Question 4: evaluation

Question 4 gives you a statement about part of the source, often from a student, and asks to what extent you agree. You are asked to:

• write about your own impressions;
• evaluate how the writer creates them;
• support your opinions with references to the text.

It tests AO4, is worth 20 marks, and you should spend about 20–25 minutes on it.

1. Box the part of the source named in the question.
2. Decide how far you agree: completely, mostly, or partly. Say so in your first sentence.
3. Take each part of the statement in turn. For each, give your impression, then evaluate the method that creates it, with a quotation.
4. Keep linking back to the statement with phrases such as ‘This strongly supports the view that…’.

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.

Focus on lines 13 to 22. A student said, ‘In this part of the story, the writer makes the place seem lifeless and threatening.’ To what extent do you agree?

I strongly agree that the place seems lifeless. Lawrence describes the fields as ‘dreary and forsaken’, and even the fowls have gone to roost. The ‘stagnant light’ effectively suggests that time itself has stopped. However, I only partly agree that it seems threatening. The pit-bank ‘loomed up’ like a monster, and the flames are ‘like red sores’, which convincingly suggests danger. Yet the colliery is also busy, with wheels ‘spinning fast’, so it feels less threatening than tired and worn out.

The top level (16–20 marks) needs perceptive, detailed evaluation:

• a convincing and critical response to the statement;
• detailed evaluation of the effect on the reader;
• perceptive understanding of the writer's methods;
• a judicious range of quotations.

The model answer does this by agreeing with one part, partly disagreeing with another, and explaining exactly why.