This key facts covers Key Facts: Extract Questions on AQA 8702 within Using the Extract and the Whole Text for GCSE English Literature. Revise Using the Extract and the Whole Text in Exam Skills for GCSE English Literature with 10 exam-style questions and 15 flashcards. This topic shows up very often in GCSE exams, so students should be able to explain it clearly, not just recognise the term. It is section 7 of 12 in this topic. Use this key facts to connect the idea to the wider topic before moving on to questions and flashcards.
📋 Key Facts: Extract Questions on AQA 8702
- Paper 1 Section A (Shakespeare): 30 marks + 4 SPaG. Extract question says "Starting with this extract, explore how…"
- Paper 1 Section B (19th-century novel): 30 marks. Same structure — extract plus whole text required.
- Extract length: typically 12–20 lines. Time allowed for both responses: 1 hour 45 minutes total.
- AQA mark scheme Level 2 ceiling: applies explicitly when response is "limited to the extract."
- AQA mark scheme Level 3+ descriptor: requires engagement with "writer's methods" across the whole text.
- Level 5-6: "convincing critical analysis" — the extract and whole-text evidence must work together, not separately.
Practice questions for Using the Extract and the Whole Text
In AQA English Literature, what is 'Sin 5'?
Explain what the 're-embed' move is and why it signals Level 5–6 thinking in an AQA English Literature response.
Quick recall flashcards
What is Sin 5 in AQA Lit, and what does it cost you?
Sin 5 is treating the extract in isolation — writing only about the printed passage and never engaging with the whole play or novel. The AQA mark scheme explicitly caps responses that stay within the extract at Level 2. Even the most perceptive close-reading cannot reach Level 3 without whole-text engagement. The command 'starting with this extract' is an invitation to begin there, not end there.
What is the most common error at the zoom-out stage?
Zooming out correctly (leaving the extract) but landing in plot narration — Sin 1 at the zoom-out stage. 'Later in the play, Macbeth kills Banquo because he fears the prophecy' is narration, not analysis. A genuine zoom-out makes a structural argument: 'Shakespeare constructs the Banquo murder as the logical consequence the 1.7 soliloquy already predicted — the writer builds inevitability into the structure, not spontaneity into the character.' Every zoom-out must answer: why HERE? not: and then what happened?