Everybody Hates Paper 2 Question 4
This is how to get full marks.
How do I know everyone hates this question?
In April to May students had the chance to get unlimited English language exam questions marked by an AQA Senior Examiner if they signed up to my course.
They submitted 166 answers. Of those, only 8 were this question.
This happened even though I told every student this:
Questions 4 and 5 count for 72.5% of your marks!
You should spend as much time as possible just practising these questions.
Practising Questions 2 and 3 make almost no difference to your grade, and the skills for them are already included in Question 4.
If you aren’t ready for Question 4, you aren’t ready.
This comes from the June 2020 paper.
Try the question yourself.
In my Guide to Question 4 of Paper 2 I had to rewrite these sources so that AQA did not pursue me for a copyright infringement. The answers therefore have slightly different quotes - but otherwise, the explanations are exactly the same as the students wrote in the real exam.
Here is a grade 7 answer from the guide:
Response 6
Although Youngs is an experienced climber who clearly relishes the sport, Source A conveys a sense of dread.
Before the description of their descent, both Ben and Jack must have felt a sense of dread, as Youngs mentions “the despair we’d both felt when my leg broke”. This suggests their first reaction had been that it would be impossible for Ben to safely descend the mountain.
Ben appears to feel this despair again later when he cannot stop his broken leg from snagging as he descends, observing “It was hopeless.” This hyperbolic reaction reveals that he doesn’t believe he can save his leg from irreparable damage. Youngs has lost any sense of excitement in his mountain adventure, and now feels only excruciating pain.
Bear also describes her adventures as tortuous, confessing “But I must declare – it is terrifying”. Although the letter is written to her mother, we can imagine it is also intended to persuade other readers that the adventure is also full of terror. However, she also takes pride in overcoming her fear, declaring that “I … now look upon it with utmost delight – I imagine myself ready to meet all future challenges”. We feel her joy and satisfaction in looking back on her memory of success and meeting the challenges of the climb.
This contrasts with Youngs’ feelings of pain and sense of dread.
10 marks
3 comparisons
226 words
My Comments
Explanations 10
Methods 8
References 7
Points 11
I would give this 9 marks for 9 explanations, but technically you could decide the first line includes an explanation, to stretch it to 10.
Notice that the first sentence acts as an introduction - summing up the main difference, and the last sentence acts as a conclusion - although it would be more effective if it was about both sources.
The Senior Examiner I employed calls this framing. It is something she looks for in top grade answers.
Student Answer 15/16
Writer A felt extreme pain during his adventures in the mountains whereas Writer B felt fear. Writer A describes the “sickening grisly crunch” of his knee using auditory imagery, providing a gruesome idea of his injury. The adjective “grisly” is visceral and disgusting, evoking pity from the reader. This gruesome image is worsened by the use of the verb “crunch” which demonstrates how his knee is extremely broken and the extreme, horrifying pain he feels where his bones are not set correctly, making us the reader wonder if his leg will ever recover due to the extent of his injury.
The senior examiner really liked the idea of a frame. She liked a first sentence which frames the answer - a one sentence summary of the main difference you are going to highlight.
“Writer A felt extreme pain during his adventures in the mountains whereas Writer B felt fear.”
There is nothing in the mark scheme about this. But it accomplishes two things:
the examiner feels confident you have understood the whole question, in advance of answering it.
the examiner therefore feels you are intelligent and deserving of a high mark.
The other thing examiners get excited about is more than one explanation about the same quote.
I call this PREZE - Point, Reference, Explanaton, Zoom, Explanation.
The Zoom is where you pick on individual words, to explain their connotations. You can see this with “grisly” and “crunch”.
✅ Paid subscribers get the rest of the answer with my comments.
✅ They also get the answer graded using points make prizes, so you can see if that method makes writing easy for you.
You also get to see why it is exactly how the examiner thinks - even if it is not mentioned in the mark scheme.
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