AQA English Language Paper 1 Question 4 EXPLAINED
Summary of Mrs Wear’s “Top Five Things to Know About AQA Paper 1 Question 4”
Mrs Wear explains how to tackle the evaluation question (Q4) on Paper 1 Section A.
What you need to do – You’ll be given a student’s statement about the text. Your job is to evaluate it — basically judge whether it’s true. And yes, it always is true. Your role is to prove it beyond reasonable doubt, like a lawyer building a case. Don’t ever fully disagree. Either completely agree or mostly agree, but always prove the point.
Marks and timings – It’s worth 20 marks — the same as Questions 1, 2 and 3 combined. That’s nearly half your Section A marks. You must give it proper time: about 25 minutes. A big mistake students make is running out of time by spending too long on Q2 or Q3. Ignore this at your peril; it can cost you grades.
Don’t forget to analyse – The student statement might tempt you into writing about characters as if they’re real people. Don’t drift into a “Jeremy Kyle” essay about family relationships! Stick to analysis of language and structure to prove the statement is correct.
Use evaluative language – Show the examiner you’re making a judgment. Use clear evaluative phrases like “the student is clearly correct because…” or “the writer successfully shows…”. It makes your evaluation obvious and earns you marks.
Depth over breadth – Sometimes the statement includes two ideas, like “the writer builds tension and shows Maria has a bad relationship with her father.” You don’t have to prove both. Pick one and prove it really well. Analyse several techniques in detail until there’s no doubt left. Better one point done brilliantly than two done half-heartedly.
She finishes by reminding students to subscribe for more lessons — she covers the whole Language and Literature exam, not just AQA.
So, this question will give you a statement that a student has said about the text that you've been answering questions on so far. Uh the student will always say something uh that sounds like they really enjoyed the text, but also is kind of like simple. So, they might say something like they describe the setting in a really vivid way. Uh the writer builds tension. It makes you feel like you're there. It makes you want to read on. Basically, any other sentence that every English teacher ever tells their students never to write in an exam AQA write in an exam. So, what you need to do with that statement is you need to evaluate, which means to judge, if that student's statement is correct. Spoiler
alert, it is. It always is. But, what you're trying to do is prove that they are correct beyond reasonable doubt. So, imagine you're like a lawyer in a case. Somebody said this is true, and you are really having to like prove that it's true. Cuz we can't just take this random student's word for it. You've got to really prove it. With that in mind, it's important to remember that you should never completely disagree with the statement, okay? AQA would have to be super messed up to give you a statement in the exam that is just plain wrong. They won't do that. So, make sure you either completely agree or kind of agree. In my course, which you can find on Stream English, on this exam paper I go into a lot more detail on how to have
that kind of nuance of agreement, but my top tip to keep things simple here, just agree. Just really agree and really prove that that student is right. So, this question is worth 20 marks, which is the same amount as questions 1, 2, and 3 combined. So, this is a really important question in this paper. And it's that is deliberate on the part of AQA because it's supposed to be a a that combines the skills of questions 1, 2 and 3 as well. And I'll be doing videos on those questions, so keep an eye out for those and watch those if you need a bit of uh help and revision with those ones as well. Because it's worth 20 marks, you should spend 25 minutes answering the question. So, if you're spending an hour on uh
section A, that means it's nearly half of your time. The worst, but one of the most common mistakes that students make, is they leave this question to the last minute. They don't give themselves enough time to do it cuz they spent way too long on question 2 or question 3, and they don't give this one enough time. This is worth so many marks that it could really take multiple grades away from you if you do not answer this question. So, make sure you're really strong in your timings and you give question 4 the amount of time that it needs. Another reason that I tend to hate the student statement that's provided with this question is because it talks about the characters as if they are real people. Something like, "From
reading this text, we can see that Alice really wishes her father would care for her more." What this then makes students do is not write an English essay, but a kind of like Jeremy Kyle-esque, Oprah Winfrey-esque, just like monologue about how we need to love one another and how parents need to care for their children. Don't let the statement make you lose sight of what it is you're trying to do. You are there to prove that statement is correct by analyzing language and structure. That's what you have to do. And again, I've got a lot of videos coming up on how to do that, so make sure you look out for those. But, as I mentioned earlier, evaluation just means that you're judging something. So, you
want to be using language that shows that you're making a judgment. This is really useful just from a writing style perspective for the examiner because it's really almost like you're signposting, "Look, look, I'm evaluating. Give me marks. And then they can do that because they can clearly see that's what you're doing. So, basically, what you want to do is use judgmental language. So, for example, the student is clearly correct because the writer successfully highlights. When we consider whether the student is correct, we can see that the student statement can sometimes be quite long. For example, it might say, um in this text, the writer successfully builds up tension and makes us think that Maria and her father have a bad
relationship. I don't know why I keep talking about fathers in bad relationships. I swear there's nothing going on in my life. Anyway, uh point is, when you've got two different things in there, you have to prove that Maria has a bad relationship with her father, and you have to prove there's a building of tension. You might find it quite hard to try and prove both in 25 minutes. And you don't have to prove both. AQA have said that it's okay if you do not prove every single part of the statement. The key thing is, as I said back in point one, that the part that you do prove, you prove it beyond doubt. Nobody can argue that tension is built in this text because you have analyzed that technique and that technique and
that technique and that technique and that technique and that technique to all show that they come together and they build tension. Here, here, here, here, here, the tension increases, decreases, goes on a loop-de-loop, whatever it is that's going on in the text. You have left the examiner in no doubt that that student statement is right.