AQA Paper 1 Question by Question

So that the worked examples are about something, here is a short original passage written for this page. It is in the style of the fiction openings Paper 1 uses. It is not an AQA source.

From The Long Field (original RCF passage)

Lines 1-7. The frost had come in the night and taken the field entirely. Where there had been mud and the ruts of the tractor there was now a hard grey sheet, pale as bone, that rang faintly underfoot. The hedges stood black against it. Nothing moved in them. At the far end, where the ground fell away towards the river, a thin mist lay along the hollow and did not lift, though the sun had been up an hour.

Lines 8-14. Martha walked out into the middle of it and stopped. She had crossed this field every morning for eleven years and she did not recognise it. The distances were wrong. The gate she was walking towards seemed to have moved further off, and the barn behind her, when she turned, seemed nearer than it had any right to be. She stood there a long moment, turning slowly, and understood at last that it was the silence doing it - that without the ordinary noise of the place she had no way of measuring how far anything was.

Lines 15-20. Then the mist at the bottom of the field moved. Not lifted; moved, the whole body of it, sliding a few yards along the hollow the way a sleeper shifts. Martha watched it. She was not frightened, and it interested her that she was not. She thought: I should go back. She thought it quite calmly, the way a person thinks about a task for later in the week, and she did not go back. She began instead to walk down the slope towards the river, and the frost rang under her, and behind her the barn went on standing where it had always stood.

What it is for

AO1: can you find stated information in a defined part of the text? It is the only question on the paper where a correct answer is simply correct. There is no analysis and no credit for style.

Marks and time

4 marks - one for each thing. RCF recommendation: about 5 minutes. AQA gives 45 minutes for the whole section and does not publish a per-question time.

The method

1. Underline the line numbers in the question. Everything outside them is worthless here.
2. Find four separate facts about the stated topic.
3. Write each as a short phrase. Do not write sentences.
4. Stop at four. A fifth answer cannot gain a mark and a wrong one may replace a right one.

Worked example

List four things about the field from lines 1 to 7.

1. The frost had covered it in the night.
2. It had previously been muddy with tractor ruts.
3. It was hard and grey.
4. It made a faint ringing sound underfoot.

Common mistakes

• Copying a whole sentence that contains the answer instead of stating the fact.
• Giving four things about the wrong subject - the hedges, say, rather than the field.
• Straying outside the stated lines.
• Interpreting. The field feels lonely is not a stated thing about the field.

What it is for

AO2: can you explain how the writer's word choices, techniques and sentence forms create an effect? The question names the effect it wants you to write about, and it gives you three bullet prompts - words and phrases, language features and techniques, and sentence forms.

Marks and time

8 marks. RCF recommendation: about 10 minutes. In AQA's specimen mark scheme the top band for this question is 7-8 marks and rewards detailed, perceptive analysis with judicious quotation and accurate terminology.

The method: quotation, technique, effect, development

1. Choose three short quotations from the given lines - short enough to embed in your own sentence.
2. Name what the writer is doing. Use the term only if you are sure of it; a wrong term costs more than no term.
3. Say what effect it creates for the reader.
4. Develop one of the three further: zoom in on a single word and offer a second reading of it.

Worked example

How does the writer use language in lines 8 to 14 to describe Martha's confusion?

The writer uses the flat statement "The distances were wrong" to place us inside Martha's confusion rather than outside it. The sentence is only four words long, and after the long descriptive sentence before it the abruptness makes the wrongness feel like something noticed suddenly rather than reasoned out.

The verbs then work against each other. The gate "seemed to have moved further off" while the barn "seemed nearer than it had any right to be". The repetition of "seemed" concedes that neither has actually moved, so the disorientation is located in Martha's perception, not in the field. The phrase "any right to be" is faintly comic and faintly indignant, as though the barn were misbehaving - which suggests Martha is still calm enough to be irritated rather than afraid.

Finally, the writer withholds the explanation until the end of the paragraph: it is "the silence doing it". Because the cause arrives last, the reader experiences the confusion first and understands it afterwards, exactly as Martha does.

Practice (original RCF task)

How does the writer use language in lines 1 to 7 to describe the frost? Write three developed paragraphs, about 10 minutes.

Indicative answer for the practice task

• "taken the field entirely" - the verb makes the frost an occupying force, and "entirely" leaves no part of the field unclaimed.
• "pale as bone" - a simile that brings death into a description of weather, and "bone" is hard as well as pale, so it does two jobs at once.
• "rang faintly underfoot" - a sound word used for a surface, which makes the frost feel thin and brittle; "faintly" keeps the whole scene quiet.
• "The hedges stood black against it. Nothing moved in them." - two short sentences after a long one, the second even shorter, so the stillness is enacted by the sentence lengths as well as described.
• "did not lift, though the sun had been up an hour" - the concession tells us the ordinary rules are suspended, which prepares for Martha's disorientation later.

What it is for

AO2 again, but structure rather than language. The question asks how the writer has ordered the whole text to interest a reader. It is about the shape of the extract, not its words - which is why answering it with quotations and adjectives is the single commonest way to lose these 8 marks.

Marks and time

8 marks. RCF recommendation: about 10 minutes. The specimen mark scheme's top band, 7-8 marks, rewards detailed and perceptive understanding of structural features and analysis of their effects.

The method: beginning, shift, end

1. Beginning. What does the writer put in front of you first, and why that?
2. Shift. Where does the focus change - from wide to narrow, outside to inside, place to person, present to past? Name the moment.
3. End. Where are you left, and what has changed since the opening?
4. Add one further structural feature: a repeated image, a withheld piece of information, a change of sentence rhythm, a shift in time.

Worked example

How has the writer structured the text to interest you as a reader?

The writer opens on the field rather than on a person. For seven lines there is no one in the extract at all, only frost, hedges and mist, so the reader is given a place and left to wonder who will enter it. That withholding is the first thing that creates interest.

The focus then narrows sharply. Martha walks "out into the middle of it and stopped", and from that point the extract is inside her perception rather than above the field. What we are shown stops being what is there and becomes what she thinks is there - the gate that seems further, the barn that seems nearer. The reader is moved from watching to sharing.

The final paragraph reverses the direction of the whole piece. Everything until then has been about stillness; then "the mist at the bottom of the field moved", and the one thing that moves is the one thing that should not. The writer also structures Martha's decision against expectation: she thinks "I should go back" and then does the opposite in the same sentence, so the extract ends by opening rather than closing.

Underneath all of this the barn is mentioned at the start, in the middle and in the last line, standing "where it had always stood" - a fixed point that measures how far Martha has moved away from the ordinary.

Practice (original RCF task)

Take any novel opening you have to hand - two or three pages. Write four sentences: what the writer focuses on first, where the focus shifts, where you are left, and one structural feature that runs through the whole passage. About 10 minutes.

What it is for

AO4: can you evaluate a text critically and support your judgement with references? A student in the extract is quoted making a claim about the second part of the source, and you are asked to what extent you agree. It is worth a quarter of the whole paper.

Marks and time

20 marks. RCF recommendation: about 20 minutes - roughly half the reading section. The specimen mark scheme's top band is 16-20 marks and rewards perceptive, detailed evaluation.

The method

1. Take a position in the first sentence. Fully agree, largely agree, agree with a qualification - any of these works, but say which.
2. Four developed paragraphs, each one: a point about the statement, a short quotation, an explanation of how the writer created that impression, and your judgement of how well it works.
3. Keep the statement in view. Refer back to its actual wording at least twice.
4. Qualify once. A paragraph beginning This is less true of... usually lifts an answer, because evaluation means weighing rather than praising.

Worked example (opening two paragraphs)

A student said: "In the last part of the extract Martha behaves strangely, and the writer makes this feel unsettling rather than dangerous." To what extent do you agree?

I largely agree, though I would say the writer works harder to make Martha's calm strange than to make the field strange. The unsettling quality comes from the gap between what is happening and how little she minds it.

The clearest evidence is that the writer tells us directly what Martha is not: "She was not frightened, and it interested her that she was not." A more conventional passage would have her afraid, and the refusal is deliberate. By making her curious about her own lack of fear, the writer puts a second layer between Martha and ordinary reaction, and it is that distance, rather than the moving mist, that makes the reader uneasy. The mist itself is described almost gently - it moves "the way a sleeper shifts" - so the threat, if there is one, is not in the landscape.

Practice (original RCF task)

A student said: "The writer makes the field feel like a place where the ordinary rules have stopped working." To what extent do you agree? Write four developed paragraphs on lines 1 to 14. About 20 minutes.

Indicative content for the practice task

• Agreement: "the distances were wrong"; the gate and barn appearing to move; the mist that "did not lift, though the sun had been up an hour".
• Agreement: the field is described as unrecognisable after eleven years of daily crossing, which makes the failure of the ordinary explicit.
• Qualification: the writer supplies a natural explanation - the silence removing her sense of scale - so the rules have not stopped so much as lost their usual evidence.
• Judgement: the effect works because the explanation arrives late; a reader who is given the cause first would find the passage merely descriptive.