Writer's Methods: Language, Form and Structure (Edexcel GCSE English Literature): Revision Note

What are writer’s methods?

Writer’s methods are all the choices a writer makes to shape what the reader or audience thinks and feels. You can sort them into three groups:

• Language: the words and images the writer chooses

• Form: the type of text the writer chooses, and the shape it comes in

• Structure: the order and arrangement of the text

Mark schemes refer to this skill in different ways, such as “language, form and structure”, “meanings and effects” or “their effect on the reader”. However, these terms all point to the same skill you need to show the examiner: explaining how a writer creates meaning.

Why do writer’s methods matter in English Literature?

Analysing writer’s methods accounts for over 40% of the marks in Edexcel GCSE English Literature. Methods matter for three reasons:

• Methods show how meaning is made, so your analysis explains how a text works

• Methods keep the writer at the centre of your essay, which stops you retelling the plot

• Methods are assessed in part (a) of the Shakespeare and 19th-century novel questions and in both poetry questions, so you need this skill for every extract and poem you write about

Analysing methods means that you are aware that the writer of a text shaped that text deliberately, in order to create effects. When you explain how the writer makes something happen, you show the examiner that you can analyse the text as well as understand it, and that’s what gains the highest marks at GCSE.

What is the difference between language, form and structure?

The simplest way to differentiate between language, form and structure is to ask how much of the text the feature that you have identified covers. Language works on words and phrases. Form is the type of text and its shape. Structure is the order of the whole text, or of a section of it.

Some methods fit more than one group. Metre is part of a poem’s form, but a sudden change in metre is also structure. Don’t worry about labelling a method perfectly, because the examiner rewards what you say about its effect.

Which language techniques do you need for GCSE?

You don’t need to memorise a long list of language devices for your exams. The language techniques GCSE essays use most are word choice (you can simply call it “the word”), imagery, symbolism, repetition and contrast. A precise comment on one word earns more credit than an unusual term you can’t explain.

What counts as structure in a novel or play?

In a novel or play, structure includes how the text opens and ends, where the chapter, act and scene breaks fall, and the timing of entrances and turning points. It also includes foreshadowing and dramatic irony.

How to write about writer’s methods

Here is how to write about a writer’s methods in five steps:

• Make the writer the subject of your sentence, for example “Dickens presents…”

• Name the method, using a subject term only if it makes your point more precise

• Support your point with a short quotation or a precise reference to the text

• Explain the effect of the method on the reader or audience

• Link the effect to the writer’s ideas or purpose

Steps 4 and 5 matter most. Naming a technique on its own is called technique spotting, and it only shows the examiner that you know a term. To avoid it, start with an idea about the text, and then choose the method that shows that idea best.

Characters and themes as constructs

Is a character a writer’s method? Yes. The writer creates each character for a purpose, such as a foil, a mouthpiece or a symbol.

For example, in An Inspector Calls, you could write: “Priestley uses the Inspector as a mouthpiece for his socialist views when the Inspector tells the Birlings, ‘We are members of one body.’”

Themes work in the same way, because the writer builds each theme through characters and events, for example: “Dickens explores poverty through the Cratchit family.”

What does writing about methods look like?

Language, form and structure look slightly different in drama, prose and poetry. Form and structure are harder to write about, so each worked example below focuses on one of them.

Writer’s methods in drama

• Language: In Macbeth, Shakespeare uses hyperbole when Macbeth asks whether “all great Neptune’s ocean” could wash the blood from his hand. The image suggests his guilt is too great to wash away.

• Form: Most noble characters in Macbeth speak in iambic pentameter. The witches speak in shorter lines with a trochaic metre, which sounds like a chant: “Double, double, toil and trouble, / Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.” The rhythm marks the witches out as unnatural.

• Structure: Macbeth’s first line, “So foul and fair a day I have not seen”, echoes the witches’ “Fair is foul, and foul is fair”. Macbeth hasn’t met the witches yet, so the echo links him to them from the start.

Worked example (structure in An Inspector Calls): In Act 1, Mr Birling mocks “community and all that nonsense”, and Priestley interrupts him with “the sharp ring of a front door bell”. You could write:

“Priestley times the Inspector’s arrival so that the ‘sharp ring’ of the doorbell cuts off Birling’s speech about looking after himself. The interruption suggests that Birling’s selfish views are about to be challenged, and it prepares the audience for Priestley’s message about shared responsibility.”

Writer’s methods in prose

• Language: In A Christmas Carol, Dickens describes Scrooge as a “squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner!” Most of these words describe grabbing or holding on tightly, so the long list suggests Scrooge’s greed never lets go.

• Form: A Christmas Carol is a novella and a ghost story. The narrator talks to the reader as if they are sitting together, which means the lesson is aimed at the reader as well as at Scrooge.

• Structure: Dickens divides the novella into five “staves”, which are the verses of a song. Each stave is one step in Scrooge’s change. Calling the chapters staves reminds readers that the story is meant to spread Christmas cheer, just as a carol does.

Worked example (structure in A Christmas Carol): You could write:

“Dickens uses a cyclical structure to show how far Scrooge has changed. In Stave 1, Scrooge refuses his nephew Fred’s invitation to Christmas dinner, but in Stave 5 he arrives at Fred’s door and asks, ‘Will you let me in, Fred?’ Repeating the earlier scene with a different ending shows the reader the extent of Scrooge’s transformation.”

Writer’s methods in poetry

• Language: In ‘The Manhunt’, Armitage describes “a sweating, unexploded mine / buried deep in his mind”. A mine is a hidden bomb, and “buried deep in his mind” suggests that the soldier’s worst injury is trauma that nobody can see, and that it could still go off.

• Form: In ‘My Last Duchess’, Browning uses a dramatic monologue, so the Duke reveals his own jealousy and cruelty as he talks.

• Structure: In ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’, Keats ends the poem with almost the same stanza he began with. The knight is still “Alone and palely loitering”, and “no birds sing”, so the structure suggests he is trapped where the poem started.

Worked example (form in ‘My Last Duchess’): You could write:

“Browning writes ‘My Last Duchess’ as a dramatic monologue, so the Duke is the only voice the reader hears. His listener never speaks, which suggests that the Duke controls every conversation, just as he controlled his wife. He hints at her death with ‘I gave commands’, and the form means nobody in the poem can question him.”

What are the common mistakes?

• Technique spotting: naming a method without explaining its effect only shows the examiner that you know a term, so it earns very little credit

• Writing about characters as real people: discussing what a character should have done takes the writer out of your essay, so there’s no analysis of methods to reward

• Only writing about language: analysing single words in every paragraph leaves out form and structure, which limits how fully you can show the writer’s methods

• Naming the form with no effect: saying a poem is a sonnet tells the examiner nothing unless you explain how the form fits the poem’s ideas

• Retelling the plot as “structure”: describing events in order earns no credit for analysis, so explain why the writer placed an event at that point

Writer’s methods in your Edexcel GCSE English Literature exam

Edexcel assesses writer’s methods through AO2, which asks you to “analyse the language, form and structure used by a writer to create meanings and effects, using relevant subject terminology where appropriate”.

AO2 carries 42% of the marks for the whole qualification, which is more than any other assessment objective. AO2 is assessed in part (a) of the Shakespeare and 19th-century novel questions (20 marks each), in the poetry anthology question (15 marks) and in the unseen poetry question (12 marks). It isn’t assessed in part (b) or in the Post-1914 essay. The writer’s methods GCSE essays need are on this page, and this table shows how to write about them in each section: