📖 The Comedy of Labelling First
📖 The Comedy of Labelling First
Imagine a doctor who walks into the room, announces “Diagnosis: something wrong with your leg” and then leaves. Technically accurate. Entirely useless. Now imagine your English essay: “There is a simile here. It compares the crowd to a wave. This is effective.” You have labelled the technique. You have named the comparison. You have told the examiner nothing about what the word ‘wave’ actually does to a reader.
The label comes at the end — if at all. The analysis comes first. This is the name-after-explain principle, and it is worth a grade boundary.
English Language glossary
- What is the name-after-explain principle?
- <strong>Name-after-explain</strong> means analysing the effect of a language choice first, and naming the technique label afterwards — or not at all.<br><br><strong>Name first (L2):</strong> “The writer uses a metaphor. This creates atmosphere.”<br><br><strong>Effect first, name after (L4):</strong> “The word ‘devours’ perhaps implies the fire has an appetite — the writer may be suggesting destruction is not accidental but hungry. This is a metaphor, but the word ‘devours’ is doing the specific work.”<br><br><strong>Why it works:</strong> AQA does not award marks for correctly identifying a technique. It awards marks for explaining what specific words do. The label is optional; the zoom is not.
AQA’s mark scheme does not give extra marks for naming a technique correctly. It gives marks for analysing the effect of a language choice. A student who writes “there is a metaphor” and stops has demonstrated recognition. A student who writes “the writer perhaps implies the character’s an
Now try it yourself
Quiz · Question 1 of 9
The name-after-explain principle says that in an analytical sentence you should:
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