What in the World Are AO's?

Your official guide to the particular hellscape that is...Assesment Objectives in A-level English Literature.

If you're taking English Literature A-level, you may have heard the term "A01" or maybe "A02" or even "A03" thrown around. These strange codes are more relevant than you may think, because these are exactly the targets you want to be hitting in your exam to get full marks. Today, let's break down what these are and how you can use them in your essay.

What is an AO?

Put simply, AO's are "Assesment Objectives". They are the objectives you need to outline in your essay to get the marks. I used the AO's to dictate how I would structure my argumentation and paragraphs.

AO1

AO1 is your argument/point. To fulfil AO1 your argument should be relevant to both the question and the text you're writing about. For example, your point should adress the question and the concepts raised within it. It should adress the text, the themes that arise and key concepts, again, within it. Your point should be clear for the examiner to understand, but it helps if it is also original, that meaning, it is interesting, dynamic but still well thought out and comprehensible.

A02

A02 requires you to look at the meanings behind the text. What are the implications? The messages? The themes? What was the author/playwright/poet trying to say and then how did they do that. What devices, concepts, ideas have been used, and what do they convey? How does an audience/reader interpret these things? What impact does it have? Why is the meaning implied? How does it affect the characters or plot? What does the meaning do to the text? What is the atmosphere? Impact? A02 calls on you to look deeper. Make sure you're armed with quotes!

A03

Context is key, when it comes to A03. A02 asked for meanings, and A03 seeks to adress them by looking at the context of why that meaning is built. So, what was the social and historical context of the time, and how has that shaped the text. If you're looking at Shakespeare's Othello, for example, you can discuss an elizabethan audience or writers approach towards women or race.

A04

Connections-either, how does the text connect or fit into the genre or theme, OR how it connects to the text you're comparing it with. For example, with Othello, how the text fits within the genre of tragedy. What devices have been used to cement it amongst other tragic works, or to define it as that.

AO5

How the text can be analysed from a different perspecitve, whether that be from a critical lense, a feminist lense, a marxist lense etc. Read up on the different forms of literary criticism and familiarise yourself with a few. I really reccomend the site "massolit" or to find university lectures on the text's you're studying to get some critical quotes to put in this part of the essay. It will make it look more professional.

I would structure my paragraphs using these AO's, starting with AO1 and ending with AO5. This way I was ensuring I was ticking off all of the objectives and securing the necessary marks. Goodluck :)