Structuring a longer answer
It can be useful to think of your longer exam responses as a layered sandwich or burger to make sure you include all the main parts.
Longer answers are needed when you are asked to compare or evaluate (one or more) non-fiction texts.
A longer answer should include:
- A brief introduction - which summarises your opinion, signalling the direction that your answer to the question will take.
- The main body - three or four detailed paragraphs.
- A short conclusion - which focuses on the question and how the reader is left feeling at the end of the extract – has the writer’s purpose been achieved?
Writing an introduction
When you’ve planned your points, and ordered them, it’s time to start writing. Your opening sentence should summarise your main argument. The rest of the answer then shows how you've reached that opinion.
Example
In this article from the 'Comment is free' section of The Guardian newspaper, how successful is Charlie Brooker at persuading us to his point of view on the television show MasterChef?
Have you seen MasterChef? Of course you have, even if you've been trying to avoid it, because it's always there, like the sky or the ground or that skin you're in. MasterChef dominates the schedules like a slow-moving weather system dictating the climate. Your TV's stuck on MasterChef mode. It's not even a TV these days, more a MasterChef display unit. Cooking doesn't get more omnipresent than this.
Masterchef is the best television show in broadcasting history, if you ignore all the other ones, Charlie Brooker (2014)
Suggested introduction
Charlie Brooker is successful at persuading the reader that ‘MasterChef’ has taken over television – and is not to everyone’s taste. He does this through establishing a heavily sarcastic and exaggerated tone.
This introduction:
- specifically answers the question rather than just rephrasing it
- summarises what the text is effective in doing (by creating a sarcastic tone)
- prepares to launch into a detailed analysis of structure and language – the following paragraphs will provide evidence to support this initial view