We're not looking for polished, finished writing, but for an idea of how you approach literary work and the kind of things you like to think about.
Dr Sophie Read
Applying for English? During the application process, you'll be asked to upload two pieces of written work by a deadline in early November.
We know that not all of our applicants for English take a qualification that's exactly like A level English Literature, so this page is for you, to explain what we are looking for in your essays.
When and how will I upload the work?
There'll be a written work upload deadline in early November. You'll be asked to upload two pdf files, each containing a piece of written work (handwritten or typed - we don't mind) with a completed coversheet as the first page. The exact deadline, the coversheet and the upload tool will all be provided in the Christ's College current applicants section, published on 20 September.
Don't worry too much about the practicalities of uploading your work before you apply. The important point is to understand what kind of work we will be looking for so that you can make sure you have appropriate essays available when needed.
What kind of written work is needed?
We will ask you for two pieces of marked school work on a literary topic that interests you. Your work would normally discuss a piece of English (language) literature.
If you are planning an application but do not have essays with an appropriate literary focus available, please write two short essays (1,000 - 1,500 words for each essay would be ideal) on a literary topic that interests you. This could be an extended book review; an analysis or appreciation of a poem or other short text you've read; or an argument about a literary question.
If you have an essay on literature but it focuses on the literature of another culture, such as a French poem: It is possible to upload such work but it should ideally have a comparative element / your second essay should explore a piece of English literature. Remember that as you are applying to study English literature, we will want the written work you upload to show an interest in literature written in English.
If you have written essays at school in a language other than English, note that we do need essays in English so some further work will be needed to produce these. When writing in English, it's fine to take inspiration from a piece you've already written for school, but we do not want a mechanistic translation - remember that we are interested in your ability to write freely in English.
What makes a good essay?
One of our Directors of Studies, Dr Jo Bellis, explains that good written work in English does not follow a set template but is characterised by certain things:
Intelligent and sensitive comprehension is the first step: understanding what a text is saying, including how it is saying it. Attentiveness to tone, nuance, subtlety, timbre, what’s left unsaid, what’s implied; as well as to style, voice, syntax and grammar.
Knowledge is important, and if you demonstrate the ways in which you have sought to inform yourself, this is excellent: fields of knowledge you could consciously populate include historical context, cultural context, the history of ideas that informs the text, and the critical context that surrounds it. In particular, literary context: in order to speak about form, you must know what form is: versification and metre (poetic form), as well as genre and its conventions (literary form), and language and its usage (linguistic form, including metaphor and imagery, rhetoric, and grammar). All of these conduce to good writing, which is rooted in profound comprehension of the text in the first instance.
You also need to pursue the questions that a text raises. ‘What’s at stake here?’ is a good mental reflex, instead of ‘what does my essay need to demonstrate to be a good essay.’ Asking ‘what’s at stake’ also leads you towards good argumentation: a sense of priority and cohesion governing the local analytical observations you might be making about a text; a sense of what unites them, and under what banner they have been marshalled. Having a sense of ‘the case you want to make’, which may be as simple as ‘the key questions I want to ask of a text’, can give an essay a certain unity and momentum. You don’t need to produce ‘the answer’ (as though with any text there were such a thing), but rather to keep asking the right questions, pushing towards greater sophistication, and troubling simple orthodoxies.
