Hi.
I received 40/40 on my inspector calls gcse question thanks to you- securing myself 9, 9 in english lit and language. Would you like my script to use?
But honestly I can’t thank you enough. I’ve encouraged friends in year 11 to watch your videos so they can improve too🙏🙏
Noah Cutts
Thanks Noah - here is the essay!
Let’s call this an average of 7 words per line. Noah writes about 27 lines per page for the last 5 pages, and 13 lines on page 1.
That gives a total of (7x27x5) + (7x13) = 1036 words.
This is typical of full mark essays, and grade 9 essays. Points make prizes, simple as that.
If you aren’t practising writing fast, you aren’t practising getting grade 9.
This was written for the Edexcel paper.
Mark Scheme:
AO1
There is an assured personal response,
showing a high level of engagement with the text and
discerning choice of references to the text.
A critical style is developed with maturity,
perceptive understanding and interpretation with
discerning choice of references to the text.
AO3
The understanding of relevant contexts is excellent.
Understanding of the relationship between text and context is integrated convincingly into the response.
AO4
High performance-in the context of the Level of Demand of the question,
Learners spell and punctuate with consistent accuracy, and
consistently use vocabulary and sentence structures to achieve effective control of meaning.
The items in bold italic are different to AQA - but overall, both exam boards want the same thing from a grade 9 essay: it needs to be well argued and perceptive.
What Scores the Marks?
Your Thesis Statement should make it easy to work out what the topic of the question is.
Noah has gone into the exam knowing in advance that he wants to write a thesis statement which explains two aspects of context - one, that this is a socialist play, and two, that the tragedy is Aristotelian.
This means that he is not really integrating his context into his argument - it kind of stands on its own here. It is only at the end of the thesis statement that he uses the key words of the question ‘the younger generation’.
This means his thesis statement ignores the second bullet point of AO3.
So, my advice is, do plan your thesis statement in advance. But, in the exam, make it relevant to the question as quickly as possible by introducing the key words from the question in your first line.
So:
Priestley portrays the younger generation of 1912 to promote his socialist message to their children in 1945. His play follows the Aristotelian conventions of tragedy in order to illustrate the terrible consequences of not following socialist principles in society between 1912 and 1945.
This is a very weak quote to back up the idea that Eric is a socialist. His words about the Birlings seeking higher profits justifying the workers’ need for higher wages would have been much better here.
"Why shouldn't they try for higher wages? We try for the highest possible prices."
But, the examiner has a kind of checklist of Priestley’s ideas:
Eric is sympathetic to the working classes
He challenges his father’s capitalist ideas
Edwardian society was patriarchal, so Eric also attacks the sexist control of women
Noah writes about all of these, so it’s tick, tick, tick from the examiner.
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Noah has introduced an alternative interpretation of Eric’s behaviour here, which is always going to give you higher grades.
He leaps to this a little too quickly, as we don’t see exactly what social responsibility Eric is denying - his alcoholism, his stealing from his father, his probable rape of Eva - but Noah is beginning to make the case that perhaps Eric has not learned the Inspector’s lesson or, if he has, that it will not have enough power for Eric to make use of it.
This is a sophisticated argument. Although the younger generation might hold socialist beliefs, they will never be able to live up to them because of the privileged lifestyle they’ve led, and the wealth they continue to enjoy.
There are no extra marks for using the words ‘proletariat’, ‘bourgeois’ (adjective) and ‘bourgeoisie’ (noun). Noah actually confuses the last two. So, I tend not to use these words - working class and upper class are good enough for me.
Notice how Noah writes about society and Priestley’s views - this is what earns the marks.
You should know by now that writing about the characters as ‘constructs’ is the way to show the examiners you understand the writer’s ideas.
Noah uses this as a springboard to analyse Priestley’s ideas about social responsibility.
Writing about one character as the ‘foil’ of another also emphasises how the play is constructed in order to promote Priestley’s message (in simplistic terms younger generation good vs their foil, older generation bad).
The quote ‘we are members of one body’ would have helped Noah here. It is one I would slip into every essay.
This paragraph has gone a bit rogue. Noah doesn’t tell us what was ‘vile’. He doesn’t link Mrs Birling’s actions, in denying charity to Eva, to the consequence: Eva’s suicide and murder of her unborn child.
So, he loses a lot of Priestley’s message and anger.
However, he is able to link to Priestley’s ideas, so it scores marks.
You’ll notice that Noah keeps bringing context into his explanations of Priestley’s ideas. This is excellent.
(You never have to introduce context by saying ‘contextually’, in the same way that you wouldn’t introduce your analysis by saying ‘analytically’).
This is a weaker analysis of Mrs Birling’s language, but the examiner is happy because Noah is linking it to Priestley’s socialist ideas.
Noah makes this relevant to the question by always referring to the perspectives of the older and younger generations.
This is a bit confusion.
Noah makes the strong case that Mrs Birling is being wilfully blind to Eric’s actions and responsibility.
He suggests that Priestley uses this to criticise upper class society, as this is what Mrs Birling represents.
But he also asserts that this is a criticism of the patriarchal society and that Mrs Birling is a victim of it. This needs a lot more explanation to make sense.
Points 1 and 2 score well, but point 3 is left hanging.
As soon as you say that the Inspector is a proxy for Priestley’s views, you are treating the Inspector as a construct.
So, you get higher marks.
Linking Priestley’s portrayal of the younger generation to his desire for social responsibility is a strong link to the conclusion.
The socialist and Christian context of 1945 is also cleverly linked to the theme of social responsibility.