How Unit 1 is built

Unit 1 is an untiered written examination: 1 hour 45 minutes, 30% of the qualification, in two very different halves.

• Section A: Novel — 1 hour, 20% of the qualification. You answer one question from a choice of two on the modern novel you have studied. This section is closed book: no text in front of you.
• Section B: Unseen Prose — 45 minutes, 10% of the qualification. You respond to the set question on a nineteenth-century prose extract you have never seen. CCEA advises 15 minutes reading and 30 minutes writing.

The four CCEA assessment objectives: AO1 respond to texts critically and imaginatively, and select and evaluate relevant textual detail to illustrate and support interpretations; AO2 explain how language, structure and form contribute to writers presentation of ideas, themes, characters and settings; AO3 make comparisons and explain links between texts, evaluating writers differing ways of expressing meaning and achieving effects; AO4 relate texts to their social, cultural and historical contexts, and explain how texts have been influential and significant to readers in different contexts and at different times.

The prescribed novels for this unit are chosen by your school from the CCEA list — which includes titles such as Lord of the Flies, Of Mice and Men, To Kill a Mockingbird, Animal Farm, About A Boy, How Many Miles to Babylon? and Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha. This mini-lesson teaches the method — apply it to the novel your class is studying.

What the novel question rewards

The Section A learning outcomes ask you to: read and understand a novel; respond to the novel critically and imaginatively; select and evaluate relevant textual material; use details from the novel to illustrate interpretations; and explain and evaluate how the author uses narrative techniques, language, structure and form to present ideas, themes, characters and settings.

Read that last outcome again. It contains the whole essay:

• Narrative techniques — point of view, time, foreshadowing, what the narrator does and does not tell us.
• Language — the words, the imagery, the patterns.
• Structure — chapter shape, where the crises fall, how the novel begins and ends.
• Form — what kind of novel this is, and what conventions it is working with or against.

Closed book means preparation. You will not have the novel with you — so you must arrive with short, accurate quotations already learned.

Retelling or analysing?

Preparing for a closed-book exam

Closed book is not a memory test of the plot — it is a test of whether you can prove things without the book. Prepare like this.

• Learn ten to fifteen short quotations, five or six words each, spread across the novel. Choose ones with a dissectible word in them.
• Attach each quotation to a theme and a character, so it can serve any question.
• Know the shape of the novel: opening, turning points, ending. Structure arguments are always available, even when a quotation escapes you.
• Practise from a blank page. Revision that involves looking at the text is revision that has not tested you.
• If a quotation will not come, refer precisely to the moment instead — when he refuses to look at her in the final chapter. Never invent words and put quotation marks around them.

A quotation worth learning

The unseen nineteenth-century extract

Section B lasts 45 minutes: CCEA advises 15 minutes reading the extract and 30 minutes writing your response to the set question. You are asked to explore, respond to, analyse and evaluate an unseen nineteenth-century prose extract, using details to illustrate your interpretations and explaining how the author uses narrative techniques, language, structure and form.

Nineteenth-century prose has its own texture, and it should not frighten you.

• Long sentences with many subordinate clauses. Find the main verb; the rest is scaffolding.
• An intrusive narrator who comments and judges — that voice is analysable.
• Elaborate description where a modern writer would cut. Ask what the detail is being used to tell you about a person or a place.
• Class, money, propriety and reputation are almost always in the room, whatever else is happening.

Fifteen minutes of reading is a gift. Read once for the story, once with a pen. Then plan four points before you write a word.

Handling a long sentence

Which section does it belong to?

Tap a piece of advice, then tap where it belongs.

The prose toolkit

The same five tools work on your set novel and on the unseen extract.

• Narrative voice — who tells us, how close are we, and can we trust them?
• Characterisation — built from speech, gesture, what they notice, and what they never say.
• Setting — mood, class, power and history, all doing work in the background.
• Structure and pace — where the writer lingers is where the writer is pointing.
• Withholding — what the writer refuses to tell you is a decision. Ask why.

Setting doing work

Narrative technique to its effect

Tap a technique on the left, then tap its effect on the reader.

Timing Unit 1

The two sections have different clocks, and CCEA is explicit about them.

• Section A — one hour. Five minutes planning, fifty writing, five checking. Six developed paragraphs is a realistic target.
• Section B — forty-five minutes. Fifteen minutes reading the extract, thirty minutes writing.
• Do not let Section A run over. It is worth 20% and Section B is worth 10% — but ten per cent lost is a whole grade for many candidates.
• Answer the question asked, not the one you revised. Every year candidates deliver a prepared essay on a theme the question did not name.

Which section is closed book?

Turning a theme into an argument

Novel questions are usually built on a theme or a character. A theme is not a topic to survey — it is a claim to prove.

• Decide your line in the first two minutes and let the essay test it.
• Track it across the novel — beginning, middle, end — so the argument moves rather than repeats.
• Evaluate. AO1 asks you to select and evaluate textual detail: say what the evidence is worth, not just that it exists.

Answering the question set

The big ideas to know

You have now covered both sections of Unit 1 and the skills each one needs. Press Finish to see your score.