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Pearson A-level English Language and Literature
A guide to Dracula on Pearson A-level English Language and Literature. 2017–2025 examination material. Use the documents for your own paper and year; past material is also useful for wider preparation.
Your task
How Dracula is examined. Q8 is a comparative essay on a theme of crossing boundaries. Dracula and Wide Sargasso Sea are the two anchor texts, roughly equally popular; Dracula is usually paired with Twelfth Night or Rossetti’s poems, sometimes with Wide Sargasso Sea.
Past questions
Browse the Pearson 9EL0 question records. Exact question excerpts, shortened prompts and report-based summaries are labelled separately. Open the original paper for the complete instruction, extract and rubric.
What examiners report
Read each year’s questions before its feedback. The wording labels distinguish recorded excerpts from summaries that still need checking against the paper. General-paper and unseen-passage comments are identified separately; a report may not discuss every question listed.
2018
Questions in this series. The recorded wording below is labelled as an excerpt or a summary; use the original paper for the complete instruction and any supplied passage.
| Paper and question | Recorded wording or focus | Task |
|---|---|---|
| Edexcel 9EL0/02 Lang & Lit (Crossing Boundaries) Question Q8 | Summary – check paper: the opportunities and dangers of crossing | Crossing Boundaries: compare the chosen texts using linguistic and literary methods. Find the original paper. |
- report, PDF p. 54. Dracula and Twelfth Night were the most popular texts. Answers explored many kinds of boundary but not always the dangers that followed. Dracula answers leaned on Harker and the three vampire women and on Lucy, using them to bring in context, but rarely analysed them in detail; discussion of craft stayed at word choice and neglected narrative structure. Source details.
2019
Questions in this series. The recorded wording below is labelled as an excerpt or a summary; use the original paper for the complete instruction and any supplied passage.
| Paper and question | Recorded wording or focus | Task |
|---|---|---|
| Edexcel 9EL0/02 Lang & Lit (Crossing Boundaries) Question Q8 | Summary – check paper: how crossing a boundary affects language and communication | Crossing Boundaries: compare the chosen texts using linguistic and literary methods. Find the original paper. |
- report, PDF p. 71. The language-and-communication focus suited Dracula well: candidates explored how language changes across geographical boundaries and, through Renfield, across the lines between sanity and insanity and between human and supernatural. Source details.
2022
Questions in this series. The recorded wording below is labelled as an excerpt or a summary; use the original paper for the complete instruction and any supplied passage.
| Paper and question | Recorded wording or focus | Task |
|---|---|---|
| Edexcel 9EL0/02 Lang & Lit (Crossing Boundaries) Question Q8 | Summary – check paper: boundary crossings with moral or ethical implications | Crossing Boundaries: compare the chosen texts using linguistic and literary methods. Find the original paper. |
- report, p. 63. Candidates attended precisely to the question’s terms; producing relevant context was a key discriminator, and most chose gender contexts. Dracula was usually paired with Rossetti. Source details.
2023
Questions in this series. The recorded wording below is labelled as an excerpt or a summary; use the original paper for the complete instruction and any supplied passage.
| Paper and question | Recorded wording or focus | Task |
|---|---|---|
| Edexcel 9EL0/02 Lang & Lit (Crossing Boundaries) Question Q8 | Summary – check paper: boundary crossings that provoke strong reactions | Crossing Boundaries: compare the chosen texts using linguistic and literary methods. Find the original paper. |
- report, p. 69. Some neglected the precise focus – the reactions to crossings, not just the crossings themselves. Source details.
2025
Questions in this series. The recorded wording below is labelled as an excerpt or a summary; use the original paper for the complete instruction and any supplied passage.
| Paper and question | Recorded wording or focus | Task |
|---|---|---|
| Edexcel 9EL0/02 Lang & Lit (Crossing Boundaries) Question Q8 | Question excerpt: ‘Evaluate the effectiveness of the methods used… to present individuals who are strongly affected, physically and/or emotionally, by the crossing of a boundary.’ | Crossing Boundaries: compare the chosen texts using linguistic and literary methods. Find the original paper. |
- report, pp. 67–77. Many used Freud and Jung; any critical theory (psychoanalytic, Marxist, feminist, postcolonial) must rest on a secure understanding and be relevant to the question to earn credit. Source details.
Board-published candidate answers
Open the candidate-answer catalogue for links, reported marks, page references and what to learn from each response.
- 2025 report, Q8, Dracula + Twelfth Night, described by the examiners as high-achieving, pp. 67–77. The commentary says it starts weakly (over-complex sentences on the first page), then settles into a long, detailed discussion that attends closely to the question and meets all four assessment objectives. The mark is given in the report and has not been recorded here.
Using context on this paper
Context is a discriminator here, but the paper is a Language and Literature paper: examiners look first at how the writers’ methods (language, narrative structure, dramatic devices) present the crossing. Context drawn from a couple of famous scenes and left unanalysed is not enough; critical theory must be understood and relevant.
Papers and supporting documents
Open the board’s assessment-materials library. The source register records individual reports, mark schemes and access notes. Sources for studying and teaching Dracula.
Return to Chapter C · Past-question catalogue · Candidate answers
Prepared by the Bram Stoker Estate. Page last updated 8 November 2026. Report a correction here.