Approaches to Section B

Okay, there are two approaches to Section B that AQA seemed happy with last year.  As you know the task is split into two parts: a and b.  Part a is pretty straight forward, it will ask about how Steinbeck has portrayed a character, or how a certain theme is explored and that sort of thing, we're all familiar with this type of question.  But rather helpfully they have made the second part (b) context based.

Now hints and tips: Last year when I marked this paper I had some great 'history' essays!  There was one in particular that was utterly exceptional, but he wasn't able to go past about 2-4 marks for part b because at no point did he make the overt connection between the context and the text.

For instance he would have said something like:

In the 1930s the American people were still suffering from the Great Depression meaning there were not a lot of jobs available and people struggled to get by.
ZERO marks.

What he should have said was:

At the time the novel is set, the early 1930s, the American people were suffering from the effects of the Great Depression; there were not a lot of jobs around and life was a struggle for thousands just like Lennie and George.

I've over simplified it I know, but hopefully you will see the obvious difference.

AQA informed us last year, at least my supervisor did, that to proceed beyond 14/30 context must be addressed.  If you do not tackle part b then you can't go up into the higer bands.

Now, at the beginning I said there were two approaches.  You can either answer part a and then part b, or AQA will allow a student to go beyond 14/30 if context is addressed as part of a whole response.  I marked a good deal of essays that didn't reference 'b' in their margin, but had answered it as part of their whole response by tying in context throughout.