Studied + Unseen

The question nobody can revise for

Component 01 Section A gives you a **two-part, 40-mark question** on the modern text your school chose - one of Anita and Me, Never Let Me Go, Animal Farm, An Inspector Calls, DNA or Leave Taking. **Part a)** prints an extract from your studied text **next to an extract you have never seen**, from a different modern work in the same form, on a linked theme. You compare them. **Part b)** is a question on your studied text alone, closed book. OCR is the **only** one of the three boards that puts unseen material inside the modern-text essay. You cannot revise the unseen extract. You can revise the technique, and that is what this module is for.

What the marks are for

Three assessment objectives, and they are not spread evenly across the two parts.

Where does context earn its marks?

You have prepared strong material on post-war British class attitudes. Where does it belong?

• Worked into your argument in part b), where context is assessed
• In part a), to explain the background of the unseen extract
• In an opening paragraph before you start either part
• Split evenly across both parts

Part a) is not the warm-up

Students routinely treat part a) as the small one to get out of the way, then pour everything into part b) because that is the half they revised. The two parts are worth preparing **equally**. Part b) needs a small, precise quotation bank for each major theme and character, because it is closed book. Part a) needs something you can only build by practising: the habit of reading an unfamiliar passage quickly and usefully. The way to build it is to practise on extracts you have never seen, in the same form as your text. Re-reading your studied text does not train this at all.

Read it cold

This is a practice extract, written for this module. Tap the TWO details that show Mrs Ellery behaving as though the house belongs to her.

• Mrs Ellery
• took the chair by the window without being asked
• , and arranged her coat over the back of it
• as though the room needed improving
• . My mother stood. She had been standing since the knock, and she went on standing, one hand flat against the doorframe, while Mrs Ellery explained
• what the school had decided
• . I watched my mother's hand.
• It did not move at all

Which of these is a comparison?

Select the TWO sentences that actually compare, rather than describing one extract at a time.

• Both writers give the powerful character the physical space, but where one takes a chair, the other simply never has to move
• The extract from my text builds tension through silence, whereas the unseen extract builds it through interruption
• In the first extract, the writer uses short sentences to create tension
• The second extract is also very interesting and uses lots of techniques

Two ways to write part a)

Both of these look like work. Only one of them is being marked.

Order the moves

Put the moves of a single part a) paragraph into the order that makes it a comparison rather than a description.

• State one idea that is true of both extracts
• Show how the first extract does it, with a short quotation
• Show how the second does the same thing differently, with a short quotation
• Explain what that difference does to the reader

Match each signpost to its job

Build the topic sentence

Build an opening sentence for a comparative paragraph that is doing the right job.

One paragraph, done properly

**"Compare how the two extracts present power between adults and children."** "Both writers hand the powerful adult the room itself. In the practice extract Mrs Ellery 'took the chair by the window without being asked', and the verb 'took' does the work: there is no negotiation in it. The mother, by contrast, is given only a hand 'flat against the doorframe', a detail that is held still while the adult talks. Where one character acts on the room, the other can only brace against it, and the reader is left watching the smaller gesture." One idea. Both texts. Short quotations, chosen because of the single word being discussed, not because they were the longest thing available.

Finish the comparison

Both extracts present authority through who controls the space. The first makes it visible in a single _____, while the second withholds it until the closing _____. The effect is not the same: the first invites the reader to judge at once, _____ the second makes them wait. What the two share is the _____; what separates them is the _____.

Now a play

A second practice extract, this time in dramatic form. Tap the ONE line where Joan stops arguing and starts helping.

• JOAN. You will write, then. When you are settled. DEREK. I will write. JOAN.
• Because your father will not ask. He will not ask and then he will say nobody told him.
• DEREK.
• I said I will write.
• (Pause.) JOAN.
• Take the blue case. It shuts properly.

Revising for part b)

Part b) is closed book. What should your revision of the studied text actually produce?

• A small bank of short, precise quotations for each major theme and character
• A detailed summary of the plot, chapter by chapter
• Whole passages learned word for word
• Nothing, since the extract is printed on the paper

Your turn: compare the two extracts

Using the two practice extracts in this module, write one comparative paragraph on how each presents the relationship between an adult and a younger person.

• Open with one idea that is true of both extracts
• Quote briefly from the prose extract and say what the wording does
• Quote briefly from the play extract and say how its method differs
• End on what that difference does to the reader, not on a summary