IGCSE English Literature: Component 5 – Coursework — Practice Questions

These are original questions written for Marlbridge, for revision and practice on this content. They are not reproduced past-paper questions, and they do not replicate the exam’s exact structure, question count or mark tariffs — examination boards hold copyright in their own papers. Use these alongside the official past papers available free from your board.

Related: Component 5 Coursework revision notes · Component 5 Coursework study guide

Component 5 of Cambridge IGCSE Literature in English (0475) has no question paper: you submit two assignments of 600–1200 words on two different texts, each marked out of 25 against the eight-level Component 5 criteria. The component is worth 25 marks in total; the syllabus does not state how the two assignment marks are combined into that total, so treat each title below as a separate 25-mark piece. These practice tasks therefore do two jobs. Section A checks that you know the rules that can cost marks before a word is written. Section B gives full coursework titles on out-of-copyright texts, each with indicative content mapped to AO1–AO4 and a note on what separates the levels, so you can draft, self-assess and redraft.

Section A: Rules and task-setting

1. State how many assignments the portfolio contains, the word guidance for each, and whether quotations count towards that guidance. [3]

2. A student plans one assignment on a Paper 1 set novel and the other on a Paper 3 set play. Explain whether this is allowed. [2]

3. A student wants to write an empathic response in the voice of the speaker of a poem. Explain whether this is allowed and suggest an alternative. [2]

4. A student submits an assignment that analyses one short story only. Explain the problem and how to fix it. [2]

5. Rewrite each title so that it allows all four assessment objectives to be assessed. [6] (a) “The witches in Macbeth” (b) “Describe what happens in chapter 1 of Great Expectations” (c) “Christina Rossetti’s poems”

6. A student uses a website that underlines weak sentences and suggests replacement words. Explain why this breaks the coursework rules. [2]

Section B: Coursework titles (each marked out of 25)

7. Critical assignment (drama). How does Shakespeare use the supernatural to shape the audience’s judgement of Macbeth? Refer to the whole play. [25]

8. Critical assignment (prose). Explore how Dickens presents Pip’s sense of shame in Great Expectations. [25]

9. Critical assignment (poetry). How do two poems by Christina Rossetti that you have studied present longing? You need not compare them. [25]

10. Empathic assignment (prose). You are Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, on the evening after you have read Mr Darcy’s letter. Write your thoughts. [25]

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Answers

1. Two assignments [1], each 600–1200 words [1]. Quotations do count; references and the bibliography do not [1].

2. Not allowed. The syllabus permits one of the two assignments to be on a text set for Papers 1, 2 and 3 [1]; the other must be on a different text of equivalent scope and demand, originally written in English [1].

3. Not allowed: the empathic option is only for a prose or drama text [1]. The student could write a critical assignment on two or more poems, or an empathic piece on a novel or play [1].

4. Where short stories (or poems) are used, the assignment must cover at least two stories [1]. Add a second story; the two do not need to be compared [1].

5. Award 2 marks per title: 1 for turning it into a question, 1 for focusing on the writer’s methods. Model answers: (a) “How does Shakespeare use the witches to create uncertainty about Macbeth’s responsibility for his actions?” (b) “How does Dickens make the opening of Great Expectations both frightening and comic?” (the assignment must still show study of the whole novel) (c) “How does Rossetti present the conflict between earthly love and religious faith in two poems you have studied?”

6. The syllabus forbids online tools that act as writing assistants [1]: tools that identify specific sections where a correction should be made and propose the words to use instead [1].

Question 7: indicative content

AO	What a strong answer does
AO1	Ranges across the play: the witches’ first meeting, the prophecies in 1.3, the dagger soliloquy, Banquo’s ghost, the apparitions in 4.1, and Macbeth’s final reliance on the prophecies
AO2	Argues a position on responsibility: the prophecies tempt but do not compel; Banquo hears similar words and does not act; Macbeth chooses to visit the witches in Act 4
AO3	Analyses methods: the trochaic, rhyming chant that separates the witches’ speech from the blank verse of the court; equivocation (“Fair is foul, and foul is fair”); dramatic irony in the apparitions; the dagger as a staged or imagined object
AO4	Reaches a personal, evaluated judgement, for example that the supernatural exposes ambition rather than creating it, and sustains it to the conclusion

Context (AO2) can be used briefly where it explains a choice: for example, early modern beliefs about witchcraft help explain why an audience might fear the witches, but the paragraph must return to the play.

Level guidance. A Level 4 answer (11–13) tells the story of the prophecies with some quotation. A Level 6 answer (17–19) explains how the witches’ language works and shows “some of its deeper implications”. Level 8 (23–25) needs an individual argument held across the essay, with references integrated “skilfully and with flair”.

Model paragraph (Level 7–8 quality). “The witches never tell Macbeth to kill; they only name what he will become. Shakespeare makes this gap the centre of the play’s moral judgement, because Macbeth’s startled reaction to ‘king hereafter’ shows the thought was already present. Banquo, hearing a prophecy of equal weight, warns that ‘instruments of darkness tell us truths’ to win us to harm, and the contrast leaves the audience unable to blame the supernatural alone.”

Question 8: indicative content

AO	What a strong answer does
AO1	Refers to the Satis House visits and Estella’s contempt for his “coarse hands”, Pip’s embarrassment at Joe’s visit to London, and his later recognition of Magwitch as his benefactor
AO2	Traces the development of shame from class-consciousness to moral self-knowledge; links shame to Victorian ideas of the “gentleman” where this clarifies Dickens’s criticism
AO3	Analyses the double perspective of the older narrator judging his younger self; irony; the symbolism of hands and of the forge versus Satis House; the structure of the three “stages”
AO4	Evaluates whether Pip earns the reader’s sympathy, and supports a clear personal view

Level guidance. The key discriminator is AO3: answers at Level 5 “make some response to the way the writer uses language”, while Level 7 responds “sensitively and in detail” to how Dickens achieves his effects, especially through the retrospective narrator’s irony.

Question 9: indicative content

AO	What a strong answer does
AO1	Covers at least two poems (for example “Remember” and “Song: When I am dead, my dearest”), with brief, accurate quotation
AO2	Shows how longing is directed at a lover, at release from earthly feeling, or at God, and how the poems question whether longing should be indulged
AO3	Analyses form (the Petrarchan sonnet’s volta in “Remember”; the song’s regular stanzas), repetition, imperative voice and the imagery of memory and forgetting
AO4	Offers a personal reading, for example that the speakers find a kind of freedom in renouncing longing

Level guidance. Comparison is not required, so do not lose words to forced links. An answer that discusses only one poem cannot meet the rule for poetry assignments, whatever its quality.

Question 10: indicative content (empathic)

AO (empathic wording)	What a strong answer does
AO1	Weaves in accurate detail from the letter and earlier events: Wickham’s story, Darcy’s remarks at the Meryton ball, Jane and Bingley, the Hunsford proposal
AO2	Shows Elizabeth’s realisation that her prejudice has misled her, matching the novel’s turning point
AO3	Sustains a convincing voice: articulate, self-critical, witty even in distress, in a register close to Austen’s
AO4	Selects and shapes the material so that the piece has its own direction, ending at the edge of a changed judgement

Level guidance. Level 8 “sustains an entirely convincing voice” and “seamlessly uses well-selected textual detail”. A piece that slips into modern slang, or that summarises the letter instead of reacting to it, stays in the lower levels however long it is.

A note on technique

Write more than two assignments during the course: the syllabus advises this so that you and your teacher can choose the strongest two. Plan each with a one-sentence argument, check every quotation against the text, read the piece aloud, and keep to 600–1200 words.

Frequently asked questions

How long should I spend drafting? The syllabus sets no time; assignments can be completed at any point in the course. What matters is that plans and drafts are your own, since teachers can give only brief summative comments.

Can the empathic task be my stronger piece? Yes. One assignment may be empathic, and it is marked against the same eight levels, with the AO1 and AO3 descriptors adapted to voice and textual detail.

Should I compare texts within an assignment? Not unless your title asks for it. Each assignment is on one text, and poetry or story assignments need two or more pieces but no comparison.

Official syllabus

Cambridge IGCSE Literature in English (0475) syllabus for exams in 2026, Component 5 and the Assessment criteria for Component 5 — cambridgeinternational.org.