From analysis to argument
What "respond critically" adds
- Critically does not mean negatively. It means exercising judgement — reaching a position and defending it.
- The Explanatory Notes define responding critically as making evaluative interpretations and judgements. Two things are named, and they are not the same.
- A Level 2 essay moved unchanged to Level 3 stalls at Achieved. Explaining how three techniques create an effect is a complete Level 2 answer and an incomplete Level 3 one, because nothing has been judged.
- The missing material is usually one sentence per paragraph — which is why candidates who write well are so often marked lower than they expect.
Interpretation and judgement are different
- An interpretation says what the text means or does.
- The parking space stands for the identity the job gave him.
- It can be right or wrong, but it is a report about the text.
- A judgement says something about that interpretation.
- Making the space an allocated one rather than a chosen one is what makes the symbol work.
- It can be agreed with or disputed by someone who accepts the interpretation.
- Both are required. Judgement with no interpretation under it is opinion; interpretation with no judgement on top of it is Level 2.
- Interpret, then judge. A paragraph that opens with the judgement usually spends the rest of itself hunting for evidence.
Four kinds of judgement
- Effectiveness — does the choice achieve what the text is attempting?
- Push past it is effective to where it succeeds and where it strains.
- Significance — how central is this to what the text is doing?
- Ranking is a judgement. Saying one technique carries the text and another decorates it is an evaluative claim.
- Implication — what does this choice commit the text to?
- A text ending in reconciliation has taken a position on whether the damage was reparable, whether or not it says so.
- Comparative — how does this element sit against another, or against what the form usually does?
- The strongest version compares the text to its own conventions.
The disagreement test
- Could a well-informed reader disagree with this sentence?
- If no, you have described. The writer uses short sentences to create tension is not disputable by anyone who has read the text.
- If yes, you have judged. The short sentences create tension at the cost of making the narrator sound more composed than the situation allows is arguable.
- Apply it to your thesis first. A thesis nobody could disagree with cannot be argued for, so the essay becomes an illustration.
- Then apply it to the last sentence of every paragraph. That is where the judgement belongs, and it is the sentence students most often leave out.
The grade ladder — read this once
- Achieved — respond critically. Evaluative interpretations and judgements, supported by evidence, in essay format.
- Merit — convincingly. Reasoned, clear and discerning: the judgements are argued for, and the essay chooses well between them.
- Excellence — perceptively. Insightful and/or original, and at Level 3 also sophisticated — proportion, concession, and knowing where the claim stops.
- The words are cumulative. Excellence is not a different essay from Achieved; it is the same argument handled better.
- Later pages name these grades without redefining them.
Worked Example
Worked Example
The passage was written for this page, so it can be quoted freely. Treat it as an extract from a studied novel.
Task: show the same material handled at four levels.
Answer:
Strong Level 2. The parking space shows Ray's identity is tied to his job. He parks "third from the gate", his usual space, and this repetition shows he is holding onto his old routine. "Nowhere to put their hands" uses a physical detail to show the men have lost their purpose.
Accurate, evidenced, clear — and every sentence fails the disagreement test. Nothing says whether the choices work, what they cost, or what the novel commits itself to.
Level 3 Achieved — add judgement. Identity is located outside the person, in places rather than in the self. The choice works because it makes an abstract idea physical: the reader sees identity as a position that can be kept up after it has stopped meaning anything. The cost is that Ray is never given language for his own situation.
Two disputable judgements — effectiveness with a reason, and implication. The interpretation underneath is unchanged.
Merit — argue for the judgement. The detail is administrative: third is a position on a list, not a preference. That flatness is what lets the novel avoid stating its idea, and it is why the same point made about a photograph on a desk would not work — a chosen object would show attachment, and an allocated one shows issue.
The judgement is now reasoned, and the alternative it rules out is named.
Excellence — find the pattern and hold both sides. In each detail the grammatical subject is displaced: onto a body (their bodies did), onto a count (knew by the second one), onto a third person who is the same person. The passage runs on a grammar of dissociation. It is effective and it is costly: the reader understands Ray better than he understands himself, and a reader could reasonably find that condescending toward its subject. Both are true, and the essay says so.