La Sombra Del Viento

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GCSE English Revision Guide:
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Anthology Non-Fiction

The exam requirements

* There is one question. It will be based on one named extract or article from the non-fiction prose section of the Edexcel Anthology.
* The question usually asks you to ‘discuss’ or ‘comment’ on key aspects ofthe text.
* This question is worth 10% of your total mark for GCSE English.
* You must answer the question in 40 minutes.
Understanding form, purpose and audience

The non-fiction you are studying in the Anthology divides into two types:
* Literary non-fiction such as travel writing and autobiography, in which the writers describe real-life experiences. Their purposes include toinform, to entertain and to reflect on experience.
* Newspaper articles that focus on particular themes. They contain individual opinions and ideas and often some personal experience. Their main purposes are to argue and inform.
To comment effectively on the effect of literary and structural features, it helps to understand who it is being written for (the audience) and why it is being written(the purpose or aim).
What should I write about?

You will gain marks in the non-fiction prose question by commenting on what the writers say and how they say it. No marks are given for commenting on the way the non-fiction piece is visually laid out on the page, so don’t waste time writing about what it ‘looks like’.
Weak answers spend a lot of time describing what happens in a text. Simplydescribing does not show your understanding. To show your understanding, you need to focus more on commenting on the text.
Commenting means making an analytical comment that relates to the question. Comments could include:
* Your own ideas or feelings about the text (make sure there are directly and relevantly related to the text and not just general personal comments on the subject oranecdotal opinions)
* Examples from the text that back up your points in detail
* Explaining how the writer uses language for a particular effect
* Points about the organisation of the text (e.g. a comment about how a text begins or ends, whether the text is organised in a chronological sequence of events, or how the argument develops)
* Points about the background or context thatinfluences what the author writes (e.g. much of the humour in Mongolian Wedding comes from comparisons with our own experiences of weddings).
If you wish to develop your comments further then you can do this by:
* Exploring the effect created in more detail by analysing the effect of particular words or phrases
* Referring to another example of the same feature/techniques
* Making a linkwith something else you have said in your essay (this creates cohesion and cross-referencing)

Literary Features
Literary Non-Fiction (the first four pieces)
Writers of literary non-fiction often use descriptive language to engage their readers’ attention. Some of the key features of descriptive language are:
1) Going into detail – particular events, people, places, objects etc. aredescribed in detail. This takes the reader into the writer’s world.
2) Powerful words – strong, interesting nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs all add colour and power to a narrative.
3) Techniques such as repetition, contrast and varied sentence length also add power.
4) Imagery – writers describe something by linking it to something else (simile, metaphor, personification).
5) Usingthe senses – the reader hears, see, smells, feels and tastes the scene.
Don’t simply list technical terms and expect the examiner to be impressed. The examiner will only give you marks if you make a comment on them, by saying how they create the effect the writer wants (which needs to be relevant to what the question is asking).
Newspaper Articles
Texts which argue often contain these features:...