Literary essay skills, Year 10: Paper 1, tracing a theme and learning quotations

105

提示It is half an hour shorter than Paper 2.

为什么That is 1 hour 45 minutes for two essays, so a little over 50 minutes each including reading the extract and planning.

64

提示Two equal essays, plus a few marks for accurate writing on the first.

为什么Section A (Shakespeare) is 30 marks plus 4 for accurate writing; Section B (the nineteenth-century novel) is 30.

40; 60

提示The second paper is longer and has three sections, so it carries more.

为什么Paper 1 has two essays; Paper 2 has an essay, a poetry comparison and two unseen poetry answers.

A Shakespeare play and a nineteenth-century novel

提示One text is drama, the other prose fiction.

为什么You answer one question on each: the play your school chose in Section A and the novel it chose in Section B.

The text as a whole

提示The extract is a starting point, not the limit.

为什么A balanced answer analyses the printed lines closely and then links them to other moments in the play or novel, from memory.

No: both papers are closed book

提示Think about what is printed on the exam paper for you.

为什么Everything beyond the extract has to come from memory, which is why learning short quotations and key moments matters.

A theme

提示It is what the text is about underneath the plot.

为什么A theme is not the same as the story. The story is what happens; a theme is an idea the events keep raising.

The beginning, the middle and the end

提示Spread them out so that a change can be seen.

为什么Three well-spaced moments let you show how the idea develops. Three moments from the same chapter or scene can only show how it stands at one point.

What the writer shows or suggests about it

提示Finish the thought: power is presented as…

为什么“This play is about power” gives the examiner nothing to assess. “The play presents power taken by force as impossible to enjoy” is a view you can prove.

Link the extract to an earlier or later moment and say what has changed

提示Use a phrase that points to another stage of the text.

为什么Development means difference over time: a character's view hardens, an image comes back with a new meaning, a hope turns out false.

A motif

提示A five-letter term borrowed from French; music and design use it too.

为什么Following a motif is a practical way to trace a theme: you note each time the image returns and what is different about it.

They are easier to remember accurately and easier to work into your own sentence

提示Think about memory, and about how the finished writing will read.

为什么A short quotation also pushes you to comment on particular words, which is where the analysis marks are.

An embedded quotation

提示The first word of the term also describes something fixed firmly inside something else.

为什么For example: The narrator calls the house “a tomb with windows”, which makes it sound lifeless. The quoted words are part of the sentence, not parked after it.

Refer precisely to the moment in your own words

提示The assessment objective speaks of references as well as quotations.

为什么A precise reference says who does what, and where in the text. It counts as evidence. Never make up a quotation: an invented one is worse than an accurate reference.

Ones that fit more than one character or theme

提示You do not know what the question will be.

为什么A line that shows a character, a theme and a method at once can be used whatever the question asks. Sort your list by theme and by character to test this.

B

提示In one of them the quoted words are part of the student's own sentence.

为什么In A the quotation is dropped in and left unexplained. In B it is embedded and followed by a comment on what the image suggests.