English literature offers you the challenge of reading and studying a wide range of literature written at various periods of time and in different styles. These will include: novels, short stories, plays and poems. As well as studying specific texts for the examination, you will gain knowledge about the social, historical and cultural contexts of certain writers and their works. In total, you are expected to study twelve texts over two years. You will learn how to analyse texts and to write about them critically. You will develop your own responses to literature and combine this with knowledge of how literature ‘works’–how writers achieve effects in their writing, and how effectively they ‘shape’ their works or create characters and settings.