Every year hundreds of thousands of Year 11 students sit the GCSE in English literature.
The specification states that texts are chosen to enable students to “appreciate the depth and power of the English literary heritage”, and to foster advanced reading, writing and critical-thinking skills.
However, about 25 per cent of those who sit English literature GCSE do not achieve the grade 4 required for a standard pass.
To try to understand the reasons for this, we compared the vocabulary used in 32 prose books on the GCSE English literature specifications for AQA and Edexcel with the vocabulary used in books popular with British teenagers.
Our analysis of the vocabulary used in popular books relied on 200 random samples of 32 books from a corpus of 368 books in the CYP-LEX database suitable for teenagers aged 13-16.
GCSE English literature: the vocabulary barrier
Here is what we found:
There is a high density of vocabulary in GCSE books
On average, a GCSE book contains half as many words and half as many sentences as a popular book. However, the number of distinct words in the two types of books is very similar. We found that each GCSE book contained many words that were not present in the other GCSE books, while the popular books were more homogeneous in terms of the words they used.
This is why GCSE books are both rewarding and challenging. On the one hand, they offer an opportunity to access more vocabulary through reading less text. On the other hand, their dense vocabulary may disrupt the reading flow, making it harder to understand the text as a whole.
Many words used in GCSE books are unfamiliar
On average, 27 per cent of the distinct words used in the 32 GCSE books did not occur in any other random selection of 32 popular books. In fact, there were 21,972 distinct words in the 32 GCSE books that did not occur in any of the popular books that we analysed.
Perhaps even more strikingly, around 3,000 words in the GCSE books did not appear in a database of every word used in programmes broadcast on nine BBC television channels over three years (around 160,000 distinct words).
Many of these words are archaic, obsolete or specialised (such as “poulterer”, “bonneted”, “dowerless”, “bedight”, “sepulchre” and “catechize”) and the list also includes adverbs rarely used in spoken language (such as “brusquely”, “docilely”, “imploringly”, “beatifically”, “unwaveringly” and “superciliously”).
The fact that the GCSE books use so many words that are not encountered in popular age-appropriate books or in typical spoken language suggests that the GCSE texts are likely to challenge even those who read widely. Weaker readers may not be able to engage with these texts at all.
Many unfamiliar words in GCSE books are new roots
Students frequently encounter words that they don’t know in popular books. These words are usually combinations of meaningful chunks, such as “mournfully” or “unmysterious”. Even if these words have never been encountered, readers can understand their meanings by analysing their parts (for example, mourn + -ful + -ly).
In contrast, the majority of unfamiliar words in the GCSE books are new roots for which the meanings cannot be derived from smaller parts (such as “aspidistra”, “crimplene”, “beseech”, “coccidia” and “gambol”). This means students need to rely on context (or resort to a dictionary) to understand them. However, research shows that deriving the meanings of new words from context is no trivial task, particularly for students with weaker language and reading skills.
Our findings show that each GCSE text provides an opportunity to experience rich and varied vocabulary, supporting the idea that engaging with these texts has the potential to enhance students’ language skills.
Yet our analysis also makes it clear that the GCSE texts are likely to be incredibly demanding even for avid readers with strong reading skills. The National Literacy Trust recently found that less than 30 per cent of children read daily in their free time, suggesting that many students will not have developed the reading and language skills needed to access the course.
GCSE English literature aims to enhance students’ capacity to engage in deep analysis of English literary heritage, but this requires sophisticated reading and language skills. Future reviews of the specification must consider the wide variation in these skills alongside the literary merits of texts.
Maria Korochkina is a research fellow and Kathleen Rastle is a professor of cognitive psychology, both at Royal Holloway, University of London
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