What the portfolio must contain

Component 5 is optional: candidates who take it also take Paper 3 Drama (Open Text). It is internally assessed and externally moderated by Cambridge, and is worth 25 marks.

• A portfolio of two assignments, each 600–1200 words.
• Each assignment should be based on the study of one complete text.
• Each text must be equivalent in scope and demand to the set texts for Papers 1, 2 and 3.
• The assignments must be on different texts. One of them may be on a text set for Papers 1, 2 and 3.
• The title of each assignment must be phrased to allow scope for the assessment of all four assessment objectives.

The four assessment objectives (equally weighted, 25% each): AO1 show detailed knowledge of the content of literary texts, supported by reference to the text; AO2 understand the meanings of literary texts and their contexts, and explore texts beyond surface meanings; AO3 recognise and appreciate ways in which writers use language, structure and form to create and shape meanings and effects; AO4 communicate a sensitive and informed personal response.

A title that opens all four AOs

This is the decision that determines your mark before you write a sentence. A narrow, factual title makes a high mark impossible — there is simply nowhere for AO3 or AO4 to go.

• Use a how or an arguable proposition. How does..., To what extent..., In what ways...
• Name an effect, not a topic. Not the theme of jealousy, but how the dramatist makes jealousy feel reasonable.
• Make it answerable in 1200 words. A title that would need a book is a title you will answer thinly.

Which title works?

Structuring a 1200-word assignment

Between 600 and 1200 words is about six to ten developed paragraphs. That is enough to argue something properly, and not enough to survey a whole novel. Choose depth.

• Introduction: a claim, not a preamble. State the argument the essay will prove.
• Body: each paragraph makes one claim, proves it with a short quotation, analyses the method, and reaches an effect and a judgement.
• Range: draw evidence from across the whole text — beginning, middle and end. Coursework based entirely on chapter one advertises its own weakness.
• Conclusion: not a summary. The final movement of the argument — the thing the essay has earned the right to say.

The redraft that always works: take your longest paragraph and ask what its claim is. If you cannot say it in one sentence, that paragraph is description wearing an analysis costume.

What is a good coursework paragraph made of?

The empathic response

Cambridge allows a portfolio to include an empathic response to a prose or drama text — writing as a character, in their voice, at a specific moment in the text.

It is not a creative writing holiday. It is one of the hardest literary tasks there is, because everything you invent must be anchored in the text.

• Choose a precise moment — immediately after the letter arrives, not at some point in Act Two. The voice needs a situation.
• Build the voice from the text. How does this character speak? What do they repeat? What do they never mention?
• Weave in textual detail — the assessment rewards seamlessly using well-selected textual detail in an empathic task.
• Stay inside what they could know. A character cannot comment on events they have not witnessed, or read their own novel.
• Show the self-deception. The best empathic writing lets the reader see what the character cannot.

Empathic writing done right

Portfolio rules

Tap a statement, then tap whether it is required, allowed, or not allowed.

What the top band rewards

The Component 5 assessment criteria describe the highest level in terms you can aim at directly. In the top band a candidate:

• demonstrates knowledge by incorporating well-selected reference to the text skilfully and with flair (or, in an empathic task, seamlessly uses well-selected textual detail) — AO1;
• sustains a critical understanding of the text showing individuality and insight — AO2;
• responds sensitively and in considerable detail to the way the writer achieves her or his effects — AO3;
• sustains personal and evaluative engagement with task and text — AO4.

Read those verbs again: skilfully, sustains, individuality, sensitively. None of them describes an essay that lists devices. They describe a reader with a mind of their own — which is exactly what coursework gives you the time to become.

Assignment move to the AO it serves

Tap what you do on the left, then tap the assessment objective it satisfies.

Working on coursework properly

Coursework is not an untimed exam. Its advantage is process — and the rules protect that process.

• Write more than two assignments during the course if you can, so you have a genuine choice of what to submit.
• Teacher feedback is general, not line-by-line rewriting. The words must be yours; the work is authenticated.
• Redraft for depth, not length. The best second draft is usually shorter and sharper than the first.
• Check the mechanics. Quotations exactly accurate, characters and titles spelled correctly, punctuation of quotations handled properly.

Never fabricate a quotation. In coursework you have the book open in front of you — there is no excuse for an inaccurate quotation, and a moderator will notice.

The portfolio rules

Quoting well in coursework

With the text in front of you, there is no excuse for weak evidence. Quotation is a skill, and moderators can see it instantly.

• Embed quotations in your own sentence so the grammar runs through cleanly.
• Quote short. Two or three words you can dissect are worth more than three lines you cannot.
• Quote from across the text — beginning, middle and end. Range is part of AO1.
• Analyse the words you quoted, not the events around them. If you have nothing to say about the actual words, you chose the wrong quotation.

Accuracy is non-negotiable: copy the words exactly, including punctuation. A misquotation in coursework, where you have the book open, undermines everything else you claim.

Choosing the second text

Developing a critical voice

The difference between a competent portfolio and a distinguished one is usually voice — the sense of a reader who has thought about the text and arrived somewhere.

• Take a position early, and let the essay test it rather than merely repeat it.
• Use the grammar of complexity: although, and yet, which complicates, it would be easy to say... but.
• Disagree with the obvious reading when you have evidence. Insight is often a well-defended dissent.
• Avoid inflation. Words like amazing, incredible and powerful are not judgements — they are noises. Say what the effect is and why it matters.

The big ideas to know

You have now covered the rules of the portfolio and how to write an assignment that reaches all four AOs. Press Finish to see your score.