Module B (Standard): essay craft and personal informed evaluation quiz

About 20 minutes

About 40 minutes

About 70 minutes

The full 2 hours if needed

The text is a classic and deserves to be studied.

The text has many themes that are still relevant today.

The text's distinctive language and structural design sustain a coherent vision of [specific concern], whose continuing significance lies in [defensible position], earned by [specific textual features the body will quote].

This essay will analyse various techniques in the prescribed text.

From a single famous passage repeated across paragraphs

From across the whole text, with short embedded quotations chosen for what they let you argue at the level the feature operates

From summaries of the text rather than direct quotation

From secondary critics rather than the text itself

Quoting too many short phrases

Listing literary features without arguing the meaning they produce or how they work together

Memorising too many techniques before the exam

Using technical terminology in the essay

Topic sentence, plot summary, a couple of techniques named, link

Topic sentence linking to thesis, short embedded quotation, close reading at the feature's scale, integration sentence linking form/structure/language, evaluative sentence contributing to the personal informed view, link

Topic sentence, biographical context, modern relevance, link

Topic sentence, list of all the times the feature appears, restatement, link

In autobiographical first-person, with personal anecdotes about how the text made you feel

As an analytical argument that takes a defensible position on the text's significance, grounded in evidence and analysis throughout, not reserved for the conclusion

Only in the conclusion, as a brief reflection on whether you liked the text

Avoided entirely; only objective analysis is rewarded

Asserting that the text is well-structured in the introduction and assuming the marker agrees

Showing in paragraph after paragraph how a form decision, a structural decision and language choices work together to produce a single coherent vision

Counting the features the text uses and noting their frequency

Comparing the text's structure to another text's structure

Because the marker has not read the text

Because plot summary tells the marker what happens without arguing how the text's features produce meaning; it is engagement, not close engagement

Because the syllabus prohibits any reference to plot

Because plot summary is too short to fill the essay

A summary of the body paragraphs in different words

A new piece of evidence saved for the end

A push beyond summary to claim the textual evidence's larger significance for the text's coherent vision and the responder's reading

A statement of how the student now feels about the text

By writing the longest essay possible

By covering every chapter or scene at equal length

By drawing short embedded quotations from across the text, tracking patterns and recurrences, and arguing them cumulatively as evidence of the integrated reading

By citing the year the text was published in the introduction