Cambridge IAL English Literature study guide
Cambridge IAL English Literature · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
Cambridge International AS & A Level English – Literature (9695) is a Cambridge Advanced qualification in literary study, assessed through three question papers: Paper 1, Paper 2 and Paper 3. Learners study a range of texts in the three main forms - prose, poetry and drama - with set texts offered from a wide range of different periods and cultures. The syllabus is built around developing skills of reading and analysis of texts, and learners are encouraged to undertake wider reading to aid understanding of the texts they study. It also develops effective and appropriate communication, including the ability to discuss the critical context of texts. Topics on this exam: Prose, Poetry, and Drama. The Cambridge IAL English Literature study guide has 3 sections and about 1,186 words.
01Prose: Narrative Technique and Close Reading
Prose tests how fiction makes meaning. You are asked to analyse the ways a novelist or short-story writer shapes voice, structure and detail, and to build an argument rather than retell events. Questions may quote a passage and ask you to relate it to the whole text, or ask about a theme, character or method across the text; both demand close reference to wording. Strong answers quote briefly and precisely and always move from technique to effect to significance.
418 words, about 2 min02Poetry: Form, Sound and Argument
Poetry rewards attention to how a poem means: form, lineation, syntax and sound working together. Examiners want an argument about the poem's movement and effect, not a list of devices. Read the sentence first - across the line breaks - then explain what the verse shape does to it. Sonnet, ode, elegy, dramatic monologue, lyric, free verse: each sets up conventions a poet may use or resist.
389 words, about 2 min03Drama: Stagecraft, Dialogue and Audience
Drama tests your understanding of plays as written for performance: how dialogue, structure, stagecraft and audience knowledge create conflict and meaning. A play is not a novel in dialogue. What characters do to each other in speech, what the audience sees that characters cannot, and where scenes are placed all count as evidence. Speech performs: it persuades, evades, wounds, exposes power.
379 words, about 2 min