WHAT YOU SHOULD EXPECT IN YOUR SSCE LITERATURE-IN-ENGLISH PAPER
By Hassan Abdulbaqi
In your SSCE Literature, you shall be required to attempt three papers. Paper 1 and 2 shall be combined and you shall attempt both in one sitting.
Paper 1 contains fifty multiple choice questions, (read What You Should Expect in Eng). Twenty shall be on your general knowledge of Literature. Questions on Literature, genres and types of Literature, literary terms and styles etc shall be asked. Five questions shall be asked each on a prose passage and poem. Twenty questions shall be asked on the prescribed Shakespearean text. The current prescribed Shakespearean text is William Shakespeare’s Othello.
Do not forget that it shall be combined with Paper 2 which has two sections (Section A for African Prose and B for non-African prose). Two essay questions shall be set on each of the prescribed novels, and candidates shall be required to answer just one question from one of the four questions in each section.
Simply put, Amma Darko’s Faceless and Bayo Adebowale’s Lonely Days are the two current prescribed texts (Click here to register for a free study of the recommended SSCE Literature texts). Two questions shall be set on Amma Darko’s Faceless and another two questions shall be set on Bayo Adebowale’s Lonely Days and you shall be asked to choose one from the four questions.
A similar instruction applies to Non-African Prose. You will be asked to answer just one question from the four questions. There are four question because two shall be on Richard Wright’s Native Son and the other two on Patience Swift’s The Last Goodman.
The last paper is the Paper 3 which is usually split into four sections: Section A (African Drama), Section B (Non-African Drama), Section C (African Poetry) and Section D (Non-African Poetry).
There shall be two questions on each prescribed books and you shall be required to answer only one question from each section.
That is, under Section A (African Drama), two questions shall be set on Frank Ogodo Ogeche’s Harvest of Corruption and another two on Dele Charley’s The Blood of A Stranger. You shall only be required to attempt one out of these questions. This goes for the prescribed test in Non-African Drama as well. For your poetry which forms the fourth sections, two of the poems shall be picked for both African and Non-African poetry respectively.
You shall only be asked questions relating to your prescribed Literature texts (except William Shakespeare’s Othello) in Paper 2 and 3. You shall not be asked to define terms or give examples. William’s Shakespeare’s Othello shall only be asked in the multiple choice part which is the first part of the paper.
You can also read SUMMARY OF WHAT YOU SHOULD EXPECT IN YOUR ENGLISH SSCE
