This is an extract from my coming guide on An Inspector Calls essay writing.
If you want to see the ingredients of a good essay, you might want to read this previous post first.
This essay is typical of students who simply write as much as they can. I respect that as a way to get great marks. Points make prizes, and effort goes a long way.
I’ve kept exactly the same points and meaning, but halved the number of words. You can get a grade 7 with under 450 words, if you are a really good writer.
But, if you are a really good writer, you can write 900+ words and get 100%.
Anyway - this is not one of the shorter grade 7 essays in my guide.
Response 18: Character Question
Sheila begins the play as both obnoxious and immature, but develops and matures into an adult taking responsibility for her actions.
Initially she defers to her mother: “Yes, go on, Mummy”. We would associate “mummy” as the word choice of young children, which suggests Sheila is childlike. It’s also a vocabulary choice of the upper classes, and reflects the values of that society. Posh people are repressive. Alternatively, the word choice might indicate that Sheila herself has chosen to remain immature.
We associate adulthood with responsibility, taking responsibility and being aware of wider issues. Capitalist society rejected this, so capitalism may cause her immaturity. However, Sheila is transformed by the Inspector. He reveals her part in Eva’s death. This forces Sheila to mature and react differently to her parents.
She begins to defy Mrs Birling, and swaps “mummy” for “mother”: “Mother, I couldn’t possibly go”. She is now addressing her mother as a fellow adult. She has rejected her own immature outlook.
Priestley portrays her as taking personal responsibility and adopting socialist ideas, which she learns from Inspector Goole. In Act Two, she begins to side with him against her parents, declaring “You wait, Mother”. She begins to correct Mrs Birling. Sheila has learned that her actions affect others, so she is trying to use this to help her parents, by influencing them to think about social injustice.
The Inspector comments on this change in Sheila’s character, pointing out that the younger generation is “more impressionable”. Priestley MAKES Sheila take responsibility to criticise the older generations in his audience, to show that they are too attached to capitalist viewpoints. THROUGH Sheila he portrays a socialist viewpoint about social responsibility.
Sheila also feels tremendous remorse for her actions and feels greater guilt than the other characters. She keeps declaring that she wishes she had acted differently towards Eva, rather than being judgemental. She also loses any humour that she displayed in Act One.
She was judgemental towards Eric in Act One, calling him “squiffy”, and exposing his drunkenness to his parents. At that stage, Sheila was keen to blame others, and she probably wanted Eric to be criticised by her parents.
However, in Act Three she takes responsibility for her own actions first, saying “it was I who had the girl…” Declaring it was “I” shows how she has transformed, and stopped accusing others, “you”.
In conclusion, her guilt and remorse now make her focus on herself. This makes her less critical of her family and more accepting of the Inspector’s message.
Original 815 words
421 words
22 marks
Examiner Comments
· This is a logical answer
· And always answers the question
· There is a large range of references
· And these are always used to give explanations
· The essay builds an argument about Priestley’s ideas
· And how he uses Sheila as a construct to demonstrate those ideas
· The student analyses language very effectively for AO2
· And AO3 context is used to show Priestley’s ideas
· To improve, write more about the methods, linking them to Priestley’s ideas
My Comments
Quotes 9
Explanations 21
METHODS 2
Context 9
Society 2
Patriarchal 0
Thesis Statement Yes
Conclusion Yes
Time after time we’re reading introductions instead of real thesis statements. The thesis statement has to include Priestley’s purpose, his messages. It explains the ‘so what’ or the ‘why’.
So,
Priestley presents Sheila’s transformation in the play so that he can show his audience that even privileged upper classes can learn social responsibility. He focuses on a female character to transform most because he is appealing to a 1945 audience of women who have been empowered by the second world war. And then then contrasts that transformation Sheila experienced in 1912 with the tragic ending of the play to suggest that women of the earlier generation were victims of patriarchal power and control.
That’s a 3 part thesis.
It’s also a kick ass essay plan.
It also means I have to write about the ending.
When I prove those 3 things in my essay it will be almost impossible not to get at least a grade 8.
Now, jump to the conclusion. Because the student ignored Priestley’s message or purpose at the beginning of the essay, they also ignored it at the end. This student could have walked a grade 9.
There are no PREZE* paragraphs. The penultimate one looks like it might be, but there is no analysis of the longer quote. That quote is just there to give us context.
Normally I would count an explanation as anything which follows a word like ‘suggests’, ‘implies’, ‘reveals’, ‘emphasises’, ‘highlights’, ‘indicates’, ‘connotes’, etc. These words are always used after a quote. But, if you aren’t quoting, but just referring to the text, this is too narrow.
Explanations then become opinions. You might argue an opinion is just a point, and not an explanation, which is true. But, if I say ‘When Sheila stands up to her parents we can see that she has been transformed from a people pleasing young woman into a more independent woman’ I am still explaining, even though I’m just giving my opinion. There is no quote, and there is no ‘explain’ vocabulary. So, this does make counting explanations a little tricky, but I hope the numbers will give us a helpful picture of what actually scores the marks.
The examiner is all excited about the way that the student has written about Sheila as a ‘construct’. This is because it tells the examiner that the student knows the character was created on purpose, to carry a message. You can see this in the paragraph with the two METHODS in it. It’s paragraph 6. You should go back and read it again.
Ok, paragraph 6 is the only paragraph where the student writes about Priestley’s message. All the other paragraphs explain what we should understand about Sheila. But this paragraph explains how Priestley uses what we understand about Sheila to help us understand society better, and what we must do in society. That’s where the grade 7 is earned.
That’s what the examiner’s final bullet point means – write more paragraphs like this. And I say, it is so easy to do that in your thesis and your conclusion – a grade 9 was just sitting there.
To be fair to this student, they have earned a grade 7 through sheer effort. They wrote 815 words. Points make prizes – they have just written as many explanations as they can. But, a lot of that was using too many words to get to the point – I was able to get rid of nearly half of them when I trimmed it down to 421 words. If this student has spent 60 minutes of revision practising how to get rid of words they don’t need, they would have had loads of time in the exam to craft that thesis statement and conclusion.
*What’s a PREZE Paragraph?
99% of English teachers teach a paragraph structure.
They make up lots of mnemonics to try to cover all the bases. I’ve just made PREZE up, having read hundreds of answers. Because, what is noticeable, is that essays students write in exams don’t use paragraph structures very much at all.
You just don’t need them.
However, there are occasions where zooming in on a word in a quote you have already analysed is really useful.
It is Point, Reference, Explain, Zoom, Explain. PREZE. Think of this as your Christmas PREZE.
If you continually wrote like that, you would get very good marks. I don’t teach my students to do that, because it slows you down in the exam.
For a start, it depends on having a quote each time. You can get loads of explanations – money in the bank – with references to moments in the play, without ever quoting.
And you can get much more by paraphrasing a quote (if you don’t remember the exact words), and explaining that.
So, I teach students to bosh out as many explanations as possible. Your paragraphs structure will vary according to what you want to explain – if you can zoom in on a single word, awesome. 100% do it. But if you can’t, who cares? Race on to the next explanation.