Information Sheet - Advanced Higher English
Advanced Higher is SQA’s highest level of National Course. It is very demanding. Advanced Higher extends students’ knowledge and skills beyond Higher. Students will face new academic and personal challenges, requiring them to develop their knowledge and abilities, and to think and work independently.
The Advanced Higher English Course consists of two mandatory Units and a further Unit chosen from a list of options.
The two mandatory Units are Specialist Study (an independent study of an aspect of literature or language or media) and Literary Study.
The optional Units (from which the student chooses one) are Creative Writing, Language Study, Textual Analysis and Reading the Media.
To achieve an overall pass in the Course, a candidate must pass internal assessment (conducted in the school or college) in all three Units and must also pass external assessment through examination performance for Literary Study (and for Textual Analysis or Language Study or Reading the Media, if the candidate chooses one of these options) and through submitted coursework for Specialist Study (and for Creative Writing, if the candidate chooses this option).
Whatever combination of Units is taken, the resulting Course and assessment will be at a consistently advanced level.
Candidates who pursue their studies and successfully complete the Course in Advanced Higher English will:
♦ possess an award at a level specified as an entry qualification for various tertiary education courses
♦ gain a qualification which, for some tertiary education courses, carries a credit transfer rating allowing accelerated progression on those courses
♦ gain a qualification which signals an ability to demonstrate a range of high order skills across a number of sophisticated purposes
♦ possess a level of communicative competence which will enable them to access other levels of the curriculum at an advanced level.
Further Information
You can find the detailed Course Arrangements on the English page of SQA’s website ( www.sqa.org.uk ). A specimen examination paper is also available here, together with other information and guidance.
Copies of past examination papers (for the last two years) can be purchased from SQA’s Customer Contact Centre – tel 0845 279 1000. The Contact Centre can also send you a free leaflet Introducing Advanced Higher (publication code BD2803).
The Advanced Higher English Examination
The examination paper is worth either 30% (the mandatory Literary study) or 60% (if you choose an option other than Creative Writing) of your overall award.
At first glance, the Question Paper may seem daunting—around forty pages long, lots of detailed information to absorb on the opening page, a dozen or so pages and over forty questions in the mandatory Literary Study section alone.
But you needn’t panic.
Only ONE or at most TWO questions have to be answered.
If Creative Writing is your chosen Option, you need only answer ONE question—which must, of course, be selected from the mandatory Literary Study section of the paper.
If you have chosen an Option other than Creative Writing, you will be required to answer TWO questions. Your first will be, as it is for all candidates, from the mandatory Literary Study section. Your second will be from the Textual Analysis or Reading the Media or Language Study section.
Remember that you have one and a half hours in which to tackle each question. Of course, not all of that time should be spent writing. You should take as much time as you need to think about the question and to plan how you intend to respond to it. Then you should begin writing in as much detail as you think relevant and manageable in approximately one hour’s worth of solid writing.
For the mandatory Literary Study section, you should have studied the work of at least two authors (from different genres – Drama, Poetry, Prose). If you are properly prepared, therefore, for the examination, you should have a choice between the questions set on each of your chosen authors. There is similar choice in the Textual Analysis paper for which two genres will have been practised.
Because you do not have access to your texts during the examination, you will not be penalised for minor inaccuracies as you attempt to support your answer with relevant quotations and references. You should, however, be so familiar with the texts you have studied that quoting from them is instinctive and natural to you. Learning key quotations by heart is one way of ensuring that you have developed a firm grasp of the central concerns and features of the text.
The key to success in the exam is that you should write directly in response to the terms of the question you are attempting. One of the main things examiners are looking for is evidence of your willingness to get involved, your ability to confront the terms of the question—to meet its implications head on and to deploy your knowledge of the text to provide convincing supporting evidence for the line of thought you are seeking to develop.
