The 2021 CSSA paper presented several confusing questions to Advanced and Standard candidates. Yes, it was the same Module C question for both Standard and Advanced, which seemed a bit cheap to me. Module C was a little better than Module A (which was nightmarishly meaningless), and had two parts. Part A looked like this:... Continue Reading →
Then, although it was still the end of the story, I put it at the beginning..., as if I needed to tell the end first in order to go on and tell the rest. Lynda Davis * Rachel looked like a candle flame, even in her sleep. Outside, a single tent away, I could hear Leah, my... Continue Reading →
...were we led all that way for / Birth or death? * Set down this, he said, set down this. And I did, although I was not there as a scribe. I set down his story about following a star in his youth, and how it led him to the land of my own people,... Continue Reading →
What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way around. –George Orwell, ‘Politics and the English Language’ * Once upon a time I had a boss (at a tutoring business) who sent out a fortnightly email. It was a relentlessly – sometimes exhaustingly – exuberant piece.... Continue Reading →
Choose a character, persona or speaker from ONE prescribed text that you have studied in Module C. Express the thought processes of this character, persona or speaker by exploring a moment of tension in the text from an alternative point of view. * The mirror cracked from side to side. It had been a cheapie... Continue Reading →
Continue the extract as a piece of imaginative, discursive or persuasive writing that evokes a particular emotional response in the reader. Twice before, a book had turned him inside out and altered who he was, had blasted apart his assumptions about the world and thrust him onto a new ground where everything in the world... Continue Reading →
Continue the extract as a piece of imaginative, discursive or persuasive writing that evokes a particular emotional response in the reader. Twice before, a book had turned him inside out and altered who he was, had blasted apart his assumptions about the world and thrust him onto a new ground where everything in the world... Continue Reading →
Some things are unknowable. A person’s secrets may be revealed by the things they leave behind; but what are they, those supposedly uncovered secrets? Words, ideas…dry and dead as dust. The rest of the letter had crumbled. She dropped the packet, which turned into large flakes of what had once been paper. Something about the... Continue Reading →
Choose a character, persona or speaker from ONE prescribed text that you have studied in Module C. Express the thought processes of this character, persona or speaker by exploring a moment of tension in the text from an alternative pointof view. * Father turfed the council out and went to town on Hal. I suppose... Continue Reading →
Recall the figure of Adèle Ratignolle, the 'mother woman' from Chopin's novella The Awakening Choose a character, persona or speaker from ONE prescribed text that you have studied in Module C. Express the thought processes of this character, persona or speaker by exploring a moment of tension in the text from an alternative point of... Continue Reading →
The Craft of Writing 