Responding to a statement
What the exam paper actually gives you
- This is the biggest practical difference from Level 2.
- At Level 2 you are given questions — Analyse how…
- At Level 3 you are given five statements, and you choose one.
- The instruction is: discuss the extent to which you agree with your chosen statement, responding critically by making a close analysis of the text(s).
- A statement is a proposition about literature in general, written as a declarative sentence — a claim about what good texts do, or about how readers respond, phrased so that it could be true of many texts and is not obviously true of any.
- You write one essay in the booklet provided, and essay format is required.
- Statements are worded to cover every text type, so one will fit a novel, a drama script, poetry or non-fiction equally. Choose on the strength of your argument, not on the wording you like the sound of.
Why a statement is not a question
- A question asks what your text does. A statement asks what you make of somebody else's claim. The order of operations reverses.
- With a question, you go to the text and report.
- With a statement, you interrogate the claim first, then go to the text for evidence about that claim.
- An essay that describes the text and mentions the statement twice has answered a Level 2 question that was not asked.
- The extent to which is an invitation to qualify. The examiner has deliberately used a phrase that asks how far. A student who only agrees, or only disagrees, has not answered what was asked.
Break the statement into its claims
- Most statements stack two or three claims together, and they are rarely all true of your text.
- Take a statement of the shape characters become convincing through the way they handle difficult decisions. It claims:
- that convincingness is produced by something the character does, rather than by description;
- that the something is decisions specifically;
- that the decisions must be difficult;
- and, by omission, that this is how it happens rather than one way among several.
- Test each claim against your text separately. You will usually agree with one and not another. That is the answer, not a problem with it.
- Watch for the smuggled evaluation. Statements often hide a judgement inside the description — a worthwhile text, skilfully combines. You may contest it, and contesting it is a Level 3 move.
- Watch for the absolute. Only, always, fully, most — these make a statement much easier to disagree with in part, which is what you want.
Four positions, all legitimate
- Broad agreement with a limit — the statement holds, but not for the reason it gives, or not in the final section.
- Agreement with a redefinition — true once its key term is properly understood, and the essay establishes that meaning.
- Partial disagreement — one claim holds and another does not.
- Disagreement with a better account — the statement is wrong, and here is what the text does instead.
- The hardest and the most rewarded, because it replaces the claim rather than resisting it.
- None is safer than another. Markers reward the argument, not the position.
What fails: the unqualified position
- Total agreement produces an essay that illustrates someone else's idea. The statement does the thinking and the text supplies examples.
- Total rejection usually means the statement has been read uncharitably — narrowing it into something absurd, then defeating that.
- If your position could be stated before you thought about your text, it is not a response. That is the test.
- Put your extent in the introduction, in one sentence: this holds for X but not for Y, and the reason it fails for Y is the more interesting one.
- Do not paraphrase the statement for a paragraph. Quote it once, in your own argument's terms, and move.
Worked Example
Worked Example
Real statements are copyright NZQA, so this one is written for the page in the same shape. Treat it as your chosen statement.
The text is the studied novel from which this extract comes, written for this page.
Task: work out your position, and write the thesis sentence.
Answer:
Step 1 — break the statement into claims.
- Claim A: what a text does with an ordinary decision is where its value lies.
- Claim B: the achievement is making that decision feel difficult.
- Claim C: this is when a text matters most — the absolute, and the weakest link.
Step 2 — test each against the text.
- A holds, strongly. Nothing here is dramatic. Marion's decision is whether to mention a parking space.
- B does not hold as stated. The decision is not made to feel difficult — she makes it in six flat words: She did not say.
- But something is happening. The novel makes an ordinary decision feel consequential while leaving it easy. The weight lands afterwards, in the eleven weeks the silence permits.
Step 3 — choose a position. A holds, B needs replacing, C is an absolute you can decline. That is partial disagreement moving toward a better account — the most rewarded shape.
Step 4 — write the thesis.
The statement is right about where the novel's value lies and wrong about the mechanism. Marion's choice not to speak is presented as easy, and the novel is stronger for it: difficulty is not what the text adds to small decisions, consequence is. The claim holds for the Ray sections, where decisions are laboured over; it fails precisely where the novel is strongest.
Step 5 — check it. Could an informed reader disagree? Yes. Could it have been written before reading the text? No. Does it say how far, and where the limit falls? Yes.