Fact Finder

Section A: the ladder

Section A gives you one unseen 19th-century fiction extract and four questions, and they are not four versions of the same task. They climb. Q1 and Q2 ask what the text says: find it and quote it. Q3 (6 marks) asks how the writer wrote it. Q4 (15 marks) asks how well it works, which is a different question again and by far the biggest prize. Spend your time in proportion to those numbers. The commonest way to run short on Q4 is to write a beautiful paragraph on Q1, which can only ever earn a mark or two however good it is.

The extract

*The old house stood at the end of Marsh Lane, half-swallowed by ivy and older than anyone living could remember. Its windows were dark, and a single crow perched upon the crooked chimney, watching the road with a patient, glittering eye. Mr Grey approached the gate slowly, his lantern trembling in the fog. He had been told the house was empty; yet a thin ribbon of smoke curled from the kitchen chimney, and somewhere within, a floorboard groaned like a living thing.* Read it once straight through for meaning before analysing a word of it. Every question in this module is about these five sentences.

Question 1: retrieval

Q1 asks where the old house stood. Tap the words that answer it, and nothing more.

• The old house stood
• at the end of Marsh Lane
• ,
• half-swallowed by ivy
• and
• older than anyone living could remember
• .

How much to write

Q1 is worth one mark and asks what Mr Grey had been told about the house. Four students answer it. Which answer is best?

• "He had been told the house was empty."
• The whole final sentence, copied out from "He had been told" all the way to "a living thing."
• "He thought the house was empty, but the smoke shows he was wrong and someone is living there secretly."
• "He had heard some things about the house before he got there."

How, against how well

Q3 and Q4 both quote the text and they are asking two genuinely different questions. Nearly every under-performing Q4 is a Q3 answer written in the wrong box:

Question 3: the method

In the final sentence, tap the comparison the writer uses to describe a sound.

• yet a thin ribbon of
• smoke curled from the kitchen chimney
• , and somewhere within,
• a floorboard groaned like a living thing
• .

What does it achieve?

The writer could have written "a floorboard creaked loudly". Instead we get "a floorboard groaned like a living thing". What does that choice do that the plainer version would not?

• Both "groaned" and "like a living thing" attribute life and suffering to the house, so a building the character has been told is empty becomes something present and awake. The reader is unsettled before any actual threat has appeared
• It tells us the sound was louder than an ordinary creak
• It proves there really is a person inside the house standing on the floorboard
• It is a simile, which is a more sophisticated technique than a plain description

The terms you need

Q3 wants the correct name. These four cover most of what a 19th-century extract will offer:

What is each detail doing?

Question 4 is the big one

It hands you a statement. Q4 does not ask an open question. It gives you a proposition about the extract, usually about how successfully the writer achieves something, and asks how far it holds. Your first job is to decide what you actually think about it. You must take a position. "There are points on both sides" is not an answer. Partly agreeing is perfectly acceptable, and often the strongest response: agree with the claim in the main, then name the place where it works least well and say why. Range across the whole extract. Fifteen marks cannot be earned from one sentence. Take evidence from the opening, the middle and the close, and show how the effect builds. And watch the clock. Q4 is worth more than Q1, Q2 and Q3 put together. A perfect Q1 is worth a mark. Budget your time by the marks, not by the order the questions happen to be printed in.

Which Q4 opening is strongest?

The question states: "The writer succeeds in making an ordinary house feel threatening. How far do you agree?" Four students open their answers. Which is strongest?

• "I largely agree. The threat is effective precisely because it is never confirmed: the crow watches, the smoke rises and the floorboard groans, but nothing is ever seen. Where it is slightly less successful is the fog, which is a familiar device and does less work than the rest."
• "There are arguments on both sides. Some readers would find the house threatening while others might not, as everyone responds to writing differently."
• "I completely agree. The writer makes the house very threatening and creates a really effective atmosphere throughout the whole extract."
• "The writer uses a simile, personification and pathetic fallacy to make the house threatening, which are all effective techniques for creating atmosphere."

Build a Q4 paragraph

Put the moves of a strong Q4 paragraph into order.

• State how far you agree with the claim, in your own words
• Quote a piece of evidence that supports your view
• Explain what that evidence does to the reader, and why it works
• Bring in a second piece from a different part of the extract and show the effect building
• Name a place where the claim holds less well, and say what makes it weaker
• Close by restating your judgement, now qualified by everything above it

Write your Q4 response

Answer this: "The writer succeeds in making an ordinary house feel threatening. How far do you agree?" Use the paragraph shape from the step above, take evidence from at least two different parts of the extract, and include the sentence where you say the claim holds less well.

• Open by saying how far you agree, in your own words rather than by repeating the statement
• Quote from the opening of the extract and explain what it does to the reader
• Quote from the close of the extract and show how the effect has built
• Name one place where the claim holds less well, and say what makes it weaker
• Close with your judgement, qualified by what you have just conceded

Section A summary

Questions 1 and 2 test AO1: find what the text states _____, quote it exactly, and stop. Question 3 tests AO2, which is about how the writer wrote it, so naming a technique earns little and explaining its _____ on the reader earns the marks. Question 4 tests AO4, which is about how _____ it works: it hands you a statement and asks how far you agree, so you have to take a position and support it with evidence from across the whole extract. Conceding where the claim holds less well is a _____ rather than a weakness.