In the summer 2018 exams, more than a quarter of a million students failed to achieve above half marks in
AQA English language paper 1 question 3. This question
is less about what is happening, and more about where it's happening and why. And in this video we'll look at how to maximise your marks in this tricky structure analysis question.
Question 3 is an 8 mark question, analysing the writer’s use of structure.
The assessment objective is: A02: Explain, comment on and analyse how writers
use language and structure to achieve effects and influence readers, using relevant subject
terminology to support their view. But just as question 2 focused only on the
language element of this assessment objective, question 3 focuses only on the structure element.
So what does it actually mean to analyse structure in an extract?
Put simply, structure is about how the text is organised: the order things take place
in. Structure analysis is less about what’s happening in a source, and more about where
it’s happening and why. There’s a subtle difference between the what and the where,
but it is absolutely essential that you get your head around it. One of the most common
mistakes I see is that students end up writing answers to question 3 that are pretty much
the same as the answers they are writing to question 2. Let’s make sure that doesn’t
happen for you. Let’s look at a sample question:
You now need to think about the whole of the source.
This text is from the beginning of a short story.
How has the writer structured the text to interest you as a reader?
You could write about: What the writer focuses your attention on
at the beginning of the source How and why the writer changes this focus
as the source develops Any other structural features that interest
you. [8 marks] So there are two things students struggle
with: no.1 what kinds of things are structural features, and no.2 how do I write about them
in a way to get above 3 or 4 marks. Let’s start with a quick overview of some of the
most common structural features: Flashbacks and flashforwards - where we go
back in time or forward in time from the current moment in the story
Shifts in focus and perspective - where the focus changes perhaps from outside to it,
or from setting to character, from action to dialogue
Zooming in and out - where the description moves like with a camera zooming in close
to one detail and then zooming out to a broader, bigger description
Repetitions - where something appears throughout the text, for example continual references
to weather Cyclical structure - where a story begins
or ends in the same place Foreshadowing - an advance hint of something
that is to come later And on it goes
However, it’s important to point out that the source may have none of these - structure
is all about the shifting, moving, changing focus of an extract. You might only be able
to write about these more subtle points such as alternating between action and dialogue,
building up of tension, or the move from outside to in.
Whatever you find, it’s not enough to just spot these structural features and even to
add some generic comment on effect such as ‘it draws you in’ or ‘it makes you want
to read on’. No, once again, just like in question 2, analysis of effects should be
precise, and contextualized to a specific point in the text.
And that’s tricky. It’s tricky because what it essentially means is this: depending
on what the extract is about, and what happens in it, the effect of the structural device
could be totally different. Let me give you a quick example: in ‘Frankenstein’ chapter
5, Frankenstein creates a monster, bringing it to life, and just as that happens, there’s
this flashback. In that example, we could say that the flashback is used as a digression
to create tension, as the reader feels more and more anxious to return to the tale of
the monster, probably imagining all the awful things it is doing. But in our extract here
with Brightly, there is also a flashback. It’s a flashback to the Church service and
the song which inspired him how to name his dog. But is it used as a digression to create
tension? Not at all. It’s used perhaps to illustrate the power of hope upon Brightly,
and how dark and miserable his life was that a song about a ‘glorified dairy filled with
milk and honey’ had this amazing effect upon a man who was ‘very hungry’. In this
way the writer has demonstrated how hunger and despair can destroy a person so that a
simple song can provide such solace/hope. And that’s how you get beyond the half marks
so many students fail to: Write about the effect in a specific way, avoiding vague and
generalised comments.
Let’s have a look at a sample paragraph: The story begins and ends with Brightly moving
along on his journey. The story begins with Brightly wearily walking, ’Up the road…to
St Mary Tavy…came Brightly, his basket dragging on his arm.” and ends with him dreaming
about ‘a little cart’ as he ‘tramped the moor’. By beginning and ending the story
with Brightly’s journey, the writer creates a circular narrative where Brightly is trapped
in his life of poverty, and mirroring the cycle of poverty Brightly finds himself in.
The writer illuminates how it doesn’t matter what Brightly dreams of, he is still hungry
and homeless, walking across a landscape he is too blind to appreciate, and unable to
ever achieve his dreams.