Kindertransport: The Shared-Stem Question Format

You already know the question

Section A of the written paper sets a question on your set text, and students revise for it as though the question were a mystery. It is not. The wording of the question is a shared stem: the same for all seven set texts on the paper, printed year after year, with only a small part changing to name your text and a moment from it. You can read a past paper for a play you have never studied and see the exact shape of the question you will face. Because the format is fixed, you do not revise an answer. You revise the method and the mark-budget. The stem is shared, so the skill is transferable. Whatever moment the paper picks, it asks the same kind of thing: make a performance choice for a character and explain how it communicates meaning to an audience. Learn that method once and it works on any moment the paper can set. There are several questions, and they climb in marks. The paper moves from a lower tariff, worth around four marks, to a higher one, worth around eight. The number of marks is an instruction about how much to write, not a suggestion. Matching your depth to the marks is the single skill this format rewards. A lower-tariff question wants a clear choice named and briefly justified. A higher-tariff question wants the same kind of choice explained in sustained detail, showing exactly how it works on an audience. Writing a four-mark answer to an eight-mark question throws away half the marks, and writing an essay for four marks wastes time you need later. The staging choices themselves, how to pick and justify an expression or a movement, are covered in the companion module; here the focus is the format and the budget. Carry one question through everything that follows: how many marks is this worth, and have I scaled my answer to match?

Words for the paper

Five terms, each defined by what it is. They describe the format, not any one play.

Tap the two built for a high tariff

Tap the TWO answers that match a higher-tariff question, which wants sustained explanation.

• It names a movement, explains what it shows the audience, and then explains a second choice that builds on the first
• It explains in detail how one facial expression communicates a shift in the character to the people watching
• It simply names a facial expression and stops there
• It lists three movements with no explanation of any of them

What the higher tariff wants

A question is worth around eight marks. What does its answer need that a four-mark answer does not?

• Sustained explanation of how the performance choices communicate meaning to an audience, developed in more detail and across more than one choice
• Simply more words, whatever they say
• A longer list of choices with no explanation added
• A retelling of what happens in the play around that moment

Four marks against eight

The same kind of question at two tariffs. The choice is similar; the depth is not.

Match each part of the format to what it means

Two that follow from a fixed format

Select the TWO statements that follow from the question stem being shared and printed every year.

• You can revise the method by practising on past papers, even for other set texts
• The shape of the question is not a surprise, so preparation is about how to answer, not what will be asked
• You can memorise one perfect answer in advance and reuse it
• The number of marks can be ignored because every answer should be the same length

Reading and budgeting a question

A method for any Section A question, whatever moment it sets. Read the tariff first. Before anything else, note how many marks the question is worth. That number decides how long your answer should be and how many choices to develop. Find the moment in the sub-option. The shared stem tells you the kind of task; the sub-option tells you which character and moment. Fix that clearly before you choose anything. Choose, then explain the effect. Make a performance choice, a facial expression, a movement or something in the voice, and explain how it communicates meaning to the audience. Naming the choice is the start; the explanation is where the marks are. Scale the depth to the marks. For a lower tariff, one choice, briefly explained, is enough. For a higher tariff, explain in detail and develop a second, linked choice, because the marks are there to be earned. Trust a defensible reading. Indicative content is examples, not the only right answers, so a sensible choice you can justify will score even if it is not the one the mark scheme happened to list. Two habits waste marks. The first is ignoring the tariff and writing the same length for every question. The second is naming choices without ever explaining how they work on the audience.

Order how to take on a question

Put the steps of approaching a Section A question into a sensible order.

• Read the tariff to see how much the question is worth
• Read the sub-option for the character and moment
• Choose a performance choice for that moment
• Explain how it communicates meaning to the audience
• Develop the answer to the depth the marks call for

Build the mark-budget rule

This is the rule the whole format rewards. Assemble it.

The format quick-fire

Five questions on the shape of Section A. Three lives.

One stem, budgeted two ways

Here is the method on one example. No line from the play is quoted, because the point is the format, not the words. Imagine the paper sets a moment for the character Lil and asks, in the shared stem, for a performance choice and how it communicates meaning to an audience. Suppose the same kind of moment appears once as a lower-tariff question and once, in another year, as a higher-tariff one. At the lower tariff, worth around four marks, a good answer is short and exact. It might choose that Lil turns away as she speaks, and explain in a sentence that turning away shows the audience she is hiding how much the moment costs her. One clear choice, one clear effect, and move on. Spending ten minutes here would be a mistake, because the marks are not on offer. At the higher tariff, worth around eight marks, the same moment needs much more. The answer still chooses the turn away, but now explains in detail how the timing of it, just after she speaks rather than before, changes what the audience reads into it, then develops a second, linked choice, perhaps a movement of the hands, and explains how the two together build one impression. Same character, same kind of choice, but sustained explanation, because the marks reward it. Notice what decided the length. Not the moment, which was the same, but the tariff. Reading the marks first, and budgeting to them, is the habit the whole paper is built to reward.

Complete the format facts

The wording of the question that is the same for all seven set texts is the _____. The part that names your own text and the moment you must write about is the _____. The number of marks a question is worth, which tells you how much to write, is its _____. Reading that number first, and scaling your answer to it, is the habit the paper rewards.

Three answers to budget

Three students face Section A questions. In each case pick the approach that spends the marks well.

• A student writes a full page of sustained explanation for a question worth around four marks, and then runs out of time on the eight-mark question. What went wrong?
• For an eight-mark question a student names three performance choices in a list and explains none of them. What is missing?
• A student panics because the printed moment is one they never revised in detail. What should reassure them?

Explain how to take on Section A

A student in the year below is frightened of Section A because they do not know what the question will be. Explain how the format works and how to answer it well whatever the question turns out to be.

• Explain what the shared stem is and why it means the question is not a surprise
• Explain what the sub-option changes from one year to the next
• Explain why you revise the method rather than a memorised answer
• Explain how the tariff of a question should decide the depth of the answer
• Explain what a higher-tariff answer needs that a lower-tariff one does not
• Finish with the first thing to do when you read any Section A question