Introduction

The “Structure” Question

This part of the exam asks you to focus on how the given text has been structured for some purpose (usually to “interest” you as a reader, or something similarly vague). 

So, what is structure?

Defining Structure

Well, structure is a broad term. Essentially, if the language of a text is the ingredients portion of a recipe, then the structure is the method! So, it includes: the order you put things in; the amounts and ratios of what you include; the mixing of things; and so on.

If that conceptual way of looking at structure left you cold, then just apply the acronym we use here at MyEdSpace: COOL SPIDER. This is a checklist of several of the most common structural features used by writers: contrast, opening, order of events, length of sentences, shifts, paragraphing, implications, discourse type, end, and repetition.

Let’s take them one by one.

The COOL SPIDER Approach

C = Contrast

Contrast is any time that the writer has placed opposing ideas next to each other. This might include adjacent words, like “deafening silence” (oxymoron), or adjacent ideas, like “a miniature poodle barked at the gargantuan tree” (juxtaposition). Often, contrast serves to make things stand out in their difference (the dog seems extra small next to such a large tree), or to create a sense of something mind-boggling (sounds so quiet they can deafen).

O = Opening

Perhaps the easiest way to talk about structure is to think about what comes first in a text (or last!) and consider why. Considering that the question usually asks something about your experience as a reader (“How has the writer structured the text to interest you as a reader?”), then your first impression matters a lot! Think about what event or character or tone kicks things off and how that prepares you as a reader for the rest of the text.

O = Order of events

The order in which things happen in a text is always a deliberate structural choice by a writer. Have they been chronological, or have they ordered things in terms of importance, or built towards a focal point? Think about what happens and when. Not all texts are heavily narrative, of course, so it may not be an order of events so much as an order of mention when it comes to ideas. Whatever the case, consider the effect of when we are told (and not told) things.

L = Length of sentences

This is a tricky one to discuss, because it is controversial. Sentence length is easy to spot, but it is hard to talk about meaningfully in an exam! If you point out that there are several short or long sentences, and leave it there, you won’t be getting many marks. If you point out that the short sentences create unease and the long ones slow the pace, you may get a few marks. If, on the other hand, you are able to point out that a sentence is extended artificially using appended clauses and a polysyndetic system in order to build toward a climax of the main clause that carries the meaning, leaving the reader with a dramatic revelation, then you’re writing about sentence length effectively – and you will earn your 9! In short, don’t talk about sentence length if there’s nothing to add.

S = Shifts

Shifts are great to talk about for this question. Shifts are any time there is a change of focus or tone (or anything else for that matter). If something has changed, the writer has shifted. It may be that the focus shifts from action to inaction, or that the tone shifts from humorous to grave. The writer, in doing so, is positioning you as the reader to feel or think a certain way at that specific moment. So ask yourself, Why now? and, Why this? Write in the exam about how your “experience” is being “shaped” by the writer when they do this.

P = Paragraphing

Like sentence lengths, these are easy to spot and to label, but hard to speak about meaningfully. If there are particularly lengthy paragraphs, or a particularly short one, by all means notice it – but make sure you go one step further. Consider why this specific paragraph, given its content, is so lengthy (is it packed with detailed exposition or informative details?), or so short (is it isolated to draw attention to the salience of a single moment in the narrative?) and comment on that, not just how long or short it is! As with sentence lengths, this is a big differentiator between Grade 3s and Grade 9s.

I = Implications

Implications are basically clues. If something is implied, you as a reader must infer something from it. Implications may be things like foreshadowing, the placement and development of motifs, the blatant withholding of details, and all sorts of other things. Any time a “seed” is planted, or dug up, you can talk about how the writer has structured the text for intrigue – or capitalised on the reader’s curiosity, or fulfilled our wonderment, etc.

D = Discourse type

All writing can be categorised into different types of “discourse”. In fiction writing, these discourse types include narrative (where events are being recounted), descriptive (where settings or characters are being described through the senses), dialogic (where characters are speaking to each other), and reflective (where a narrator reflects on the story without the story moving forward) – as well as many others. Essentially, this is what the text is “doing” at that moment. If a writer chooses to shift (another structural device) the discourse type, there is an effect on the reader’s experience. If we read a tense narrative that is building towards a climax and it is then interrupted with dialogue, it may hold us (frustratingly or otherwise!) in suspense. The writer controls our experience.

E = End

How the text ends is both easy to identify and quite easy to talk about – so it is a highly recommended focus for structural analysis. Remember, how the text ends (with what message, with what sense of closure, etc.) is the final impression that we as readers are left with – and therefore it can be argued that this is the most important structural decision that the writer makes throughout!

R = Repetition

Finally, there is repetition. Repetition is usually handled well by students. They recognise that something occurs on multiple occasions in a short space of time and they comment on the importance of that repeated thing. It is a big banker of a focus – if there’s repetition to be found! It may be direct repetition of words, repetition of phrases, or even repetition of sentence/paragraph structures. Repetition may also entail lexical or semantic fields, but in these cases the focus must be on the abundance of the idea, rather than of the meanings of words, because the latter is more like language analysis (reserved for Q2)!

The CORE Approach

If COOL SPIDER is a lot to memorise, though, why not start with the CORE elements?

C = Contrast

Where are things different in the text and why?

O = Opening

What first impression have we been given and why?

R = Repetition

What ideas have been brought up repeatedly and why?

E = End

What final impression have we been left with and why?

Ask yourself these questions as you annotate and you’ll be in a good position to write!

Writing About Structure

There is no need to complicate this. As with any analysis, you need to say something in response to the question, provide references to the text, and explore the effect of them. 

Say something: The writer has used a jarring opening to interest me as a reader.

Reference it: The abrupt opening sentence, “Listen to me, and listen good.”, positions the reader as a captive listener for a confident speaker.

Explore the effect: Starting the text like this prepares us both for a compelling narrative and a bossy narrator who may challenge us throughout. 

You can be more discursive in your response, but those key features belong in literally any analysis you ever write. The next note, modelling an answer to Q3, will show you how.

You now need to think about the whole of the source*.

How has the writer structured the text to engage you as a reader? (8 marks)

Darcus Bowden, Clara’s father, was an odoriferous, moribund, salivating old man entombed in a bug-infested armchair from which he had never been seen to remove himself, not even, thanks to a catheter, to visit the outdoor toilet. Darcus had come over to England fourteen years earlier and spent the whole of that period in the far corner of the living room, watching television. The original intention had been that he should come to England and earn enough money to enable Clara and Hortense to come over, join him and settle down. However, on arrival, a mysterious illness had debilitated Darcus Bowden. An illness that no doctor could find any physical symptoms of, but which manifested itself in the most incredible lethargy, creating in Darcus – admittedly, never the most vibrant of men – a lifelong affection for the dole, the armchair and British television. In 1972, enraged by a fourteen-year wait, Hortense decided finally to make the journey on her own steam. Steam was something Hortense had in abundance. She arrived on the doorstep with the seventeen-year-old Clara, broke down the door in a fury and – so the legend went back in St Elizabeth – gave Darcus Bowden the tongue-whipping of his life. Some say this onslaught lasted four hours, some say she quoted every book of the bible by memory and it took a whole day and a whole night. What is certain is, at the end of it all, Darcus slumped deeper into the recesses of his chair, looked mournfully at the television with whom he had had such an understanding, compassionate relationship – so uncomplicated, so much innocent affection – and a tear squeezed its way out of its duct and settled in a crag underneath his eye. Then he said just one word: Hmph.

 

Hmph was all Darcus said or ever was to say after. Ask Darcus anything; query him on any subject at any hour of the day and night; interrogate him; chat with him; implore him; declare your love for him; accuse him or vindicate him and he will give you only one answer. 

 

‘I say, isn’t dat right, Darcus?’

 

‘Hmph.’

 

‘An’ it not,’ exclaimed Hortense, returning to Clara, having received Darcus’s grunt of approval, ‘dat young man’s soul you boddrin’ yourself wid! How many times must I tell you – you got no time for bwoys!’

 

For Time was running out in the Bowden household. This was 1974, and Hortense was preparing for the End of the World, which, in the house diary, she had marked carefully in blue biro: 1 January 1975. This was not a solitary psychosis of the Bowdens. There were eight million Jehovah’s Witnesses waiting with her. Hortense was in large, albeit eccentric, company. A personal letter had come to Hortense (as secretary of the Lambeth branch of the Kingdom Halls), with a photocopied signature from William J. Rangeforth of the largest Kingdom Hall in the USA, Brooklyn, confirming the date. The end of the world had been officially confirmed with a gold-plated letterhead, and Hortense had risen to the occasion by setting it in an attractive mahogany frame. She had given it pride of place on a doily on top of the television between a glass figurine of Cinderella on her way to the Ball and a tea-cosy embroidered with the Ten Commandments. She had asked Darcus whether he thought it looked nice. He had hmphed his assent.

The writer immediately positions us, as readers, in a position of judgemental observers, with an opening that focuses on the failings of Darcus Bowden as a person, intriguing us and making us feel superior. The first sentence, with its surplus of pejorative adjectives and appended clauses detailing his inertia, amounting to an epic forty words, prepares us to expect nothing more than “bug-infested armchair” dwelling from him, no dynamism. 

Such an impression is enhanced by the contrast afforded by the depiction of Hortense, alongside whom we are initially aligned in our distaste for Darcus, affording us a sense of authority. She is his opposite: his “lethargy” and her “steam”; his “slump[ing] deeper into the recesses of his chair” and her “tongue-whipping” unleashed. Throughout the text, their absolute antithesis to one another serves to enhance their characterisation – making Darcus more reticent and Hortense more fiery by the writer placing them next to each other.

Indeed, the characters’ contrast is carried through the extract with the repetition of Hmph, which is entertaining to behold. The dismissive “hmph” offered by Darcus four times in the extract is forever in contrast to the lengthy diatribes of Hortense serve both to contrast the characters further and also to entertain us as readers who are on balance like neither of them: neither haughty nor decrepit. Overall, we are interested as readers by these two characters’ contrast and our own according sense of superiority. 

How To Approach Paper 1 Question 3

Model Answer -  Paper 1 Question 3