Answering a Literature essay question

Literature in English · WAEC and JAMB · SS2 and SS3

Most candidates lose marks for how they answer rather than for what they know. The examiner is marking your argument, your use of evidence and your relevance to the exact question, so technique here is worth more than extra reading.

What you need to know

Read the question twice and underline two things: the task verb and the content words. The task verb tells you the kind of answer required, the content words tell you the subject, and ignoring either produces an essay that cannot score in the top band.
Know what the task verbs demand. Discuss means weigh more than one side. Examine the role of means explain what a character or element does for plot, theme and other characters. Comment on means analyse significance. Justify means argue that a given statement is true and support it. To what extent means agree partly and say where you do not.
Answer the question in front of you, not the one you revised. The single commonest cause of a low mark is a prepared essay on a character or theme poured into a question that asked something narrower. Relevance is marked in every paragraph.
Spend four or five minutes planning. Write four or five points in the margin, order them from strongest to weakest, and mark beside each the incident you will use as evidence. A planned essay of four paragraphs beats an unplanned one of seven.
The introduction is three or four sentences. Name the text and the writer, frame the terms of the question in your own words, and state your line of argument. Do not open with the author's biography or with a plot summary.
One idea for each paragraph, announced in a topic sentence that uses the language of the question. If your topic sentence does not contain some of the question's own words, you have probably drifted.
Build each paragraph as point, evidence, analysis, with the analysis longest. The point states your claim, the evidence anchors it in the text, and the analysis explains how the evidence proves the claim and why the writer did it that way.
Embed evidence inside your own sentence rather than dropping it in as a separate line. Evidence does not have to be a quotation; a precisely referenced incident is equally acceptable and often stronger, provided you name what happened, who was involved and where it falls in the text.
Quote accurately and briefly, a few words at a time, and only when the writer's exact wording is doing work. A long quotation eats minutes and adds nothing, and a misquotation can undercut your point.
Learn the difference between summarising and analysing. Summarising says what happened. Analysing says why the writer arranged it that way and what effect it has. Test each sentence: if it could stand in a plot summary, rewrite it so that it explains a choice or an effect.
Make the writer the subject of your sentences. The dramatist delays the discovery until the final act so that the audience endures the suspense the characters do not. That construction cannot be written without analysis, which is precisely why it works.
Use the present tense for events in a text, since literature happens continuously: the narrator conceals, not concealed. Keep the past tense for the historical circumstances in which the work was produced.
The conclusion is two or three sentences that return to the wording of the question and state your overall judgement. Introduce no new evidence and do not summarise every paragraph you have just written.
Follow the rubric exactly. Answer the required number of questions from the correct sections, cover both African and non-African texts where the paper demands it, and share your time evenly, since a missing essay costs far more than a weak paragraph.

Key terms

Task verb: The instruction word in an essay question, such as discuss, examine or justify, which determines the shape of the required answer.
Topic sentence: The opening sentence of a paragraph which states the single idea that paragraph will prove.
Textual evidence: A short quotation or a precisely referenced incident from the text used to support a claim.
Analysis: Explanation of how a piece of evidence proves a claim and why the writer made that choice, as distinct from retelling the events.
Line of argument: The single controlling position an essay takes, stated in the introduction and sustained through every paragraph.
Rubric: The instructions at the head of an examination paper stating how many questions to answer and from which sections.

Worked examples

Rewrite this summarising sentence as analysis: 'The old man refuses to attend the ceremony, and later his son goes without him and comes back changed.'

Test the sentence. It reports two events in order and could sit in a plot summary, so it is narration, not analysis.
Ask what the writer achieves by arranging it this way. The refusal and the son's attendance are placed side by side so that the generational split is shown rather than announced.
Ask what the reader is made to feel or understand. The reader sees the father's authority failing at the moment he asserts it.
Rebuild the sentence with the writer as the subject and the effect at the end.
Keep the evidence, but reduce it to the minimum needed, so that the analysis has room.

Answer: Analysis version: the novelist sets the father's refusal directly against the son's departure so that the break between the generations is dramatised rather than stated, and the father's authority is seen collapsing in the very scene where he tries hardest to enforce it.

A question reads: examine the role of a minor character in a prose work you have studied. Produce a plan and a model topic sentence.

Underline the task verb examine the role of, which requires function rather than description, and the content words minor character.
Choose a character who actually does structural work, not simply one you remember well.
List four functions and keep one incident ready for each: advancing the plot, revealing the protagonist by contrast, carrying a theme, and shaping the reader's judgement.
Order them with the strongest first, since examiners read the opening paragraphs most carefully.
Draft the topic sentence for the first paragraph using the question's own words, so relevance is visible at a glance.
Write one closing sentence that judges the character's overall importance, which answers the examine instruction directly.

Answer: Plan: four paragraphs on plot function, contrast with the protagonist, thematic carriage and influence on the reader's judgement, strongest first. Model topic sentence: the clearest role this minor character plays is structural, since the novelist uses each of her appearances to force a decision the protagonist has been avoiding.

The mistake to avoid

Writing everything you know about the text instead of what the question asked. A brilliant essay on a character's downfall scores poorly against a question about the writer's use of setting. The second trap is the long memorised quotation dropped in without comment, which examiners recognise instantly and which earns nothing because no analysis follows it.

In the exam

Allocate your time by marks and stop when the time for a question ends, even mid-paragraph, then move on and return if you can; an unanswered question is unrecoverable. Make your first paragraph strong and relevant, because it sets the examiner's expectation. Leave three minutes at the end to read through and fix tense slips and the names of characters, which are the errors that quietly reduce a band.