AQA A-Level English Literature A 2027 Predicted Practice Paper — Paper 1

Answer ALL questions. Write your answers in the spaces provided. You must write down all the stages in your working.

Section A

Shakespeare - passage-based question with linked essay. Answer one question in Section A, the compulsory question in Section B and one question in Section C. Extract-safe note: StudyVector does not reproduce copyrighted exam-board or set-text extracts here. Use your clean copy, class extract or the original unseen poem printed in the relevant question.

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  Question SECTION-A1 (25 marks)

  Section A: Shakespeare (Love Through the Ages). Open text is NOT permitted: write on the Shakespeare play you have studied for this component without quoting it. Answer using ONLY your own studied text and your memory of it. Do not reproduce any lines of the copyrighted play in your answer. This is a StudyVector original task modelled on the AQA 7712/1 (Specification A, 'Love Through the Ages') structure. Explore the view that, in the Shakespeare play you have studied, love and the desire for power are so entangled that neither can be pursued without corrupting the other. In your response you should: - analyse how Shakespeare presents love (romantic, familial or political) and its relationship to power or authority; - examine how the pursuit of one shapes, distorts or destroys the other; - consider dramatic methods (structure, form, language, staging, use of soliloquy or dramatic irony) and relevant contexts of production and reception, and critical interpretations of love. Write a single, well-structured essay. [25 marks]

  (Total for Question SECTION-A1 is 25 marks)

Section B

Unseen poetry - compulsory comparative essay. Answer one question in Section A, the compulsory question in Section B and one question in Section C. Extract-safe note: StudyVector does not reproduce copyrighted exam-board or set-text extracts here. Use your clean copy, class extract or the original unseen poem printed in the relevant question.

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  Question SECTION-B1 (25 marks)

  Section B: Unseen Poetry Comparison (Love Through the Ages). Read the two ORIGINAL StudyVector practice poems below (written for this paper; no copyrighted text is used). Then answer the question. POEM 1 - 'Low Tide' (StudyVector original) The sea has pulled its blanket back and left the harbour bare, a map of ribs and rusted keels and light that will not stay. My grandmother waits the flats at dusk, her bucket swinging thin, for one who sailed and did not turn and will not come again. She does not speak of loving him; she reads the greying sky and names each cloud a country where the lost ones learn to fly. When the tide turns she is already home, the kettle a small applause, as if the whole retreating sea had only meant to pause. POEM 2 - 'Departures Board' (StudyVector original) The letters flip like startled birds and rearrange the day: GATE OPEN, DELAYED, FINAL CALL, then nothing left to say. I watch two strangers hug and split, rehearsing my own scene, my suitcase full of everything I could not fit between the love I was told I should feel and the love the distance made. The tannoy calls a name like mine. I stand. I am afraid, and then I am not. The concourse hums. I join the moving line. Whatever waits beyond the doors, for once the choosing's mine. QUESTION: Compare how the two poems present love and separation, and the feelings that accompany leaving or being left behind by someone loved. In your answer, analyse the ways the poets use form, structure and language to shape meaning. [25 marks]

  (Total for Question SECTION-B1 is 25 marks)

Section C

Comparing texts - open-book essay linking two texts. Answer one question in Section A, the compulsory question in Section B and one question in Section C. Extract-safe note: StudyVector does not reproduce copyrighted exam-board or set-text extracts here. Use your clean copy, class extract or the original unseen poem printed in the relevant question.

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  Question SECTION-C1 (25 marks)

  Section C: Comparative Essay across two studied texts (Love Through the Ages). Open text is NOT permitted: do not quote the copyrighted texts. Answer on the TWO texts you have studied for this component, using your own clean copies and your memory. Do not reproduce copyrighted text in your answer; refer closely instead. This is a StudyVector original task modelled on the AQA 7712/1 (Specification A, 'Love Through the Ages') structure. 'Writers show that lovers who defy the values of their society are punished for it, but their love is never wholly silenced.' Explore the extent to which you agree with this view in relation to the TWO texts you have studied. In your response you should: - compare how each writer presents a lover (or lovers) whose love resists or defies dominant social values; - analyse the methods each writer uses (narrative or dramatic technique, form, structure, characterisation, symbolism, voice) and the effects created; - examine how far each lover is 'punished' for that love and how far the love, its voice or its influence survives; - integrate relevant contexts of the representation of love and critical interpretations, and sustain a comparative argument throughout. [25 marks]

  (Total for Question SECTION-C1 is 25 marks)