English and literature are two variants of the English subject that you can choose. Majority of students usually choose English, but what are the differences This page will just be a little article describing literature and english subjects, and what both actually are. Also maybe some guidelines on which you should choose…?

Mark Allocations

In English

• 40% Responding
• 30% Creating
• 30% Exam
• State mean: 57%
• 50% of students have used English as their top 4 subjects

In Literature

• 2 extended responses and 1 short written } Responses (30%/20% correspondingly)
• Short written exams are usually “present a reading on these unseen texts)
• 10% Oral
• 10% Creative
• 30% Exam (yea you don’t get less weighting on exam for lit)

State means

State mean for English is 57%, and for literature is 64%. This is probably because majority of people who do literature will be smarter and more likely to do well in this subject (as literature is very well known for being ridiculously hard.)

Student Thoughts

50% of english students use it as part of their top 4, while 67% of lit students have lit as part of their top 4 subjects.

In literature, there are 3 types of texts, prose, play and poems. This could make it potentially easier to analyse and learn only about a specific few text types compared to film and oral and other wacky things that normal english students have to do. Also english is more focused on creativity and creative writing while lit is based on alaysis and understanding of the texts, and linking it back to other events that have happened.

Teacher Recommendations

Teacher recommends you doing lit if

• you are sure that you cannot do english (e.g. u hate film or creative or something)
• you are good at analysis and close readings (you have your first close reading assessment in year 10 semester 1 which is a good time to assess your skill level)

“English and lit are theoretically the same difficulty…but students are weird…especially gifted ones” - Mr Barton