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Snow and Ice

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The Guardian has proven to be a particularly fertile source of texts for Paper 1 in the past, possibly because their journalism is of a high and reliable standard, and possibly because the articles in both print and online versions range widely across different topics, themes and events. If you’re familiar at all with the Guardian you might be surprised at how dramatic and sensational this article turns out to be. You shouldn’t worry about that – in fact, this could form the basis of a strong analysis, as you’ll see in the sample response that follows.

Behind the Scenes

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Gender stereotypes are a popular component of many Lang and Lit courses and is an issue that sometimes surfaces in Paper 1 unseen texts as well. This CNN article contains many of the stereotypes about women that you may have encountered in your classroom study: idealised appearance; sexualisation; trivialisation; the male gaze. Nevertheless, as a textual analysis, you should focus more on the strategies and methods used by the writer to build anticipation for the catwalk show. The article begins with a challenging pun and the analysis below rests partly on an understanding of the double meaning of the word ‘skinny.’

Travel Tales

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This is an excellent text to analyse as it’s crammed full of content and ideas. One challenge of this paper is choosing what exactly to write about and focusing your answer on a well-selected range of ideas and devices. As well, this text is wide open to interpretation: some may find it entertaining and humorous, while others may see the depiction of Indonesian ‘strangeness’ challenging. The guiding question asks you to consider both possibilities, and the sample response below tries to balance both readings of the text.

Hausa People

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This text is a little bit unusual: it’s an encyclopaedia entry. Whatever text you may encounter, it’s a good idea to consider the source of the information you have been given: does it come from within the given field of knowledge or from outside? This extract is written from an outside perspective, and from that initial observation, a great deal of insight can be gleaned into not only what information we learn, but how it is phrased – and also lets us consider what is not being said. This type of thinking demonstrates evaluation of the text, something that is explicitly called for in the Paper 1 mark scheme (criteria B).

Coffee Time

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This text is an excellent example of mix you’ll see often in Paper 1: information is presented in a way that has a persuasive appeal. The writer is trying hard to convince us of Starbuck’s sustainability credentials. It comes across as a very ‘corporate’ text, using technical language and even jargon to drown the reader in evidence. However, the response attempts to balance this evaluation with focused analysis of techniques that are likely to convince the reader, so addressing the given prompt. The response focuses heavily on the stylistic features of language use. A good exercise might be to add your own analysis of some of the formal features of the text: heading/subheading and image are both ripe for analysis. Can you develop the argument even further with attention to these details?

Faraway Places: Travel Writing and Photography

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Travel is never neutral: it is driven by intention, and those intentions shape how journeys are recorded and represented. In this section, we’ll explore seven key purposes of travel: self-discovery, curiosity about the ‘Other,’ spiritual or religious pilgrimage, searching for roots, seeking knowledge, experiencing awe, and escapism. Each purpose influences not only the traveller’s perspective but also the tone, style, and content of their documentation.

Poetry Study: John Keats

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He died young and in love, passing away from tuberculosis at 25. But the work he left behind — much of it written in just a few short years — is acclaimed and has achieved cultural significance. His odes and epics were musically unmatched and emotionally urgent, and, like other Romantic poets, he strove for the eternal and ‘sublime’, trying through poetry to explore the “untrodden region[s] of [his] mind.”

Prose Study: Broken April by Ismail Kadare

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The novel describes the way life is lived in the high mountain plateaus of Albania, where people follow an ancient code of customary law called the Kanun that has been handed down from generation to generation. The code demands men to take the law into their own hands. Insults must be avenged, family honour must be upheld – and blood must be spilt.

Prose Study: The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

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Published in 1979, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories retells classic fairy tales in a disturbing, blood-tinged, explicit way. Angela Carter revises Sleeping Beauty, for example, from an adult, twentieth-century perspective. You might think that fairy tales are the sorts of stories to read to children in bed to lull them to sleep – not these versions! Her renditions are intended not to comfort but to disturb and titillate.

Drama Study: Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw

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When George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1925, he was praised for turning “his weapons against everything that he conceives of as prejudice.” This is clearly true of Pygmalion, which was premiered in German in Vienna in 1913. The play is a modern interpretation of an ancient myth, the tale of Pygmalion and Galatea. In Shaw’s rendition, Higgins, a teacher, “creates” Eliza, his pupil, by teaching her to speak like a duchess – a transformation that allows Shaw to attack the superficial class prejudices of his time.