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EnglandEnglish Language & LiteratureQuick questions
Component 1: Poetry and Prose
Quick questions on Narrative method in prose - Eduqas A-Level English Language and Literature
6short Q&A pairs drawn directly from our worked dot-point answer. For full context and worked exam questions, read the parent dot-point page.
What is free indirect style?Show answer
Free indirect style blends the narrator's third-person, past-tense frame with the character's voice, idiom and thought, without an explicit "she thought" or "he wondered". It is read precisely through the grammar: an unattributed question inside the narration, a colloquial intensifier or evaluative word that belongs to the character, a deixis ("here", "now", "tomorrow") oriented to the character's position rather than the narrator's. The blend places the reader inside a character's mind while the narrator keeps a foothold outside it, and analysing how the sentence builds the blend is integrated analysis at its sharpest.
What is free indirect style read through grammar?Show answer
"The narration slides into the character's mind through the grammar of an unattributed question and a colloquial intensifier ('Was it really so awful? It was completely impossible'), so her panic colours the third-person voice without a 'she thought'; the reader is placed inside her while the narrator keeps a foothold outside. The technique and its effect are inseparable."
What is transitivity reading agency?Show answer
"The narration denies the character agency in its very grammar: across the passage she is the object of others' verbs, acted upon, summoned, dismissed, and the rare clauses where she is the subject take mental-process or intransitive verbs, so even her actions stay inward. The powerlessness is in the transitivity before it is in the plot." Grammar reading power.
What is q1?Show answer
What is the difference between narrative perspective and focalisation? [2 marks]
What is q2?Show answer
How is free indirect style read through the grammar? [2 marks]
What is q3?Show answer
Explore how the writer uses narrative perspective to shape the reader's response, considering contexts. [out of 60]
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