Welcome...

... to the LitWorks.com website, which provides literature resources to students worldwide working towards external examinations – and to their teachers.

What students?

Grades 11-13
Sixth Form
Further Education College

What examinations?

International Baccalaureate
US Advanced Placement
UK GCE Advanced Level

What resources?


  • Are you studying or teaching Shakespeare's Othello, Macbeth, Hamlet or King Lear?
  • Is Jane Austen's Persuasion or Chaucer's Canterbury Tales on your exam texts list?
  • Is Poetry and Prose Commentary an important part of your literature studies course?

These downloadable books are designed to help you...


Click on any of the book covers alongside to find out more.

 

Five of the study guides have been fully and independently reviewed by the US College Board. If you would like to read the reviews, click here to reach the AP Central website. Go to the green button AP COURSES AND EXAMS, then to Teachers' Resources, and put Wordsmith in the Search box.

 

Free Resources in Addition

To launch our new website, we have developed

 

The Wordsmith Prompts

 

We have selected a variety of literature texts commonly studied by students from Grade 10 upwards, and produced for them a series of Prompts (short study guides) based on actual classroom work.

 

Current Prompts are:

 

  • o Chinua Achebe Things Fall Apart
  • o Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness
  • o William Golding Lord of the Flies
  • o F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby
  • o John Knowles A Separate Peace

 

Click here to read more about these open-access study guides, and the new titles in preparation.

 

The website is registered with SafeBuy.
http://www.safebuy.org.uk

 

Click on a book cover to find more

 

Shakespeare

Othello

A Study Commentary

…If you are preparing for AP the Commentary's line-by-line analysis will give you a very complete insight into the play's fine detail, and help you develop the skills of close textual comment. It will also encourage you to...

Macbeth

A Study Commentary

…If you are a GCE A Level student the Commentary will improve your understanding of the play’s subtleties, and will help you with your course work and with commentary and essay questions in the final…

Hamlet

A Study Commentary

…If you are a teacher the Commentary will help you prepare the play for the classroom. Among other things it will suggest answers to some of the challenging questions your students are likely to ask; and it will be an invaluable resource for…

King Lear

A Study Commentary

...If you are an undergraduate student or a general reader you will find that the Commentary, scholarly in its focus yet informal in its tone, looks at the play in a refreshingly different way and comes to some new conclusions about it...

Unseen Commentary

Writing Unseen Commentaries

A Student Help Book

If you are an IB student following the A1 English course the Help Book will be invaluable as you prepare for the Unseen Commentary part of the final written exam. It makes use of many passages from past IB exams...

Workbook Editions

Chaucer's General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales

A Workbook Edition

This downloadable edition of the General Prologue has been designed to provide an alternative to the poem as a standard printed and bound...

Jane Austen's Persuasion

A Workbook Edition

…The margin notes are very detailed, encourage perceptive dialogue about the text, and make many suggestions for independent student work. Essay topics in the style of AP, IB Language A1 and...