British Novel Mark Scheme And Model Answer edexcel 2-Post-1914-Literature

British Novel: Mark Scheme & Model Answer

The best way to improve any essay is to know how you are assessed, and what skills you are being assessed on. This page has been created to give you a sense of what examiners are looking for in a full-mark response. It contains: 

• Overview

• Mark scheme

• Example task

• Model answer

• Unannotated model answer

Overview

In Section B, you are required to have knowledge of the whole text and you will need to demonstrate your comprehension, critical reading and analytical skills. You must also make links to the context in which the novel was written and you are required to write with clarity and coherence using accurate Standard English. You are more likely to perform well on the paper if you keep in mind the dominant assessment objectives for Section B. For this section you are assessed on AO1, AO3 and AO4: you are awarded 16 marks for AO1, 16 marks for AO3 and 8 marks for AO4.

Mark scheme

The mark scheme for the Edexcel GCSE English Literature specification can seem intimidating at first. However, it is crucial that you have a thorough understanding of the mark scheme because, in doing so, you will know exactly what you are being assessed on and how to improve.

AO1, AO3 and AO4 are assessed as part of Section B. The weighting for this question is:

• AO1 – 40%

• AO3 – 40%

• AO4 – 20%

Here is a simple version of the Edexcel mark scheme for the Post-1914 question: 

Example task

The following task is based on the November 2020 Edexcel GCSE English Literature Paper 1 exam on Animal Farm. However, the commentary is designed to highlight how to structure your response and integrate all aspects of the assessment objectives, and therefore the model could be applied to any of the novels in the examination. 

In Section B you need to draw on your knowledge of the text and give examples from the novel. You must also make links to the context in which the novel was written.

We will now explore how you can create an informed and coherent argument using an example of a question from Section B. First, let’s read through the question below:

When structuring your essay, the most important thing to do is to have a clear introductory sentence (also known as a “topic sentence”) at the beginning of every paragraph. This topic sentence must make one clear point that is directly related to the focus of the question. Here are a couple of great topic sentences that explore different aspects of power, and the way in which Orwell explores it within Animal Farm:

When writing the rest of your paragraph, all your points then should relate to your topic sentence. It is also a great idea to maintain a focus on the key term of the question (here, “power”) throughout your argument. Here, the word power is included in the topic sentence, but also three more times in this paragraph:

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. Despite the fact it is an answer to a question on Animal Farm, the commentary is relevant to any of the topic areas, because it is modelling how to structure an answer incorporating the relevant assessment objectives. AO1 is demonstrated throughout in terms of the coherence of the overall response.