Teaching notes · Example 2
Teaching notes: Foreigners and belonging in Dracula
Essay question“In Dracula, foreigners are presented negatively.” With reference to Stoker’s narrative methods, and relevant contextual information, show to what extent you agree with the above statement.
These notes sit outside the essay. Related candidate scripts belong to their examination boards and are identified by board, year and task. A reported mark applies to that script, not to the Estate’s example.
Chapter C: Ccea course guide, sources and reports · Board-published candidate-response catalogue.
Teaching notes and examiner feedback
Board-published responses
No CCEA exemplar script on Dracula has been retrieved for this collection. That does not establish whether one is available. The nearest board material, clearly labelled as from a different board and question, is a full-mark (40/40) Dracula and Dorian Gray essay on “menace” in Pearson Edexcel’s 2019 report. It reads the Count as society’s fear of the foreign “other”, then makes its decisive move: it asks who is doing the excluding. That is the move our essay makes with the hunting band. Pearson 2019 report, pp. 86–93 (the board’s own material).
What the examiners said
From the CCEA Chief Examiner’s Report, GCE English Literature, Summer 2022, AS 2, Question 6(b), p. 13, unless stated.
- Only a small proportion of candidates wrote convincingly on this question.
- The strongest answers weighed both kinds of foreigner. They set the negatively presented Count and vampire women against the positively presented Van Helsing and Quincey Morris, the outsiders inside the hunting band.
- Answer the question set. Many candidates wrote as if the question were an earlier one on fear of foreigners, which is a different task.
- Get the facts right. Some candidates wrongly treated Renfield as a foreigner.
- Narrative methods, not micro-methods (AS 2 general comments, pp. 9–10). Write about structure, motif, setting and point of view, not isolated techniques. “AO2 rightly regarded is not decorative; it is functional.” Situate each quotation: who speaks, to whom, and when.
- Context. The supplied report notes describe context that was poorly connected to the novel. Integrate brief, relevant historical information into the argument; consult the current marking grid in Chapter C.
Points to test
Does the thesis survive its strongest counter-evidence? Check every quotation’s chapter, speaker and context. Where could a different interpretation change the conclusion?
Prepared by the Bram Stoker Estate. Page last updated 8 November 2026. Report a correction here.