Paper 1 Reading: Explorations in Creative Reading

Paper 1 Section A gives you one extract of literature fiction, from the 20th or 21st century — an opening, an ending, a descriptive passage or a moment of character. There is nothing to revise in the sense of facts to learn. What is assessed is what you can do with a text you have never seen, so what you practise is the method for each question.

The four questions are always in the same order, always worth the same marks, and each targets a different assessment objective. Knowing which is which tells you what to write.

Read the whole extract once before answering anything, and read the question line references carefully. Each question except Q3 restricts you to a specific part of the source, and writing about the wrong lines scores nothing however good the analysis is.

Question 1 is four marks for four separate pieces of information from a short stated section — typically lines 1 to 6. Write four short, separate statements. They can be quotations or your own words, but each must be true, must come from those lines only, and must be about the thing named. Do not analyse, and do not write a paragraph. It should take five minutes.

Question 2 gives you a printed extract of about ten lines and asks how the writer uses language to create a specific effect. The bullets tell you what to look at, and using all three is the safest route to the higher band: words and phrases, language features and techniques, and sentence forms.

The structure that earns marks is a short chain repeated three times: quote something brief, name what it is, explain the effect on the reader, then zoom in on one word within the quotation and explain that. Three of those in ten minutes is a strong answer.

What separates bands here is not spotting more techniques — it is saying more about each one. "The writer uses a simile" is identification. "The simile 'darted over the rocks like flames' makes the lizards seem part of the heat itself, and 'darted' adds a suddenness that makes the stillness elsewhere feel heavier" is analysis.

Question 3 is the one students find hardest, because they answer it as if it were another language question. It is not about words — it is about the order things are revealed in, and how that order affects the reader.

Structure means the whole source, so ignore individual word choices and look at the shape of the extract:

• What the writer focuses your attention on at the beginning, and why that opening choice matters • How and where the focus shifts — from a wide setting to a single person, from outside to inside, from one character to another • Whether the perspective changes, or the passage of time speeds up or slows down • Whether anything is repeated, contrasted or foreshadowed • How it ends, and what the ending leaves the reader with

The reliable plan is beginning, middle, end: one paragraph on each, saying what the writer does and why it interests the reader. Use structural vocabulary — shifts, focus, contrast, repetition, cyclical, foreshadowing, zooming in, panning out — because the mark scheme asks for relevant subject terminology.

Question 4 is worth 20 marks, half of Section A, and gives you a student's opinion about the second part of the source, then asks to what extent you agree.

The word "evaluate" is what makes this different from Question 2. You are not only explaining how the writer creates an effect — you are judging how successfully they do it, and taking a position on the statement.

A method that fits the twenty minutes:

1. Decide your position before writing. Agreeing largely, or agreeing with part of the statement and questioning another part, both work — but a clear stance beats a survey 2. Take each bullet in the question in turn, because between them they cover the statement 3. For each, quote from the specified part of the source, analyse how the writer's choices create that impression, then judge how effectively it works 4. Refer to the statement's actual words as you go, so the examiner can see you are answering it rather than writing generally about the text 5. Finish with a clear overall judgement

The phrases that show evaluation are worth having ready: "this is convincing because…", "the writer succeeds in making the reader…", "this is particularly effective, since…", "I would go further than the student here, because…"

Every one of these questions rewards the same underlying habit: quote briefly, and say what the quotation does to the reader. Long quotations waste time, and quotations left without comment earn nothing at all. Two or three words is usually enough to make a point.