Please note the screenshot below which deconstructs a question on ‘The Road’

Things to consider:

• The question is located in the centre of the image. It asks the candidate to explore how the text was constructed/generic conventions to position a response to a particular issue.
• I wanted to deconstruct the question and identify the key discriminators before going any further. Please note that the assessment criteria refers to engagement with the question, so we need to understand what the question is asking of us before we begin planning.
• The question refers to ‘generic conventions’ so I listed a few of these, though the list is not exhaustive/definitive. I simply listed the ones that are perhaps most relevant to a discussion of ‘The Road’.
• I then listed what ‘issues’ the text promotes. It would be best to write about the issues which affected you most so that you’re writing from a position of integrity. You are advised going into any assessment armed with what YOU know about the text rather than trying to remember what a teacher told you on a wintery afternoon or what you read in a study guide while you were revising.
• I then constructed my thesis statement around these ideas.
• This then lead to me reflecting on what extracts from the text would BEST exemplify the thesis statement I’d just written.
• I then applied the generic conventions to these and linked them back to the question itself.

The extended response is now planned and ready to be written.

Think about this as a process. Get your thinking in the right order and you won’t go far wrong.

Hope this makes sense.