Syllabus and Examination Information
This Wolsey Hall course is designed to prepare you for the Cambridge IGCSE English Literature examination in 2025 which you will sit at a Cambridge exam centre.
The Programme of Study for this course is a very important document as it shows how the course links to the 2025 CAIE syllabi and highlights which pages of the coursebook to read as you progress through the topics and modules. You should download this and keep it with you as you study.
It is vitally important that you become familiar with the syllabus for your examination year which can be found here.
IMPORTANT – PLEASE NOTE:
The examination code for IGCSE English Literature (Graded A* to G) is 0475.
The examination code for IGCSE English Literature (Graded 9 to 1) is 0992*.
*Exam code 0992 applies only to Zone 3 exam centres. Students taking their exam in Zone 3 may choose which grading system they prefer when they register at an exam centre by selecting either exam code 0475 or exam code 0992. Students taking their exam in the other Administrative Zones will take exam code 0475.
In your exam, you will sit three papers:
- Paper 1: Poetry and Prose (Closed Text) (90 minutes) 50% of total marks.
You get a choice of two questions for each text.
Poetry: The poems for both questions are printed on the exam paper. At least one of these questions is likely to ask you about two poems, so make sure that your answer gives equal space to both.
Prose: The first question on The War of the Worlds will be about a passage from the novel which will be printed on the paper; the other question will be a thematic question and is likely to ask you about an aspect of the entire novel. You should use 45 minutes for the first essay and then 45 minutes for the second essay.
This is a closed text exam, so you will not be allowed to take your copies of Songs of Ourselves or The War of the Worlds into the exam. Make sure you learn quotations from all the poems and from the whole of the novel that you can use in your answers.
- Paper 3: Drama (Open Text) (45 minutes) 25% of total marks.
Again, you get a choice of a passage-based question and an essay question. This is an open text exam, so you will need to take a clean copy of A Midsummer Night’s Dream into the exam. It must be a ‘clean’ copy, with nothing written in it at all in your handwriting (or anyone else’s).
Please note: We use the Cambridge University Press edition for teaching and learning purposes as it contains very helpful additional guidance. However, it is not permitted to using this edition in the exam, because of this extra material. We therefore advise that you purchase the Penguin Classics edition of the play (ISBN: 9780141396668) for use in the examination, as it contains fewer notes. It is always a good idea to contact your exam centre to enquire if they recommend or request a specific version of the play to be brought in, or if they forbid any specific version. Make sure you contact them with plenty of time.
- Paper 4: Unseen (75 minutes) 25% of total marks.
You get a choice of a question on an unseen poem or a question on an unseen piece of prose (probably an extract from a novel or a short story). You answer one of these questions. The questions will include three bullet-points as well as the main question, and you should use those bullet-points as the basis of your essay plan. You should use the first 30 minutes to read and annotate the text. The remaining 45 minutes should be used to write your essay.