The guiding question

Each passage comes with a guiding question that points you at a technical or thematic focus — for example (illustrative): How does the writer use structure to shape the reader’s sympathy?

• The guiding question opens your analysis; it does not limit it. Answer it, then range wider.
• It tells you what the examiners think is central — ignore it at your peril, but do not treat it as the only thing worth saying.

The guiding question

Argue, do not walk through

Structure the response around ideas and techniques, never line by line.

• Line-by-line commentary drifts and repeats. A thesis-led essay argues.
• Find a controlling argument — a claim about the text’s overall effect — and let each paragraph develop one strand of it.

The thesis test: could someone disagree with your opening claim? If not, it is a summary, not a thesis. “The poem is about loss” is a summary; “the poem stages consolation only to withdraw it” is a thesis.

Best structure

Reading unseen prose

Reading an unseen prose passage — first questions to ask.

• Voice: first or third person? Reliable? What attitude (tone) colours the telling?
• Focalisation: whose eyes are we seeing through, and what does that make us feel?
• Pace and paragraphing: where does the passage slow, rush or break?
• Free indirect discourse: does the narration borrow a character’s idiom?

Reading prose

Sort the unseen toolkit by form

Tap a technique, then the literary form it most belongs to.

Reading an unseen poem

Reading an unseen poem — read the form, not just the paraphrase.

• Shape: stanza form, line length, and any volta (turn).
• Movement: where enjambment spills and where a caesura stops the line.
• Sound: rhythm, rhyme, alliteration — and what they do to meaning.
• Image: the central metaphor and how it develops or breaks down.

Never just retell what the poem “says.” The marks are in how the form makes it mean.

Reading the form

The unseen discipline

Because the text is unseen, stay disciplined about context.

• Do not invent a date, an author or a historical background you cannot know.
• Make cautious inferences from internal evidence — diction, references, form — without overclaiming.
• The examiner wants your reading of the words in front of you, closely and precisely.

What SL requires

Match the Paper 1 term to its meaning

Tap an item on the left, then its pair on the right.

Embed and analyse

Embed evidence and analyse method.

1. Quote briefly — a word or phrase, woven into your sentence.
2. Name the method precisely (not “imagery” but “the rot imagery”).
3. Explain the effect on the reader.
4. Connect back to your thesis.

Avoid the feature-hunt: a list of devices earns little. One choice, analysed for two sentences, earns much.

The unseen discipline

The four assessment criteria

Know the four criteria (each analysis marked out of 20).

• A — Understanding and interpretation: a convincing reading, supported by evidence.
• B — Analysis and evaluation: of the writer’s formal and stylistic choices.
• C — Focus and organisation: a coherent, developed argument.
• D — Language: clear, accurate, well-registered writing.

Embed the evidence

Managing the time

SL time management: one analysis in 1 hour 15 minutes.

• Spend the opening minutes annotating and finding a thesis — do not start writing blind.
• Aim for a clear shape: thesis, three or four developed points, a close.
• Leave a few minutes to check that every paragraph serves the argument.

Planning is not lost time. A response with a spine beats a longer one that wanders.

The big ideas to take away

Paper 1 cannot be revised by memorising — only by reading well, again and again. Press Finish to see your score.