This page explains what a set text is, how we teach one, and how set-text study turns into exam marks. Your board and school confirm which works are set.
What a set text is
A set text is a specific literary work that an exam board names for a particular Literature paper. It might be a novel, a play, a short-story collection or a group of poems. Everyone entered for that paper studies the same work.
The exam asks you to write about it in detail: its characters, its themes, the way it is built and the effects the writer creates. Set texts are the heart of IGCSE Literature, so a large part of a good year is spent knowing one or two of them thoroughly.
Which works are set changes from board to board and can change from year to year. Your school confirms yours, and the board's current syllabus lists it, as summarised on our qualification pages. Once you know the title, the skill of studying it well is the same, and that skill is what we teach.
How we write about set texts
Set texts are almost always still in copyright, so we publish our own analysis and original teaching material, and we quote only the short, attributed phrase that a specific point needs. You read the text itself in your own copy.
That suits the exam, which gives marks for understanding what the words do, not for the words being present. Our notes show you how to read a text, so the same method works on any title.
How we teach a set text
We work through a set text the way an examiner reads an answer about it: from the inside out. A student learns to read closely for what a moment is really doing. They track a theme or a character across the whole work, and they see how structure, such as an opening, a turning point or an ending, shapes meaning.
We build the habit of choosing a short, apt quotation and embedding it inside a sentence. Then the student analyses the writer's method and its effect rather than retelling the plot.
They write about the text to time, against the skills the paper rewards. Our guides to planning a literature essay and embedding short quotations show the moves.
Context has its place, enough to illuminate the text without crowding out the words on the page. Because lessons are one-to-one, a confident reader is pushed towards subtlety and comparison. A student still finding their feet first builds a secure, well-evidenced argument.
A teacher can practise essay planning on IGCSE Literature set texts with your child in a one-hour trial.
Set-text study notes we have written
These are our own study notes for set-text options on the Pearson Edexcel International GCSE English Literature (4ET1) course. Each includes an exam-style question and a section on how the text maps to the mark scheme.
Confirm with your school which text you are entered for. The notes teach the same close-reading skills whatever the title.
Novels
- A Hundred Flowers by Gail Tsukiyama
- Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín
- Fire on the Mountain by Anita Desai
- Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
- Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard by Kiran Desai
- I'm the King of the Castle by Susan Hill
- Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
- Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga
- Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
- Playground by Richard Powers
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
- Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
- The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
- The War of the Worlds by H G Wells
- The Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera
- The Woman in Black by Susan Hill
- Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- Western Lane by Chetna Maroo
- What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah
- When We Were Birds by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo
- Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Plays
- A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare
- A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry
- A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
- A Taste of Honey by Shelagh Delaney
- A View from the Bridge by Arthur Miller
- An Inspector Calls by J. B. Priestley
- Anna in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz
- Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare
- Blues for an Alabama Sky by Pearl Cleage
- Death and the King's Horseman by Wole Soyinka
- DNA by Dennis Kelly
- Fences by August Wilson
- Kindertransport by Diane Samuels
- Macbeth by William Shakespeare
- Princess & the Hustler by Chinonyerem Odimba
- Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Simon Stephens
- The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
- The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
- The Tempest by William Shakespeare
Poetry
- Kumukanda by Kayo Chingonyi
Finding your board's set-text list
The quickest way to confirm your texts is to ask the school, since schools choose from the options a board offers. The board's official syllabus for the series lists the current set works in full, and our qualification pages link to it. If you are unsure, send us the board and the year on WhatsApp and we will help you pin down what you are sitting.
Turning set-text study into exam marks
Knowing a text well is necessary but not enough. The marks come from what a student does with that knowledge under exam conditions.
That means making an argument that answers the actual question, and supporting it with well-chosen evidence. It also means analysing the writer's methods and showing how the whole work is shaped.
Where the paper asks for it, the student compares texts or responds to an unseen passage with the same tools. Our marking follows these moves, so a student can see, essay by essay, where the marks are. See a worked answer in the literature essay structure model response.
Ready to start? Message us on WhatsApp with the Literature board and the set text, or say you are still confirming it.
We plan the term and arrange a one-hour paid trial with the teacher who would continue. Tuition starts from RM70/hr, quoted before you commit, and you can book a paid one-hour trial lesson.