Category: Paper 1 Analysis

You Are What’s Happening!

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This text is perfect example of a visual narrative, designed to hook viewers into a story of confidence and independence that can be gained by buying a new coat. The response you can read below was written by Anna Huang after she studied the visual language of advertising. I hope you’ll agree that she’s done a fantastic job at unpicking the appeals to prominence and autonomy that the ad taps in to. The structure of her response is completely effective: Anna focuses on the meaning-making image of the woman first, then analyses selected compositional features, before explaining how the slogan ties the ad together. How would you approach this text?

Make Netball Number #1

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There’s no doubt about it – humour can be one of the most tricky things to analyse. Notwithstanding cultural differences that mean people find different things funny, the mechanics of humour can be hard to unpick. Throw in a guiding question about tone, and this past paper suddenly looks far from straightforward. While you may hear tone differently to me (this article could be described as sharp, dry, witty, sarcastic, eager, satirical, and more), I’ve gone for ‘humourous’, ‘self-deprecating’ and ‘lighthearted’ in the response below.

I Was Reading That

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It can be tempting when you sit down to write your Paper 1 analysis to rush to show off your knowledge of different text types, especially after you’ve made all that effort to learn and revise niche genres such as comics and cartoons. Finally, you get to explain fancy techniques like emanata, colour symbolism, or graphic weight! However, the guiding question accompanying this past paper asks how meaning is created – and the central meaning of a comic rarely depends on features such as emanata or colour schemes. This response shows how the figures in the images combined with the words of the text create the meaning of the strip. Only once this is established does the answer analyze supporting compositional features.

Elephant Sanctuary

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As a subcategory of advertising, charity appeals employ a similar range of methods to persuade the reader to donate money or time to a worthwhile cause. Unlike an ad for a product, a charity appeal isn’t trying to sell you something in return. Rather, they need to create the feeling that your donation is worthwhile in intangible ways – the feeling of helping someone, donating to a good cause, or joining a popular movement are all powerful motivators. The response below was written by Abby Ives from New Zealand as she prepares for her upcoming Paper 1 exam. Through careful reading and creative analysis, she’s clearly analysed how this appeal gets readers onside through creating a sense of connection with and belonging to a good cause.

Island Inspiration

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The title of this passage, Prospero’s Cell by Lawrence Durrell, alludes to the antagonist of Shakespeare’s The Tempest: Prospero, a sorcerer whose pursuit of knowledge traps him on an exotic island. Similarly, Lawrence Durrell writes his diary as he arrives on the island of Corfu, with the intention of using this place to stimulate his imagination. Like the Romantic poets who found inspiration in nature, Durrell intends to immerse himself in the natural landscape and connect with classical antiquity, hoping for inspiration to write a book. Even without knowing this allusion, careful reading should reveal a sense of ‘something’ hidden beneath the island’s cold and inhospitable exterior. While Durrell’s diary evokes the loneliness and seclusion of physical austerity, at the same time, the island feels rich and fecund, abundant in movement, colour, and life. A good answer is likely to wrestle with this challenge, such as the sample you’ll read below which was written in collaboration with Isabella Wang of UWCCSC as a way of practising for her upcoming Paper 1. Her response captures the dual-essence of the island’s atmosphere beautifully and her answer is filled with insightful analysis of descriptive writing methods such as imagery, personification, and descriptions of setting.

Severe Weather Warning

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Infographics are an oft-encountered text type in Paper 1. They tend to produce a ‘love-hate’ response with my students. Some like the simple features and predictability of this text type; others find it hard to ‘get under the surface’ beyond attention-grabbing features, which produce simple analysis. The text below is an example of an infographic that’s a bit more than meets the eye. While giving simple information on the definition and causes of thunderstorms, the text also gives repeated warnings about the need to be prepared for any storm, which can suddenly escalate and put people in danger. sample answer, written in collaboration with Katelyn Tan from UWC Changshu as a practice for her upcoming mock, neatly unpicks the way different textual features convey dual purposes: to inform and to warn.

Busy as a Bee

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Blogs are a really great text type to practice with. Written by different people for a variety of individual purposes, each blog has its own distinct flavour, original uses of language, interesting hooks, and stylistic features for you to consider. The sample you’ll read below was written by Mahir Isic, a Bosnian student preparing for his upcoming Paper 1 exam. I hope you’ll agree he’s done a great job picking out a suitable range of ‘authorial choices’ – some visual, some linguistic – as required by the guiding question. How would you have answered this question?

What’s Wrong With McDonalds?

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I was given this leaflet by a colleague many years ago, and I’ve always found it to be a great practice text. True, it’s unlikely that the texts selected for Paper 1 nowadays would be as dense as this leaflet. But that’s what makes it a good text for training. It’s impossible to cover all the points and methods used by the writers in a single sitting, so you have to make clear choices about what you are going to focus on analysing and the evidence you will include in your response. Will you use the tried and tested ethos-pathos-logos route? Will you focus on heading, image, subheading, copy? Will you try to separate out the various attack strategies employed in the leaflet? The response below was written by Enrico Merisi in DP1 as a practice for his end of year exams. What I like about Enrico’s answer is the way he links his paragraphs together using the theme of ‘duplicity’ and carefully chooses only the parts of the text that support his main ideas.

A Call for Unity

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Last week would have been the 95th birthday of Reverend Martin Luthor King Jr which, this year, happily coincided with Martin Luthor King Day, always marked on the third Monday of January. As part of our course on rhetoric and persuasion, students worked with King’s famous ‘I Have a Dream’ speech to improve their skills of analysis and hear those rhetorical techniques put into action by a master of his craft. Some 100 years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves, a young church pastor climbed the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. to describe his vision of America. More than 200,000 people – black and white – came to listen. While it’s highly unlikely you’ll get such a well-known and instantly recognisable speech as a text in Paper 1, that doesn’t stop you practicing with familiar words and phrases. So this is what we did…

An American Revolution

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Advertisements are a great text type on which to practice your Paper 1 analysis skills. Most ads are multimodal, so you can practice writing about both images and text. When looking at advert images, try to break down the image into ‘chunks’. Begin with the main meaning-making image. In the advert below, that’s the car. Then look at how other elements of the advert, such as symbols, colour scheme, or compositional features, support the central message.