📖 The Student Who Listed Five Techniques and Still Got a Grade 4
📖 The Student Who Listed Five Techniques and Still Got a Grade 4
In the 2023 AQA examiner report, the most common comment on Question 2 papers was this: “Identifies features without developing the analysis.” Students named sibilance. Students named personification. They named them and stopped. That is feature-spotting. It looks like analysis. It is not analysis.
The students who moved into Level 4 did something different. They zoomed in. Not across five techniques — into two words. And they stayed there, turning each word over, until the meaning came out.
AQA’s Level 4 descriptor says: “perceptive, detailed analysis of the effects of the writer’s choices of language.” The word detailed is the key. Detail means staying on one word long enough to find what it actually does.
Now try it yourself
Quiz · Question 1 of 10
A student writes: 'The writer uses a metaphor here. It makes the reader think about the sea.' What is wrong with this response?
Tap an answer to check it