Topic Five (0.5): Successful Essay Writing – Style Tip 2: Using Quotations

Introduction

Just as at AS, the best AL English Literature essays make use of frequent, brief, relevant quotations, which are neatly embedded into the discussion. These are vital to illustrate your points so you can demonstrate strong close textual analysis skills in every essay. This topic covers how to select, use and edit quotations from your texts so that they work for you. Again, you will have seen this at AS, but it is worth reviewing now.

Task

• The following document explains everything you need to know about quotations and how you should use them:

PRINT OUT & READ – Style Tip 2: Using Quotations Download PRINT OUT & READ – Style Tip 2: Using Quotations

• If you did not study AS with Wolsey Hall, please make sure you print this out now and read it very carefully.

Top Tip

• Please also note that all of your Cambridge AS and AL English Literature exams are closed text, which means you cannot take your set texts into the exams and so you will need to learn a good range of quotations from each.
• For the AL exams (Papers 3 and 4), you will also need to need to learn some quotations from critical sources to support your argument in order to satisfy AO5.
• This can be time-consuming, so it’s a good idea to plan ahead and begin learning relevant quotations after you’ve finished studying each set text.
• The following document contains some helpful tips on learning quotations:

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