AQA English Language Paper 1 Question 3: structure

Mark totals here are read from real past papers ingested into Marked, not from a revision site: 8 marks on all 9 AQA Paper 1s where this question is present. Timings are our own guidance rather than anything the board specifies.

How the writer has structured the whole extract to hold a reader's interest: where the focus sits at the start, how and where it shifts, and how it ends.

You are looking at the text as a sequence, not as a collection of phrases.

• Analysing language. If your evidence is a metaphor or a piece of word choice, you are answering question two again, in the slot worth eight marks for something else.
• Listing features without effect. Naming a shift in focus earns nothing on its own; what earns the mark is why the writer put it there.
• Only describing the opening. The question is about the whole extract, and answers that never reach the ending cap themselves.
• Vague zooming language. 'The writer zooms in' describes a camera, not a reason.

Read an unseen extract and, before writing anything, note in three words where the focus sits at the beginning, the middle and the end. That is the answer's skeleton.

Practise on extracts you have never seen. Structure is a method, and the method is what you are drilling.

Check whether your evidence is structural. If a sentence of your answer would make equal sense in a language question, it is in the wrong place.

More on English Language, on AQA, or see all question guides.

Next, on the same paper or the same board: AQA Paper 1 Question 2: language analysis, AQA Paper 1 Question 4: evaluation.