The paper, and a method that fits the clock
What the exam paper actually gives you
- Two of the things below are countable, and students lose them without ever finding out why.
- THREE questions, and all three are compulsory. There is no choice, unlike AS91472 and AS91473. Questions One and Two are each on one supplied text, and each asks for at least TWO specific aspects of written texts. Question Three is a comparison across both texts, asking for at least ONE specific aspect used in EACH text.
| Question One | Question Two | Question Three | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Text | Text A only | Text B only | Both texts |
| Task verb | Discuss | Discuss | Compare |
| Countable minimum | At least two specific aspects | At least two specific aspects | At least one aspect in each text |
- Check the NZQA assessment specification for your exam year for the text types and the mark allocation; those change annually. The structure above comes from the papers.
- A third of the paper is comparative. A student who has only practised single-text close reading has practised two-thirds of the exam.
What counts as a "specific aspect of written texts"
- It is not two quotations and not two paragraphs. Aspects come from four families: purposes and audiences; ideas (character, theme, setting); language features (figurative language, syntax, style, symbolism, vocabulary, sound devices); and structures (beginnings and endings, narrative sequence, part text against whole).
- The word specific is load-bearing. Language features is a family, not an aspect. Syntax is an aspect, and so is the shift from past tense to present. If you cannot point at it with a finger, it is a family, not an aspect.
- Take your two from different families. Imagery and symbolism are frequently the same observation twice, and a marker counts that as one aspect; a language feature plus a structural feature cannot collapse. Name the aspect in the paragraph's opening sentence — the governing aspect here is syntax takes four words and makes the count checkable by a marker reading fast.
- Count before you leave the question: two named aspects, each with its own evidence and its own judgement. If time runs out, cut the second aspect's development, not its existence — a short second aspect meets the instruction; a missing one does not.
The six-step method
- You cannot prepare the text, so prepare the procedure. Use the same one in practice, so it runs without decisions on the day.
- 1. Read once for sense, with no pen, and note your reaction in three or four words — the fastest route to a point that is yours.
- 2. Read again for the question, and take the focus it gives you.
- 3. Annotate in passes, one channel at a time — words (diction, register, odd vocabulary), syntax (sentence length, active or passive), structure (where it begins, ends and turns; what is withheld), voice (who speaks, at what distance). A single pass looking for everything finds only what announces itself.
- 4. Find the pattern. Anything appearing three times is deliberate, and the place a pattern breaks is usually the best paragraph available.
- 5. Decide your reading in one arguable sentence, in writing. This poem is about grief is a topic; the poem withholds the death entirely and puts its grief into an unfinished sentence is a reading.
- 6. Write, judging as you go — point, evidence, analysis, judgement, link.
Budget the time in three
- Annotation is not marked and has no natural stopping point, which is why a cap works: circle about six things per text.
- Time overspent on Question One comes straight out of Question Three, and it is almost always the comparison that gets the last ten minutes it cannot be written in. Divide the working time into three roughly equal blocks and write the finishing times on the paper before reading anything, and plan Question Three first inside its block.
- If a block overruns, take the time from its own writing, not from the next block. A slightly short answer is a far smaller loss than a missing one.
Worked Example
Worked Example
Treat the poem below as a text supplied in the exam. The method is run on it against the clock.
The question asks: Discuss how the poet conveys the speaker's response to loss, referring to at least TWO specific aspects.
Answer:
0:00–2:00 — read for sense, then for the question. A shed built by a father; the father is gone; the speaker has not gone in. Reaction: the last line felt like a sentence being abandoned. The focus is response to loss, and the poem never says loss. That gap is the answer.
2:00–5:00 — the passes.
- Words. Nothing twice, Somebody twice, wrong twice — the second time the same catch, eleven months later.
- Syntax. Somebody should. is the only sentence missing its verb phrase — it has been cut off.
- Structure and voice. The poem opens with My father built — a named person, a completed action — and closes with Somebody should — no person, no action. The speaker never says died, miss or sad.
5:00–6:30 — the pattern, then the reading. Three repetitions, each with a difference, and the second instance always adds duration or subtracts something. So: the poem conveys loss by refusing to name it and recording the speaker's inaction instead, so grief is measured in elapsed time and in a sentence that cannot be finished.
Two aspects, two families, named: repetition with variation and the movement from a named agent to no agent. The judgement: the technique works because the poem's only stated fact about the speaker — eleven months with the key — is arithmetic rather than feeling, and arithmetic is what a person reaches for when they are counting instead of grieving.
Read, pass, pattern, one sentence, write.