AQA English Literature unseen poetry: both questions

Mark totals here are read from real past papers ingested into Marked, not from a revision site: 24 and 8 marks across our AQA Literature corpus; two split-era papers carry 28 instead of 24, because they assess an extra objective. Timings are our own guidance rather than anything the board specifies.

The first question asks how the poet presents something in a single unseen poem. That is where most of the marks are.

The second gives you a different unseen poem and asks you to compare the methods the two poets use. It is worth a third as much and should take about half the time.

• Spending too long on the first poem and rushing the comparison. It is eight marks, not two, and a rushed answer forfeits most of them.
• Comparing subject matter rather than methods. The second question is about how the poets write, not what both poems are about.
• Working line by line. A poem read as a sequence of separate images rarely produces an argument about the whole.
• Ignoring the ending. Where a poem finishes usually tells you what it is doing.

Read for the central feeling first, then how the poem moves from beginning to end, then how the choices create that. Practise the order until it is automatic.

Use poems you have genuinely never seen. Practising on a poem you have already analysed teaches you nothing about the actual skill.

Time the comparison separately. Most people have never written one to the clock.

More on English Literature, on AQA, or see all question guides.

Next, on the same paper or the same board: AQA Paper 1 Question 5: creative writing, AQA Paper 1 Question 3: structure.