Take a look at this table. It comes from the essay writing guide I’ve just finished writing on An Inspector Calls.
Across the top are grades 4 - 9+.
9+ means the student scored 30/30 in the exam.
These are the results of studying 31 An Inspector Calls essays, marked by senior AQA examiners.
What does ‘feature’ mean?
These are the ingredients I think you need in any essay on An Inspector Calls.
Quotes means just that, but also misquotes, and quotes given to the wrong character, and paraphrases of quotes. It also includes quotes of one or two words which are repeated from a longer quote (so, effectively, the same quote can count twice). In other words, the examiner is very generous in their definition of a quote.
Explanations normally means whatever follows on from ‘this: implies, suggests, shows, means, indicates’ - what we would all understand as an explanation.
But I have also included opinions here, because the above sort of explanation usually happens after a quote, rather than an event.
For example,
‘We can see that Priestley wants to discredit Eric through his drunken behaviour in Act 1 and his later threat of violence towards his mother when he discovers her part in the death of his unborn baby’.
This has none of the words which tell us there is an explanation.
Methods are what you would normally think of as a named method - ‘stage direction, simile, metaphor, euphemism, contrast’ etc. But it also includes anything Priestley does - ‘Priestley uses’, ‘Priestley makes’, ‘Priestley constructs’.
I’ve excluded ‘portrays’ and ‘presents’, as presents is always in the question and, to avoid copyright infringements, I’ve usually changed it to portrays. Similarly, I’ve excluded all the words which mean ‘shows’.
Context is all the usual historical stuff you would expect - capitalism, socialism, class, 1912, 1945, World War, the Suffragettes. I haven’t included ‘social inequality’, because that is normally in the question prompt.
But, another aspect of context is the ‘audience’, ‘we’, ‘us’ - because this lets the examiner know we realised that Priestley is trying to change our thoughts or feelings - we are therefore the context of the play too.
What does this mean?
Students at grade 4 just can’t be arsed.
They don’t write much.
They’ve learned hardly any quotes.
They waffle, so it takes so many words for them to explain anything.
They don’t have much to explain, because they have learned hardly any quotes. It’s a vicious circle.
Students at grade 5 work quite a bit harder.
They write 124 words more, which is 35% more than grade 4 students!
They double the number of explanations,
and nearly double the number of quotes.
They have more to explain, so they express themselves more clearly, with less waffle, taking 30 words per explanation.
Students at grade 6 are almost exactly like grade 5 students. They just work harder.
They’ve memorised 3 more quotes.
They’ve written 57 more words, with one more explanation. Their word count is therefore 12% more. Not a massive leap. Most grade 5 students could write 12% more quickly.
Students at grade 7 are almost exactly like grade 6 students. They just work harder.
They’ve only memorised one extra quote.
But they’ve managed 4 more explanations because they’ve written way more words.
They’ve written 101 more words, which is 19% harder work.
Students at grade 8 and 9 know more than grade 7 students, because they work harder.
They’ve memorised more quotes, at 12.
They write much faster, and much more at 851 words. That’s 32% more.
You know these students have probably practised writing at speed a lot more. It is the only way to get faster.
They know more, which we can tell from their context score, which is almost double that of grade 6 and 7 students.
Students at grade 9+, who get full marks, are exactly the same as grade 9 students. They just work harder.
They’ve only learned one more quote.
But they write as though they’re fighting a duel with the devil, and the fastest hand gets to go to heaven.
They write 941 words, which is 11% faster.
In 40 minutes, they average 24 words per minute. Try it for yourself. How hard is it going to be?
They also know two crucial pieces of information. If you keep writing about society, and deal with the issue of women in the patriarchal society, it is much easier to write more explanations. And better explanations.
How hard is that?
What I’ve Learned
Either AQA has chosen a very peculiar sample of essays, or the standard of teaching this text is poor.
I don’t understand how any student doesn’t automatically write about socialism and capitalism when writing about this play. It is literally beyond my imagination - anyone who can chew gum while walking in a straight line can do this.
I am similarly incredulous about the refusal to write about society. That is literally the main point of the play - the whole thing is about creating a better society.
Over 70% of English teachers are women. I read a newspaper article virtually every day about some sort of patriarchal abuse of women. The media is obsessed with it. My daughter and my wife are both convinced women are discriminated against at every turn.
They get very annoyed with me pointing out that women do better at school, 58% of graduates are women, women get paid equally well or better up to the age of 30, live longer, have more friends, report greater happiness, that over 54% of newly qualified doctors and about 70% of new lawyers are women, that 69% of school leaders are women.
I give them research which shows patriarchal disadvantaging happens not because of men keeping women down, but because of society’s sexist organisation of early childhood provision, which mean one partner usually has to take a less time consuming role, and women disproportionately take on that role.
Claudia Goldin has just won the Nobel Prize for economics for her research proving just this. I’m not making it up.
But my point is this.
I don’t need you to accept that. You can come back at all of these with alternative facts. In fact, I want you to, because it makes the next bit more shocking.
If even I, a person who believes that women are getting a pretty good deal (as well as some terrible examples of poor male behaviour along the way) - if even I can say Priestley is out to expose the terrible injustice of patriarchal society, why isn’t it on every English teacher’s lips?
Why isn’t it in every essay?
Instead, it is ONLY in essays that score 30/30!
I mean, you can get a grade 9 without ever considering this perspective. That’s awful.
I don’t see how you can get even a grade 6. It’s a bit like writing about Macbeth without mentioning the witches, or about Romeo and Juliet without mentioning the feud.
It’s like visiting a doctor who says, ‘Cancer, isn’t that a star sign?’
What is happening to the subject I love?
Am I blaming female teachers because they outnumber male teachers. No! I’m blaming every teacher who doesn’t teach the text properly. And I am blaming the exam boards who will happily give out top grades to students who have only a superficial understanding of the play.
If the exam board demanded more subject knowledge, teachers would deliver it. Teachers are motivated by the progress of their students - we all want our students to do well. But, because AQA doesn’t want to make students better at English, teachers come to have a warped view of what being good at English actually means.
Anyway, never mind my meltdown - the good news for you is that you really don’t have much competition when it comes to getting 30/30.
You just have to write really fast and use a few key words. You are living in a golden age where top grades have never been easier to achieve.