Writer’s Methods: Language, Form and Structure (Edexcel IGCSE 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

Exam questions and mark schemes refer to this skill in different ways, such as “choice of language”, “language, form and structure” or the writer’s “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 40% of the marks in Edexcel International 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 four of the five sections of your exams, so you need this skill for almost every text

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 IGCSE.

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 IGCSE?

You don’t need to memorise a long list of language devices for your exams. The language techniques IGCSE students 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 class through Pip’s shame at being ‘common’.”

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 Great Expectations, Dickens describes Miss Havisham’s room, where everything “which ought to be white, had been white long ago, and had lost its lustre, and was faded and yellow.” Most of these words describe decay, so the long list suggests that time has kept moving in her room, even though she has tried to stop it.

• Form: Great Expectations is a novel told by a first-person narrator. The older Pip looks back on his younger self, which means the reader sees young Pip’s mistakes more clearly than he does.

• Structure: Dickens divides the novel into three “stages” of Pip’s expectations. Each stage is one step in Pip’s change. Ending the first part with “This is the end of the first stage of Pip’s expectations” reminds readers that his hopes will change again.

Worked example (structure in Great Expectations): You could write:

“Dickens uses Magwitch’s return to show how far Pip has changed. In Chapter 1, Pip is a frightened child who meets the convict in the churchyard, but in Chapter 39 Magwitch arrives at Pip’s rooms and says, ‘I’ve made a gentleman on you!’ Repeating their meeting with a very different Pip shows the reader how far his expectations have taken him from his past.”

Writer’s methods in poetry

• Language: In ‘The Tyger’, Blake describes the tiger’s “fearful symmetry”. Symmetry is a perfectly balanced shape, and “fearful” suggests that the tiger’s beauty is also frightening, possibly because its creator is frightening too.

• 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 places “And no birds sing.” at the end of both the first and the last stanza, so the knight is left exactly where the poem began.

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 International GCSE English Literature exam

Pearson Edexcel assesses writer’s methods in English Literature through AO2, which asks you to “analyse the language, form and structure used by a writer to create meanings and effects”.

AO2 carries 40% of the marks for the whole qualification, which is more than any other assessment objective. AO2 is assessed in four of the five sections of the two papers. It isn’t assessed in Paper 1 Section C (Modern Prose), which assesses AO1 and AO4, so this table shows the writer’s methods IGCSE students should focus on in each section:

If you take the coursework route (Component 3) in place of Paper 2, both of your assignments assess AO2 as well.