Context Questions
A context question is a small essay question. It wants precision, not volume — but at this level it also wants significance.
What is different at Advanced Level
At O/L a context question mostly asks you to place an extract and explain its plain meaning. At A/L it goes further: it asks what the passage contributes — to a character, a theme, the structure of the work, or the reader's developing understanding.
So a good A/L context answer usually has two halves: what is happening here, and why it matters that it happens here.
Question types and what they want
| Question | What it wants | Length |
|---|---|---|
| Place this passage in the work | The stage of the action and what has just occurred | One or two sentences |
| What is the significance of this moment? | Its consequence, and what it changes | Three or four sentences |
| Comment on the language of the underlined phrase | The technique, the effect, and its appropriateness here | Three or four sentences |
| What does this reveal about the speaker? | A quality, the evidence, and any gap between what they say and what we see | Three or four sentences |
| How does this passage contribute to a theme? | The theme as a sentence, the evidence, and the stage of its development | A short paragraph |
| What is the dramatic effect of this moment? | What an audience knows, feels and expects at this point | A short paragraph |
The method
- Read the whole extract before any question. Place it in the work in your own mind first.
- Read all the questions. They usually move through the extract in order, and a later one may show you how to read an earlier one.
- Match length to marks. Two marks is two sentences. Do not write a paragraph for it and then run short on the six-mark question.
- Quote from the extract, exactly. It is printed in front of you; there is no excuse for approximation.
- Answer the question asked. Significance questions want consequence; language questions want effect. They are not interchangeable.
- Add the 'and therefore'. After stating what happens, add one sentence on why it matters here. That sentence is usually where the higher marks are.
Two answers compared
Question: What is the significance of this moment in the work as a whole? (5 marks)
Weaker answer: This is when the father refuses the money from his son. It is important because it shows he is proud and it makes the son upset.
Stronger answer: This is the first occasion on which the father refuses help from his son rather than from a stranger, and the refusal therefore changes in kind: what has previously been presented as independence becomes, here, a rejection of a particular person. The moment is placed immediately after the son's long journey home, so that the reader has been made to invest in a reconciliation that is then withheld. From this point the two men speak only through the mother, and the silence that dominates the final section begins here. The passage thus marks the point at which the father's pride stops protecting the family and starts dividing it.
Why this answer works
- The weaker answer states what happens and adds two labels. It would be an adequate O/L answer.
- The stronger answer identifies precisely what is new about this refusal — the first from his son rather than a stranger — which is the kind of discrimination A/L rewards.
- It comments on placing: the passage comes after the journey, and the arrangement produces the effect. Structural comment is highly valued.
- It traces the consequence through the rest of the work, which is exactly what "in the work as a whole" asks for.
- Its final sentence makes a claim that could be argued with. That is the mark of an answer that is thinking rather than reporting.