Written examinations
The written examination tests the two things the s7 Language 1 course has been building: the ability to read a literary text closely and the ability to sustain an argument in your first language. It is a single paper, four hours long in recent sessions, sat in the June session and marked against the same descriptors your teacher uses all year.
Structure of the paper
- Part 1 asks for an analysis or commentary of a text you have not seen. It is usually literary - a prose passage, a poem or an extract from drama - chosen to connect with the genres, periods or themes of the s7 programme rather than with one set text.
- Part 2 asks for an essay, chosen from a short list of topics grounded in the programme's set texts and themes.
- Both parts carry substantial weight: a brilliant commentary cannot rescue an essay that ignores its topic, and vice versa.
What examiners reward
- Analysis rather than paraphrase: naming a device, quoting it briefly, explaining the effect it produces.
- Precise literary vocabulary in the L1 (focalisation, anaphora, register, metre), used accurately and sparingly.
- An essay with a clear thesis, paragraphs that advance it, and evidence drawn from the texts.
- Control of formal written register throughout.
Worked example
Suppose Part 1 gives an unseen passage in which a first-person narrator returns to a childhood house, and the question asks how the writer creates a sense of estrangement. The operative verb is 'creates': the examiner wants technique, not autobiography. Pick three features - say a shift from past to present tense, a cluster of negations, and inverted word order in the final sentence. For each, name it, quote two or three words, explain the effect, and tie it back to estrangement. A sentence such as 'The move into the present tense does not merely update the narrative; it traps the narrator in a moment he cannot narrate away' does the work, because it makes a claim about technique and meaning together.
Traps that cost marks
- Retelling the passage's content instead of analysing how it works.
- Writing everything you know about the author or period, regardless of the question.
- Dropping quotations without comment.
- An essay that lists points without a line of argument.
- Register slips: slang, journalistic clichés, or a sudden slide into the wrong level of formality.
- Answering only one part of the paper.