but it can be explicitly addressed and reinforced in a well-developed conclusion.
• In poetry you have a wide range of structural devices to draw upon which are absent in Prose
• In drama you can consider and discuss the use of stagecraft in your responses
• In Prose, the narrative style is an important element that can be different from techniques used in Drama and Poetry texts

• What is it about that part of the movie that makes you feel this way?
• What has the director done to evoke that emotion in you?
• Interesting adjectives
• Powerful adverbs
• Personification
• Alliteration
• Reported speech
• Sentence structures
• Paragraph length
• Use of flashback
• Narrative voice (i.e. first or third perspective)
• Dramatic irony
• Foreshadowing
• Do I understand what the quotation means?
• Does the quotation help me answer the question?
• How does the quotation help me to explain something about character, events, themes, settings and/or atmosphere in relation to the question?
• Does the quotation contain interesting vocabulary choices and/or imagery that will help me explore the different effects the writer has created?
• in yellow, recognised ways in which the writer has used language to create and shape meanings and effects
• in green, appreciated how the writer has used language to create and shape meanings and effects
• in pink, recognised ways in which the writer has used structure to create and shape meanings and effects
• in blue, appreciated how the writer has used structure to create and shape meanings and effects.

• how well a writer has written a text
• how well they have conveyed a theme
• how they could have improved the text
• how they should have ended the novel
• why we thought the text was ‘boring’.
• What should you look out for when selecting your quotations?
• What are the key things to respond to when you are developing explanations of quotations (AO1 and AO2)?
• What aspects of the text did you identify that you had to respond to when developing your analysis of quotations?
• How characters think and behave
• Relationships between characters
• Sense of atmosphere
• Narrative style
• Red herrings
• Character relationships
• You should select quotations that are to do with these things (AO1).
• You should develop explanations about these things (AO1 and AO2).
• You should analyse how the writer’s use of language and structure makes the reader feel about these things (AO3).
• Character behaviour and actions
• It is your response to the writer’s ideas and messages.
• It is your response to how the writer has created effects through his/her (use of) language devices and structure devices.
• works as a conclusion?
• satisfies Assessment Objective 4?
• satisfies the other assessment objectives?
• The first sentence summarises the sensitive personal response expressed in the main body of the essay. These two sentences also directly answer the essay question.
• The personal response in sentences 3, 4 and 5 identifies key themes of the passage that are relevant to the essay question.
• The personal response relates the key themes and the writer’s messages to how the candidate views contemporary global events.
• The ideas in the candidate’s personal response relate to the ideas in the essay question.
• Chapters 1-6
• Chapters 7-11
• Chapters 12-15
• Chapters 16-18
• Chapters 19-27

• Introduction

The aim of this video is to give you and your learners a breakdown of how Assessment Objective 3 is assessed. However, remember that for each candidate’s answer, all four assessment objectives are considered by the examiner. The best candidate responses will consider all four when answering the question. AO3: Recognise and appreciate ways in which writers use language, structure and form to create and shape meanings and effects. In order not to just recognise, but appreciate the ways in which Shakespeare used language, form and structure we are going to look at two of Shakespeare’s tragedies: Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth. Assessment Objective 3 requires you to recognise, and then appreciate, not one, but the many ways Shakespeare used language, form and structure to create and shape the multiple meanings and effects in his work. In order for you to achieve this, we need first to consider what is meant by recognise and appreciate. Candidates will have to demonstrate an understanding of the writer’s intentions and methods, and how to respond to the writer’s use of language. To recognise and appreciate, we must be able to understand Shakespeare’s methods, such as: • What techniques has he used? • What effects are they creating? • Does this fit with our expectation? We must also be able to understand Shakespeare’s intentions: • Why did he do what he did? • How was he trying to shape the audience’s thoughts and feelings? • What impact was he trying to have on the audience? To create a response to Shakespeare’s use of language we must look at his use of language in close detail and examine the nuances of words to decide why that word was chosen. Let’s start by looking at the Prologue from Act 1 of Romeo and Juliet. We shall look at Shakespeare’s methods, starting with form and structure. ACT I PROLOGUE Two households, both alike in dignity, In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. From forth the fatal loins of these two foes A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life; Whose misadventured piteous overthrows Do with their death bury their parents' strife. The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love, And the continuance of their parents' rage, Which, but their children's end, nought could remove, Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage; The which if you with patient ears attend, What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend. The opening of the play takes the form of a sonnet – a love poem. It is 14 lines long. It has the ABABCDCDEFEFGG rhyme scheme of a Shakespearean sonnet. It is written in iambic pentameter. We know that sonnets are associated with love and death which are two of the major themes of the play, so Shakespeare is giving the audience a clue to the story. Now we move on to language, which also reflects these themes. Through the sonnet, Shakespeare promises the audience ‘lovers’ that are ‘cross’d’ and ‘mark’d’ by forces as powerful as ‘death’ and the ‘star(s)’. He hints at a deadlocked battle between equals suddenly becoming unlocked by juxtaposing an ‘ancient grudge’ with ‘new mutiny’. He uses very obvious caesura in the first four lines to reinforce this sense of division. He promises political intrigue and murder through the play on words ‘civil blood makes civil hands unclean’. He even gives away the ending and still claims there is more to say. Shakespeare’s intention was to tantalise the audience by offering them a truly juicy story: love and death are considered the two most common themes in literature. So by writing this prologue as a sonnet, making clever use of language, Shakespeare was putting his audience into the correct frame of mind for his play. But why else does he feel the need to open his play in this way? To answer we need to add in some of our knowledge from Assessment Objective 1 and Assessment Objective 2. Our Assessment Objective 1 knowledge of the play, and Assessment Objective 2 knowledge of context of production, suggests that one reason could be because the opening scene (Act 1 Scene 1) of Romeo and Juliet is a comic scene. Shakespeare is setting a serious and formal tone in the prologue by using a sonnet which has a strict and rigid form and structure. Act 1 Scene 1 is a comic scene. By starting his tragedy with a comic scene, Shakespeare would have given the wrong message to his audience. SCENE 1. Verona. A public place. Enter SAMPSON and GREGORY, of the house of Capulet, armed with swords and bucklers SAMPSON Gregory, o' my word, we'll not carry coals. GREGORY No, for then we should be colliers. SAMPSON I mean, an we be in choler, we'll draw. GREGORY Ay, while you live, draw your neck out o' the collar. SAMPSON I strike quickly, being moved. GREGORY But thou art not quickly moved to strike. SAMPSON A dog of the house of Montague moves me. GREGORY To move is to stir; and to be valiant is to stand: therefore, if thou art moved, thou runn'st away. Act 1 Scene 1 contains a series of puns, based on homonyms of ‘collier’, immature bravado from Sampson in the lines ‘we’ll draw’ and ‘I strike quickly’, and joking insults from Gregory, ‘if thou art moved, thou runn’st away.’ This scene is unlike most of the rest of Romeo and Juliet which is written in blank verse, as it is written in prose. This is because the lack of rhythmic structure allows for the freedom needed to make Sampson and Gregory’s exchange sharp and witty. This is also because the characters are from a lower class and Shakespeare often wrote the dialogue for his lower-class characters in prose. This was partly to show a lack of education and partly as another layer of character presentation, a literary type of costume to work with clothing, accent, walk, laugh, etc. Let’s now look at the opening of Macbeth. Again we will look at Shakespeare’s method to try and work out his intentions. ACT I SCENE I. A desert place. Thunder and lightning. Enter three Witches First Witch When shall we three meet again In thunder, lightning, or in rain? Second Witch When the hurlyburly's done, When the battle's lost and won. Third Witch That will be ere the set of sun. First Witch Where the place? Second Witch Upon the heath. Third Witch There to meet with Macbeth. First Witch I come, Graymalkin! Second Witch Paddock calls. Third Witch Anon! ALL Fair is foul, and foul is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air. Starting with the methods. The majority of Macbeth is written in blank verse. As Shakespeare wrote Macbeth near the end of his career, the blank verse is less rigid than in Romeo and Juliet but experts agree that it is still blank verse. However, Shakespeare begins not with blank verse, but with something else entirely. The witches speak in a rhyming style – AABBBCDDEFGHH – which opens and closes with a rhyming couplet. The rhythm is also very different as it is a combination of trochaic (DUM de) and iambic (de DUM) rhythm. As normal speech is usually mainly iambic and does not rhyme, this separates the witches from normal people. Why does Shakespeare begin the play with such a different rhyme and rhythm? Because the language of the witches separates them from normal people. This is reinforced when the first thing that we notice when we read the text is the pathetic fallacy in the stage direction ‘Thunder and lightning’. Although this is not a spoken element of the text it is still a part of the text and therefore important in creating and shaping meaning and effect. The witches are abnormal – or ‘unnatural’ – and this difference is reflected in both the language and the setting. Shakespeare continues to use pathetic fallacy to foreshadow the stormy future of Scotland’s monarchy and the evil nature of the witches. The witches are currently meeting in thunder and lightning, travel through ‘fog and filthy air’ and plan to meet in ‘thunder, lightning, or in rain’ showing they are associated with dangerous, powerful forces and deeds now and in the future. Shakespeare also gives the witches the power to know the future and that the battle will be over ‘ere the set of sun’. This foresight is also shown in the witches’ line ‘Fair is foul, and foul is fair’ which foreshadows and pre-echoes Macbeth’s very first line in Act 1 Scene 3, ‘So foul and fair a day I have not seen’. Shakespeare’s intentions here are clear. He is setting up the character of the witches by showing the audience the extent of their power and leading the audience to believe them and fear them. Awareness of how he uses language, form and structure helps us to see more deeply into his intentions. Why else does he feel the need to open his play in this way? To answer we need to add in some of our knowledge from AO1 and AO2. Our knowledge of the context of production of the play tells us that Macbeth was written as a tribute to King James I/VI. He is even mentioned in the play. Macbeth is loosely based on the historical events of James’s family; Banquo is credited with being the founder of the Stuart line. As Macbeth the play is quite different from Macbeth the reality, opening the play with the witches helps create a sense of separation from reality and a connection to it through their accurate prophecies. Also, King James was a great believer in witchcraft and very much against the practice of it on religious grounds. This led to the banning of Macbeth for five years as he feared the spells were real. Our knowledge of the text also helps us to recognise that many of the main themes and elements of the play are referred to in the opening scene – witchcraft and the supernatural, Macbeth, prophecy, war and violence, deception and the idea that ‘Fair is foul, and foul is fair’. We have looked at how understanding language, structure and form (AO3) helps us to open up and understand the text (AO1) more deeply (AO2), helping us to inform a sensitive and personal response (AO4).

The aim of this video is to give you and your learners a breakdown of Assessment Objective 4 and how it is assessed. However, remember that for each candidate answer, all four assessment objectives are considered by the examiner. The best candidate responses will consider all four when answering a question. Drama Assessment Objective 4 AO4: Communicate a sensitive and informed personal response to literary texts. Creating a sensitive and informed response to a Shakespeare play can seem daunting. The language is complex. Shakespeare was a poet and he loved to play with language and to create new words (neologisms) whenever he found the word he wanted did not exist. And the meanings in his texts are multiple and deep, and his characters are crafted with care and attention to detail. Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth are two of the most studied and performed of Shakespeare’s plays. So how do you manage to create a response that is personal as well as sensitive and informed? The informed element can be seen as the easiest element for candidates. An informed response will use the Assessment Objective 1 knowledge of the text in parallel with the Assessment Objective 3 understanding of language, form and structure, to relate the text to itself and its themes as we saw in the Assessment Objective 1 video example from Macbeth. A sensitive response requires candidates to then link their informed response with their Assessment Objective 2 knowledge of context. A personal response is more difficult to achieve at a higher level. Candidates will have to demonstrate a personal response sometimes directly (answering questions such as ‘What do you think?’, ‘What are your feelings about…?’) and sometimes by implication (answering questions such as ‘Explore the ways in which…’) Act 1 Scene 4 Macbeth [Aside] The Prince of Cumberland! that is a step On which I must fall down, or else o'erleap, For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires: The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see. One mistake candidates often make is losing an academic writing style to demonstrate their personal response: ‘I don’t like Macbeth because he is ambitious as we can see from the quote, “black and deep desires”’. Every time you perform a critical analysis you are giving a personal response. You have selected which quotes you believe are important to make your case. You have chosen which elements of the texts combine to further enhance your answer. ‘Macbeth is presented as an unlikable character because of his ambition. His “black and deep desires” create an image of a dark and ingrained evil that hungers for power.’ Although this response is a personal response it is not yet informed or sensitive. Now we need to add our understanding of Assessment Objective 3 language, form and structure. ‘The adjectives “black” and “deep” connote a malevolence that goes to the core of Macbeth’s being. This combined with the plural abstract noun “desires” reflects his emotional hunger for power.’ To develop this further, we add our Assessment Objective 1 knowledge of the text... Act 3 Scene 2 Macbeth Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck, Till thou applaud the deed. Come, seeling night, Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day; And with thy bloody and invisible hand Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond Which keeps me pale! Light thickens; and the crow Makes wing to the rooky wood: Good things of day begin to droop and drowse; While night's black agents to their preys do rouse. Thou marvell'st at my words: but hold thee still; Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill. So, prithee, go with me. ‘…The connection between darkness, evil and ambition is also seen in Act 3 Scene 2 when Macbeth refers to “night’s black agents”.’ Act 1 Scene 5 Lady Macbeth The raven himself is hoarse That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan Under my battlements. Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood; Stop up the access and passage to remorse, That no compunctious visitings of nature Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts, And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers, Wherever in your sightless substances You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night, And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, To cry 'Hold, hold!' ‘…This connection is further emphasised by Lady Macbeth in Act 1 Scene 5 as she calls for “thick night” to create a “blanket of the dark”.’ Now we have a response that is personal and fairly well informed. All we need to do now is make it sensitive by adding some of our Assessment Objective 2 knowledge of context. ‘The connections between dark deeds and ambition could be seen to represent the political situation at the time Macbeth was written. King James I, for whom the play was written, had personal experience of the dangers of political ambition as both his parents were killed for political motives and he was the intended victim of the Gunpowder Plot. The fact that lexis such as “black” and “dark” is used by Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, could be considered as associating them with witchcraft. Witchcraft, besides being a key theme of the play, was an area studied by James I and it is unsurprising that Shakespeare presented his main evil characters as in league with witches both literally and linguistically.’ ‘Although the modern western audience would not necessarily connect words such as black and dark with witchcraft, and the idea of witchcraft in the traditional sense is no longer accepted as real, the semantic association to bad deeds is still evident and the idea of malevolent beings is still scary’. Now we shall run through an example without breaking down the assessment objectives. Let’s imagine we have been asked who we think is the most important character in Romeo and Juliet. Before we start, ask yourself who you think is most important. Act 5 Scene 3 Capulet O brother Montague, give me thy hand: This is my daughter's jointure, for no more Can I demand. Montague But I can give thee more: For I will raise her statue in pure gold; That while Verona by that name is known, There shall no figure at such rate be set As that of true and faithful Juliet. Capulet As rich shall Romeo's by his lady's lie; Poor sacrifices of our enmity! Prince A glooming peace this morning with it brings; The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head: Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things; Some shall be pardon'd, and some punished: For never was a story of more woe Than this of Juliet and her Romeo. Exeunt ‘The title of the play, Romeo and Juliet, suggests to the audience that Romeo is more important as his name comes first. However, when we look at the final moments of the final scene we learn that our story of woe was of “Juliet and her Romeo”. This combination of Juliet being named first and the use of the possessive pronoun “her” to refer to Romeo demonstrates her greater importance in the story. This is further highlighted by Montague’s offer to build a statue to “true and faithful Juliet” which emphasises her positive qualities, and Capulet’s offer to build one for Romeo which will “by his lady’s lie” implying possession and giving Juliet the higher-status title. The building of a sonnet structure during the final 15 lines creates a sense of coming together which ends with Juliet as the higher-status character and is a counterpoint to the prologue’s “Two households. Both alike in dignity”. Furthermore, this is echoed in their death scenes. Act 4 Scene 3 Juliet Farewell! God knows when we shall meet again. I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins, That almost freezes up the heat of life: I'll call them back again to comfort me: Nurse! What should she do here? My dismal scene I needs must act alone. Come, vial. What if this mixture do not work at all? Shall I be married then to-morrow morning? No, no: this shall forbid it: lie thou there. Laying down her dagger What if it be a poison, which the friar Subtly hath minister'd to have me dead, Lest in this marriage he should be dishonour'd, Because he married me before to Romeo? I fear it is: and yet, methinks, it should not, For he hath still been tried a holy man. How if, when I am laid into the tomb, I wake before the time that Romeo Come to redeem me? there's a fearful point! Shall I not, then, be stifled in the vault, To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in, And there die strangled ere my Romeo comes? Or, if I live, is it not very like, The horrible conceit of death and night, Together with the terror of the place,-- As in a vault, an ancient receptacle, Where, for these many hundred years, the bones Of all my buried ancestors are packed: Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth, Lies festering in his shroud; where, as they say, At some hours in the night spirits resort;-- Alack, alack, is it not like that I, So early waking, what with loathsome smells, And shrieks like mandrakes' torn out of the earth, That living mortals, hearing them, run mad:-- O, if I wake, shall I not be distraught, Environed with all these hideous fears? And madly play with my forefathers’ joints? And pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud? And, in this rage, with some great kinsman's bone, As with a club, dash out my desperate brains? O, look! methinks I see my cousin's ghost Seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body Upon a rapier's point: stay, Tybalt, stay! Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee. She falls upon her bed, within the curtains Act 5 Scene 3 Romeo In faith, I will. Let me peruse this face. Mercutio's kinsman, noble County Paris! What said my man, when my betossed soul Did not attend him as we rode? I think He told me Paris should have married Juliet: Said he not so? or did I dream it so? Or am I mad, hearing him talk of Juliet, To think it was so? O, give me thy hand, One writ with me in sour misfortune's book! I'll bury thee in a triumphant grave; A grave? O no! a lantern, slaughter'd youth, For here lies Juliet, and her beauty makes This vault a feasting presence full of light. Death, lie thou there, by a dead man interr'd. Laying PARIS in the tomb How oft when men are at the point of death Have they been merry! which their keepers call A lightning before death: O, how may I Call this a lightning? O my love! my wife! Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath, Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty: Thou art not conquer'd; beauty's ensign yet Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks, And death's pale flag is not advanced there. Tybalt, liest thou there in thy bloody sheet? O, what more favour can I do to thee, Than with that hand that cut thy youth in twain To sunder his that was thine enemy? Forgive me, cousin! Ah, dear Juliet, Why art thou yet so fair? shall I believe That unsubstantial death is amorous, And that the lean abhorred monster keeps Thee here in dark to be his paramour? For fear of that, I still will stay with thee; And never from this palace of dim night Depart again: here, here will I remain With worms that are thy chamber-maids; O, here Will I set up my everlasting rest, And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last! Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, O you The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss A dateless bargain to engrossing death! Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavoury guide! Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on The dashing rocks thy sea-sick weary bark! Here's to my love! Drinks O true apothecary! Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die. Dies Although Juliet’s death scene is less involved than Romeo’s, the fact that she dies by the blade implies that she is brave and determined, unlike Romeo who chooses the more simple and feminine method of poison. The parallel between Romeo’s drinking of the apothecary’s “quick” feminine poison in Act 5 Scene 3 despite having a masculine dagger, and Juliet’s pretend death by a non-fatal poison whilst prepared to use the masculine dagger in Act 4 Scene 3 also demonstrate Juliet as the braver and more grounded character. The contrast found within the series of rhetorical questions each character asks is also a stark one. While Romeo is focused on how Juliet can remain so “fair”, Juliet is considering the realities of her situation as she faces waking surrounded by “mangled Tybalt” and her “great kinsman’s bones”. We have looked at how writing an informed, sensitive and personal response (AO4) combines understanding language, structure and form (AO3) to help us open up and understand the text (AO1) more deeply (AO2).

• Scenes 1 - 2
• Scenes 3 - 4
• Scenes 5 - 6
• Scenes 7 - 11

• Act 1, Scene 1
• Act 1, Scene 2
• Act 2, Scene 1
• Act 2, Scene 2