Question 3: structure

Question 3 is about the whole source and how the writer has structured it to interest you. It suggests you could write about:

• what the writer focuses your attention on at the beginning;
• how and why the focus changes as the source develops;
• any other structural features that interest you.

It tests AO2, is worth 8 marks, and you should spend about 10 minutes on it.

1. Skim the whole source and note where the focus shifts: a new place, person, time or mood.
2. Write about the beginning: what are we shown first, and why?
3. Write about one or two shifts in the middle.
4. Write about the ending: what does it leave us thinking or wondering?

Work through the text in order, using structure terms such as zooming in, shift in focus and foreshadowing. Short quotations help you show where each part is.

The small locomotive engine, Number 4, came clanking, stumbling down

from Selston with seven full waggons. It appeared round the corner with

loud threats of speed, but the colt that it startled from among the

gorse, which still flickered indistinctly in the raw afternoon,

5outdistanced it at a canter. A woman, walking up the railway line to

Underwood, drew back into the hedge, held her basket aside, and watched

the footplate of the engine advancing. The trucks thumped heavily past,

one by one, with slow inevitable movement, as she stood insignificantly

trapped between the jolting black waggons and the hedge; then they

10curved away towards the coppice where the withered oak leaves dropped

noiselessly, while the birds, pulling at the scarlet hips beside the

track, made off into the dusk that had already crept into the spinney.

In the open, the smoke from the engine sank and cleaved to the rough

grass. The fields were dreary and forsaken, and in the marshy strip

15that led to the whimsey, a reedy pit-pond, the fowls had already

abandoned their run among the alders, to roost in the tarred

fowl-house. The pit-bank loomed up beyond the pond, flames like red

sores licking its ashy sides, in the afternoon’s stagnant light. Just

beyond rose the tapering chimneys and the clumsy black headstocks of

20Brinsley Colliery. The two wheels were spinning fast up against the

sky, and the winding-engine rapped out its little spasms. The miners

were being turned up.

This text is from the opening of a short story. How has the writer structured the text to interest you as a reader?

The story opens with movement and noise, as the engine comes ‘clanking, stumbling’ into view, which grabs our attention. The focus then zooms in on a woman ‘trapped’ beside the track. She isn't named, which makes us curious about her. As the train moves on, the focus widens to the empty fields, slowing the pace and building a gloomy mood. Finally the writer brings us to the colliery, ending on the short sentence ‘The miners were being turned up.’ This foreshadows that the miners, and perhaps the woman's link to them, will matter in the story.

The top level (7–8 marks) needs perceptive, detailed analysis of structure:

• explaining why the writer makes each structural choice, and its effect;
• well-chosen examples from across the whole text;
• accurate use of structure terms.