WHAT I LEARNT FROM MARKING LITB3:
Marking AQA LITB3 A level scripts has been tiring but ultimately rewarding. I
volunteered as a result of a set of disappointing results in a previous year,
many of which were subsequently remarked and raised. My intention was to
get a closer awareness of the marking techniques at a national level and also to
get some ideas about how better to prepare my classes next year.
This grid has proven very useful. The descriptors give a good guideline for
basic grading. Obviously nothing is in fallible, but by using this to attach an
essay to a particular level at the outset, it has been moderately straightforward
as I have become more experienced, to place essays in their respective bands.
I particularly liked the “Some understanding” band for those essays which
moved between focused thought and paragraphs of irrelevance.
Obviously when a range of marks is awarded against the AOs that reflects a
range of Bands, a best fit approach is employed. Running through the whole
process is an understanding that in awarding marks, the question has been
answered.
Jonathan Peel SGS 2012
I think this was the area that was most frustrating and one that I shall be
reinforcing all the time next year. Many of the papers I marked simply did not
make their responses relevant to the question. Students seem to have a great
deal of knowledge about genre, historical contexts, critical theory, contexts of
authorship and so on. Sadly, these ideas seem to be used to pad out essays
rather than to help to focus the response. Thus in the essay about the
potential attractiveness of the Gothic Villain, a student is struggling to make a
clear link between the title of the essay and paragraphs focusing, among other
things, on the industrial Revolution, James I, characters (especially female) who
are not villains.
In fact many essays simply set out to write the essay they had practiced and
tool little notice of the thrust of the essay that was set.
This was most noticeable in Section A where the insistence on focusing on
“elements of the Gothic” made a focused response on the text difficult to
maintain.
This essay will, naturally make reference to “doubling” and other gothic tropes,
but the focus must be on the specific question. Often the essay became an
exploration of doubling for its own sake. The consequence is that many such
essays, often running to good length and stuffed with irrelevant knowledge fell
into Band 3 or 4 and will possibly disappoint the writers.
There is also an issue with a lack of debate in many responses. The questions
are nearly all framed as a “what do you think...” or “How far do you agree”
question. This really does require more than one side of any argument to be
developed and will really preclude rising above Band 4 simply for the
appearance of the word debate in the descriptors of AO1 for Bands 5&6:
Jonathan Peel SGS 2012
Obviously I am writing in general terms, but many students were writing
responses which focused solely on one view or, if they did mention a counter
argument in passing made no attempt to draw together their own response in
the conclusions of the essay. The idea of a personal perspective was quite rare
in the text I marked. This issue, which is really about essay planning and
structure, is one I will address next year.
Other obvious areas to notice were the Rubric Infringements caused by not
using three texts in Part B. Students need to be reminded of this regularly.
None failed to use the “early” text in this regard.
Jonathan Peel SGS 2012
The texts that I marked were interesting. In the 2012 paper I found strong
writing in particular from students studying Paradise Lost and Dr Faustus. I
think the essay really suited these texts well. I received few Macbeths,
surprisingly, though the essay on Darkness and Concealment was trickier to
approach than many thought. The Bloody Chamber responses were
dominated by The Snow Child and the title story to a huge extent. They were
obviously well engaged with as texts, though many responses seemed
obsessed with telling me about Feminist readings. One result of this in
was to utterly overlook the word “sinister” in the title. A pity. Possibly readers
of the texts are engrossed by Carter’s feminist agenda and the power of many
of the sexual images (“virile member(s)” were being thrust regularly into every
essay) that focus on the specific question was too easily lost.
I was also interested to notice how many responses seemed to have no
planning. I will be stressing the importance of planning next year. Again those
essays rarely achieved any focus or coherent argument and suffered
accordingly.
That said, I found many essays exciting and interesting. One or two were jawdroppingly good! I am enthused with the notion of teaching The Pardoner
next year, at least as enrichment if time allows and would have gone for the
Milton had it not been removed from the syllabus.
My hit list for next year:
 All essays will insist on debate in their titles
 The text essays will focus on the texts rather than on wider contexts
 I will try to set wider genre based essays which require reference to
more than one text more often.
 I will discuss my marking experiences with the class and my colleagues
and share the exemplar marking and so on, once the exams are “dead”.
Jonathan Peel SGS 2012
Perhaps these two instructions were the most useful at times:
Jonathan Peel SGS 2012