This subject report is listed under English A in the 2012 examination archive. The catalogue session is May 2012. The information below helps you identify the document before opening the complete PDF. Subject, year and session labels come from the archive catalogue; the original cover remains the reference if a label differs. A file is not automatically suitable for your current syllabus simply because its subject name matches.
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May 2012 extended essay reports
Page 1
ENGLISH A1
Overall grade boundaries
Grade: E D C B A
Mark range: 0 - 7 8 - 15 16 - 22 23 - 28 29 - 36
General Comments
Examiners often receive the impression that supervisors have not read the Extended Essay
Guide carefully enough, especially th e section on Treatment of the Topic, and are failing to
make candidates aware of the criteria and what they mean.
The range and suitability of the work submitted
There were fewer really outstanding essays this year but at the same time there was some
improvement at the lower end of the scale. The range of topics was as wide as ever, though
with fewer essays on Shakespeare but the usual cluster on dystopian fiction and the novels of
Jane Austen. Contemporary novels are becoming increasingly popular and to o ne examiner it
seemed as though this was the year of Harry Potter. Enthusiastic interest, such as J. K.
Rowling often inspires, is of course not a sufficient condition for a successful essay since the
nature of the research question is crucial: thus ‘The significance of mythological allusions in
the Harry Potter series’ provided an appropriate literary focus, whereas the question of
whether Rowling was inspired by Hitler in writing the Harry Potter novels simply steered the
candidate off into biography and speculation instead of analysis of the texts. In general the
best work is usually based on classics like Shakespeare, Dickens and Austen or on
contemporary texts of some weight and significance such as works by Morrison, Ishiguro,
Plath or Heaney. This y ear there was a fine essay on Sylvia Plath which ranged across the
Collected Poems and took its evidence from poems less well -known than ‘Daddy’ and ‘Lady
Lazarus’, which normally figure centrally in student essays. There were also fine essays on
the nature of the imagery in Ishiguro’s A Pale View of the Hills and Never Let Me Go and on
the significance of the stage -directions in Death of a Salesman and A Streetcar named
Desire.
The following are examples of research questions / titles that produced success ful essays:
‘Examine, compare and contrast Lorca’s concept of Duende with the
File information
Subject
English A
Document type
Subject report
Year
2012
Session
May 2012
Level
Not labelled in the archive
Paper
Not labelled
Examination zone
Not labelled in the archive
Language
English
File size
121 KB
Pages
5
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