The document provides advice for students on how to answer a Section B question for an exam. It advises students to carefully consider the question and decide which texts and parts of texts will best answer the aspect of narrative focused on in the question. Students should relate this aspect to the stories in each text and discuss it in three different ways as it relates to the texts. The texts should be connected by this common narrative aspect.

1. Section B
Advice from the board:
• Students need to think carefully about the question and
decide which texts or parts of text will best answer the
question
• The central focus is the ‘aspect of narrative’ that is set up
in the question
• Students need to relate this ‘aspect’ to the stories of each
text
• This aspect will be written about in three different ways
• The texts will be connected by this aspect; there is no
further need to connect or compare

2. You are going to select a section B
question from the lucky dip.
• What aspect of narrative is the question
directing you to focus on?
• Which texts would you use?
• For novels, or longer poems, which section of
the text would you use?

3. Brainstorm key points
(relating to the aspect of
narrative in the question)
Form:
about language, form and
structure for the three
resulting
texts you will answer on
overall style
Structure: how the
text has been put
together
Language: words; images
sentence structures;
punctuation; stage directions

4. Section B: How to Address AO3
• The invitation to address meanings and
interpretations is clearly set up in the questions
• It is often signalled by the word ‘significance’
• This word is also often used in Section A, the even numbered
questions (for example: What significance can you find in the
title Digging to America?)
• Significance is about what is signified, about what
meanings arise
• Here it is how readers find meanings in the aspect of
narrative that is the focus of the question

5. Example:
“In a narrative, there is usually a hero or heroine, a protagonist on whose fate the readers’ interest in
the story principally rests.”
Write about the significance of protagonists in the narratives of the three writers you have studied.
‘Ulysses’, ‘Lady of ‘Gatsby’ ‘Enduring Love’
Shallott’
Significance U – telling his own story Joe – narrates his own story, directs
LS – follow her, focus is on her attention, represents science
and remains with her Jed – invades that
story, antagonist, religion
Language U – personal, boastful, Joe –characterised by his own
arrogant, future – his own, language, scientific and
contrasts with his son, detailed, interest created because of
first=person what he says, or doesn’t say, self-
LS – descriptive, contrasts to Complete a grid/plan aware narrator who maintains our
characterise the Lady for your Section B interest
Form & U – first person monologue, question and texts Narrating in hindsight, biased, uses
structure directs attention his story fractions to allow other voices to be
LS – narrative poem, Lady in heard – Clarissa and Jed’s letters –
each stanza, crisis towards these increase interest in Joe and
end help characterise him
Interpretations U – fate interests the readers, Biased, is the narrative truthful,
very significant, don’t hear allows us to see different
from others interpretations of the title
LS – poem named after her,
narrative stays with her

6. Work for Tuesday
• You will be spending 1 hour answering your
section B question from today, so bring your
texts. This will be in exam conditions.
• The second hour will should be used for
making a revision chart for your four texts: on
the A3 handout.

7. Write about the significance of the ways the three writers you have studied
create and use suspense in their narratives.
Write about the significance of climaxes and/or anticlimaxes in the
narratives of the three writers you have studied.

8. Write about the significance of the ways speech is used in the work of the three writers
you have studied.
Writers draw upon the conventions of different genres when constructing their
narratives: for example, ballads, monologues, elegies, fictive
biographies, thrillers, romances.
Write about the significance of generic conventions in the narratives of the three
writers you have studied.
A key choice writers make is how they name or refer to characters in their stories.
Write about the significance of the choices writers have made in naming or
referring to their characters in the three texts you have studied.

9. “In narratives, what we are not told is just as important as what we
are told.”
Write about the significance of the gaps or of the untold stories in
the narratives of the three writers you have studied.
Write about the significance of descriptive language as it is used by each of
the three writers you have studied.
Write about the significance of the ways the three writers you have studied
have structured their narratives.

10. Write about the significance of the ways the three writers you have studied have
used places in their narratives.
Write about the significance of the ways writers end their narratives in the work of
the three writers you have studied.
Write about the significance of narrators in the work of the three writers you have
studied.

11. Many narratives have one or more significant moments of crisis.
Write about the significance of crises in the work of the three writers you
have studied.
How do writers use repetition to create meanings in their texts?
Write about the significance of repetition in the work of the three writers you
have studied.
Write about the significance of some of the ways characters are created
in the three texts you have studied.

12. Write about the significance of the ways authors use time to shape the
order of events in the three texts you have studied.
Writers often choose their titles carefully to allow for different
potential meanings.
Write about the significance of some potential meanings of titles in
the three texts you have studied.
Write about the significance of one or two key events in each of the three texts
you have studied.