Section B

Advice from the board:• Students need to think carefully about the question and

decide which texts or parts of text will best answer the question

• The central focus is the ‘aspect of narrative’ that is set up in the question

• Students need to relate this ‘aspect’ to the stories of each text• This aspect will be written about in three different ways• The texts will be connected by this aspect; there is no further

need to connect or compare

You are going to select a section B question from the lucky dip.

• What aspect of narrative is the question directing you to focus on?

• Which texts would you use?

• For novels, or longer poems, which section of the text would you use?

Form:resulting

overall style

Structure: how the text has been put

together

Language: words; images sentence structures;

punctuation; stage directions

Brainstorm key points (relating to the aspect of narrative in the question) about language, form and structure for the three texts you will answer on

Section B: How to Address AO3

• The invitation to address meanings and interpretations is clearly set up in the questions

• It is often signalled by the word ‘significance’• This word is also often used in Section A, the even numbered

questions (for example: What significance can you find in the title Digging to America?)

• Significance is about what is signified, about what meanings arise

• Here it is how readers find meanings in the aspect of narrative that is the focus of the question

“In a narrative, there is usually a hero or heroine, a protagonist on whose fate the readers’ interest in the story principally rests.”Write about the significance of protagonists in the narratives of the three writers you have studied.

‘Ulysses’, ‘Lady of Shallott’

‘Gatsby’ ‘Enduring Love’

Significance U – telling his own storyLS – follow her, focus is on her and remains with her

Joe – narrates his own story, directs attention, represents scienceJed – invades that story, antagonist, religion

Language U – personal, boastful, arrogant, future – his own, contrasts with his son, first=personLS – descriptive, contrasts to characterise the Lady

Joe –characterised by his own language, scientific and detailed, interest created because of what he says, or doesn’t say, self-aware narrator who maintains our interest

Form & structure

U – first person monologue, directs attention his storyLS – narrative poem, Lady in each stanza, crisis towards end

Narrating in hindsight, biased, uses fractions to allow other voices to be heard – Clarissa and Jed’s letters – these increase interest in Joe and help characterise him

Interpretations U – fate interests the readers, very significant, don’t hear from othersLS – poem named after her, narrative stays with her

Biased, is the narrative truthful, allows us to see different interpretations of the title

Example:

Complete a grid/plan for your Section B question and texts

Work for Tuesday

• You will be spending 1 hour answering your section B question from today, so bring your texts. This will be in exam conditions.

• The second hour will should be used for making a revision chart for your four texts: on the A3 handout.

Write about the significance of the ways the three writers you have studied create and use suspense in their narratives.

Write about the significance of climaxes and/or anticlimaxes in the narratives of the three writers you have studied.

Write about the significance of the ways speech is used in the work of the three writersyou have studied.

Writers draw upon the conventions of different genres when constructing their narratives: for example, ballads, monologues, elegies, fictive biographies, thrillers, romances.

Write about the significance of generic conventions in the narratives of the three writers you have studied.

A key choice writers make is how they name or refer to characters in their stories.

Write about the significance of the choices writers have made in naming or referring to their characters in the three texts you have studied.

“In narratives, what we are not told is just as important as what we are told.”

Write about the significance of the gaps or of the untold stories in the narratives of the three writers you have studied.

Write about the significance of descriptive language as it is used by each of the three writers you have studied.

Write about the significance of the ways the three writers you have studied have structured their narratives.

Write about the significance of the ways the three writers you have studied have used places in their narratives.

Write about the significance of the ways writers end their narratives in the work of the three writers you have studied.

Write about the significance of narrators in the work of the three writers you havestudied.

Many narratives have one or more significant moments of crisis.

Write about the significance of crises in the work of the three writers you have studied.

How do writers use repetition to create meanings in their texts?

Write about the significance of repetition in the work of the three writers youhave studied.

Write about the significance of some of the ways characters are created in the three texts you have studied.

Write about the significance of the ways authors use time to shape the order of events in the three texts you have studied.

Writers often choose their titles carefully to allow for different potential meanings.

Write about the significance of some potential meanings of titles in the three texts you have studied.

Write about the significance of one or two key events in each of the three textsyou have studied.