How do I make sure that my answer has met all the Assessment Objectives?

First, make sure you know all the AOs for your exam board. AQA’s are as follows:

AO1: Read, understand and respond to texts. Students should be able to: maintain a critical style and develop an informed personal response; use textual references, including quotations, to support and illustrate interpretations.

AO2: Analyse the language, form and structure used by a writer to create meanings and effects, using relevant subject terminology where appropriate.

AO3: Show understanding of the relationships between texts and the contexts in which they were written.

AO4: Use a range of vocabulary and sentence structures for clarity, purpose and effect, with accurate spelling and punctuation.

The AO weightings are approximately: 37%, 43%, 15%, 5%, and this stays the same across the exam boards.

A01 is your argument -  think about what you want to say, and how you want to answer the question. To really ace this part, you want to really understand your text (knowing the location of key quotes will save you lot of time). If you’re aiming for the higher bands, this is also your chance to respond personally to the text, to add some original flare and stand out from what everyone else is saying.

Thinking tactically, AO2 has the most weighting, so you want this to make up the bulk of your response. Make sure you can pick out key elements of language, form and structure from the text which illustrate your AO1 argument, using the correct terminology throughout.

Imagine AO3 as nuggets of information about the historical/cultural/social/political/personal contexts of the text. These should be scattered throughout your essay, and used to support AO1 and AO2.

AO4 – spelling, punctuation, and grammar. Practice, practice, practice. Not much more to this one!