📖 The Technique That Explains Nothing
📖 The Technique That Explains Nothing
Here is a sentence from a student’s exam response that appeared, word for word, in seventeen different scripts one June: “The writer uses alliteration. This creates a rhythmic effect.” All seventeen are Grade 5 at best. They will be Grade 5 regardless of the extract, because neither sentence does any thinking. Neither sentence is about this passage. They are templates, and examiners have seen every template.
The difference between Grade 5 and Grade 8 is not knowing more technique names. It is reading what the technique does in this sentence, in the context of this passage, to this character or this argument. A technique named in isolation is a bird spotted through binoculars. A technique read in context is a bird understood — where it lives, what it signals, why it is here.
English Language glossary
- What is the difference between identifying a technique and analysing it in context?
- <strong>Identifying:</strong> naming the technique and giving a generic effect. “The writer uses alliteration. This creates a rhythmic effect.” Level 2. Could describe any passage.<br><br><strong>Analysing in context:</strong> reading what the technique achieves specifically because of what is happening in this passage, who is speaking, and what moment this is. Level 4. Could only be written about this passage.<br><br><strong>The test:</strong> could you write this exact sentence about a different extract? If yes — it is a template, not analysis.<br><br><em>Key question: what is happening in this part of the passage, and what does the technique do GIVEN that context?</em>
AQA’s Q2 mark scheme distinguishes between “identifies” (Level 2) and “analyses” (Level 4). The distinction is not about terminology — it is about whether the effect of the technique is read specifically in the context of the passage.
Now try it yourself
Quiz · Question 1 of 12
A student writes: 'The writer uses alliteration. This creates a rhythmic effect.' Which of the following is the main weakness of this response?
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