Evidence, other sources, and planning with a grid
What the standard means by evidence
- The Explanatory Notes are precise: supported by evidence refers to the use of specific and relevant details to support an argument, and it may include quotations and/or references to the studied texts and/or other sources.
- Specific — a detail a reader could go and check. Not the film uses close-ups, but the only close-up in the scene is of the sign, at 4:12.
- Relevant — evidence for your claim, not evidence that the text exists. A quotation proving a scene happened is not evidence for a connection.
- To support an argument — evidence attaches to a claim. Evidence with no claim above it is illustration, and illustration is what a Level 2 report is made of.
- Quotations are permitted but never required. The Notes say quotations and/or references, so a described shot, a count, a placement or a bounded absence is evidence in full standing.
Other sources — the Level 3 permission most students miss
- The Notes allow evidence from other sources, not only from the studied texts. This is a genuine widening and the cheapest route to informed at Merit.
- Three ways to use another source well: context that changes a reading (what a form is required to contain, what a genre conventionally does); a critical or analytical source offering a way of reading that you then test on your texts, including where it fails; and a factual check that makes a claim verifiable rather than assumed.
- Two rules keep it safe:
- The other source supports your argument; it does not replace it. Reporting what a source says about a text substitutes someone else's judgement for your own, and judgement is the assessed thing.
- Attribute arguments, assert findings. Say whose the opinion is; use the fact plainly.
- One well-used outside source is worth five decorative ones. If you do not know where to start, check exactly one fact per text.
Planning with a grid
- Build a grid before you plan the shape of the response. It is the tool that makes a four-text argument possible.
- Rows are texts — four rows.
- Columns are the parts of the connection — the specific things you claim all four share.
- Cells contain written-out evidence, not reminders. Sign at 0:40, edge of frame — not the sign thing. A reminder gets filled in from memory when you write, and that is where inaccuracy enters.
- Read the grid three ways, in this order:
- Down a column — this shows the connection holds. It is the establishing half.
- Across a row — this shows what one text does. Useful for checking, dangerous as a plan.
- Across the columns, comparing rows — this is where the argument is: which text does the most with the shared thing, where the pattern breaks, which two agree against the other two.
- A response that follows the grid down its columns is Level 2. A response that reads across is Level 3.
What an empty cell tells you
- An empty cell is information, not a gap to fill with something vague. It has three repairs, and choosing the wrong one is the usual error:
- You have not looked hard enough. Go back to the text with that column as the only question.
- Your column is worded wrong. Reword it more specifically, so the other three stay filled and the fourth joins them.
- The text genuinely does not do it. Say so and make it part of the argument. A named exception is far stronger than a forced inclusion, because it shows you tested the claim.
- Never fill an empty cell with a paraphrase of the column heading.
Worked Example
Worked Example
The four-text set, all described specially for this topic: Notice of Closure, The Long Paddock, Crossing, Fifteen Minutes.
The connection: each text gives the consequences of a decision and withholds whoever made it.
Build the grid, read it, and handle what it shows.
Answer:
Step 1 — set the columns from the connection. The claim has three parts, so the grid has three columns.
| Text | How the agent is removed | What is given instead | Where the text stops |
|---|---|---|---|
| Notice | Agentless passives: has been closed | A reference to an unquoted test result | Before any consequence |
| The Long Paddock | We were told, six times, no teller | A dated day the narrator knew | Years after, at a new gate |
| Crossing | No character states the sale; a sign carries it | The sign at the edge of frame from 0:40 | At the gate, before the road |
| Fifteen Minutes | (empty) | Four callers, each cut when they name a person | On the hour, mid-sentence |
Step 2 — handle the empty cell. The callers do name the council, repeatedly, so the column as worded is false there. It is not that I failed to look — the naming is the most audible thing in the segment. The column is worded wrong: how the agent is removed assumes removal happens in the grammar. Reword more specifically: how the text prevents the decision being answered.
Refilled cell: the host cuts each caller at the moment they move from the institution to a person, so the segment names a body and never reaches anybody. The other three rows still fill, and they fill better — the notice does not merely omit an actor, it forecloses a reply.
Step 3 — read across, not down. Down the columns: all four remove the agent — true, evidenced, finished. Across: three texts prevent the reply by construction; one prevents it in real time, in a format that exists for replying, and the one that tries hardest gets nowhere.
Step 4 — bring in one other source, for informed. A checkable point about what a council notice is required to state makes its silence a choice within a rule rather than an authorial invention, which changes the judgement.