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WalesEnglish LiteratureQuick questions
AS Unit 1: Prose and Drama
Quick questions on Pre-1900 prose fiction (AS Unit 1 Section A) - WJEC A-Level English Literature
7short Q&A pairs drawn directly from our worked dot-point answer. For full context and worked exam questions, read the parent dot-point page.
How do sentence shapes - a long accumulating sentence, a short blunt one - control pace and emphasis?Show answer
Each observation should land on a quoted word or phrase and then explain the effect on the reader.
What are read the extract as crafted prose, not as events?Show answer
The extract is printed for a reason: it is your evidence bank. Work through it asking what the writer is doing. Is this a first-person narrator whose limited view shapes our sympathy, or an omniscient narrator who judges the characters for us? Does the prose use irony, so the surface meaning and the implied meaning pull apart?
What is model approach?Show answer
Suppose the extract is a scene of a heroine being judged by those around her. A top-band answer first reads the narration: perhaps a controlling third-person narrator whose ironic diction exposes the judges rather than the heroine, so the reader's sympathy is steered by method, not just by events. It quotes the loaded words that do this work.
What is bolted-on context?Show answer
A paragraph of background that does not bear on the meaning of the text wastes AO3. Tie every contextual point to interpretation.
What is q1?Show answer
Why is the printed extract especially important in a closed-book prose answer? [2 marks]
What is q2?Show answer
What is the difference between analysing narrative method and retelling the plot? [3 marks]
What is q3?Show answer
Examine how the writer presents a central character in an extract from your set text, and relate this to the novel as a whole. [20 marks]
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