The examiner’s report for 2022 commented that:
Quoting or referring to parts of the source which aren’t in the question leads to low marks.
The question will nearly always focus on the last half of the source.
As usual, the examiners chose a passage where it was very easy to partially agree, and very difficult to fully agree, or fully disagree. This is because the question wants you to evaluate.
Most students don’t write about enough quotations or events to get many marks. Points make prizes.
Many students ran out of steam, and didn’t write about the end of the passage. There will always be something important at the end.
The students who got most easy marks realised they could write about both language features and changes of focus in this question. It means they easily found more to write about.
Students who followed the text through from beginning to end found that their answer automatically had a structure which convinced the examiners.
If you write brilliantly about 11 points, you will only get 11 marks – your brilliance doesn’t earn you extra marks. Volume does.
The basic idea is still that you have to write a lot – 20 explained points to get 20 marks.
If you want to read 24 student marked answers to 3 exam papers, complete with detailed examiner comments, click here.
Hello! Thanks for all your great resources - glad to have signed up on my son's behalf. Your tips are excellent for those who are trying to lift up their grades but we were wondering if you were able to help out those of us who are struggling to get off the blocks!? Due to health reasons my Y9 son has missed out most of his KS3 and is really struggling with the literature essays - if it were a 100m race to GCSEs he's starting about 100m behind his peers. We will be here for a couple of years trying to catch up... Aiming for a Grade 9 at the moment is way too much for him so we wondered if you could give us some pointers on how to use your method to write for lower grades to start with? That way he can start with the basics and then hopefully work up from there over time.... Alternatively take one of your Grade 9 students' papers and reduce it down to a Grade 5 and a Grade 7 so we can see the difference? Thanks!