Whose Reading?

Students often write better about a poem they have never seen than about the books they have studied for two years. AQA’s own examiners reported this after marking the 2023 Literature paper, which ends with an “unseen” poem that students meet for the first time in the exam hall.

“Often students provided stronger responses to the unseen than they had managed in Sections A and B.”^[1]

Sections A and B are the play or novel and the group of poems that students study in class, often over two years. So many students wrote better about a poem they had known for about twenty minutes than about texts they had been taught, discussed and revised. The same report says this happens “Every year”. One member of the examining team was so impressed by the unseen answers that the report quotes the comment: “these responses were fantastic!”^[1]

How can a student do better with less preparation?

Some students wait to be given a reading

In English Literature, a reading means an interpretation: what one person thinks a text means, and why they think it. We sometimes see students who rely too much on being taught their readings. They read a text and then wait to be told what it means. When the teacher gives them a reading, they write it down, learn it and try to repeat it in the exam.

Discussion is not the problem. Talking a text through with a teacher, or hearing how other students read the same scene, helps a great deal. The habit we mean is accepting a reading without weighing it. A student who has weighed a reading and still finds it convincing has made it their own.

Suppose your child is revising An Inspector Calls in this way. They have a folder of notes on what each character represents, copied from lessons and revision videos, and they can repeat every point in it. In the exam, the question asks about something the notes do not quite cover. What does your child do with the folder then?

The obvious fix often fails

The obvious fix for a weak Literature grade is to learn more readings: more notes, more videos, more model paragraphs to remember. The examiners’ report explains why this fix so often fails. It does so in its own explanation of the unseen puzzle.

“The freedom to respond without the constraint of trying to fit partially-remembered ideas and learned essays onto a particular question positively supported many.”^[1]

In the unseen section, nobody had given the students a reading of the poem. They had nothing half-remembered to force onto the question, so they read the poem closely and thought about what it meant to them.

AQA’s report on its other Literature paper describes the same problem with revision material found online. Examiners saw “common details and references that appeared with similar phrasing in many responses”, and in some answers this material “acted as an impediment to them developing their own ideas”.^[2] An impediment is something that gets in the way.

OCR goes further. In the instructions it gives its own examiners before they start marking, it names this exact habit.

“Beware also of answers where candidates attempt to reproduce interpretations and concepts that they have been taught but have only partially understood.”^[3]

Literature is not mathematics

Why do learned readings do so badly? We think the answer lies in what Literature is. In mathematics or science, most exam questions have one correct answer, and the method for reaching it can be taught, practised and repeated. In Literature, each reader brings their own interpretation to a text, and two careful readers can reach different views. Two students can even reach opposite views and both score very highly, because AQA’s mark scheme tells examiners to reward valid interpretations,^[4] and a valid interpretation is one the student explains from the text. Writing quality matters because a reading only counts once it is explained convincingly. In our experience, some students still approach Literature as if there were a right answer to find. We have not measured how many, so this is what we see, not a finding.

A student who repeats someone else’s reading can show that they remember it. Remembering a reading is much less than understanding it, or being able to use it on a question the student did not expect.

The same OCR instructions say what examiners hope to see instead.

“It is hoped that candidates will respond to questions in a variety of ways and will give original and at times unexpected interpretations of texts. Rigid demands for ‘what must be a good answer’ would lead to a distorted assessment.”^[3]

Six boards, and none asks for a borrowed reading

Levels are counted differently on each board, so this article simply says “the top level”. The wording differs too, but every Literature mark scheme we checked asks for the student’s own response at the top.

AQA asks for a “Critical, exploratory, conceptualised response to task and whole text”.^[4] Exploratory means that the student is working ideas out on the page, and conceptualised means that the answer is built around a big idea of the student’s own about the text.

OCR asks for an answer that “Sustains a coherent critical style in an informed personal response to the text showing consistently perceptive understanding”.^[3]

Pearson Edexcel GCSE, for the essay on the 19th-century novel, says: “There is an assured personal response, showing a high level of engagement with the text.”^[5]

Eduqas describes students “engaging fully, perhaps with some originality in their personal response”.^[6]

Pearson Edexcel International GCSE says: “The response shows assured personal engagement and a perceptive critical style.”^[7]

Cambridge IGCSE asks for an answer that “sustains personal and evaluative engagement with task and text”.^[8]

Five of the six use the word personal, and the sixth asks for a response that is exploratory and conceptualised. None of them asks the student to repeat a reading they were given.

When everyone has read the same reading

The more popular the text, the harder it is to find a reading that is really your own. Macbeth, An Inspector Calls and A Christmas Carol have more notes, videos and study guides than any student could read. In our experience, much of that material borrows its ideas from other material, so the same few readings appear again and again. We cannot measure that. AQA’s examiners describe something similar: “common details and references that appeared with similar phrasing in many responses”.^[2]

Here is one example. A very common reading says that the witches in Macbeth are supernatural and powerful. The usual evidence is that the Third Witch says “thou shalt be king hereafter”, and Macbeth becomes king.^[9]

We sometimes ask students a question about that. Have you ever predicted something that then came true? A person who says a team will win, and is right, has not shown a supernatural power. They may simply have noticed a pattern. In the same way, a successful warrior in a medieval kingdom who is told he will be king is hearing something that could have been guessed from the pattern.

Now look for what else the play says. Before the murder, Macbeth asks whether the dagger he sees is real or “A dagger of the mind, a false creation, / Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain”.^[9] Banquo’s first words to the witches are “you should be women, / And yet your beards forbid me to interpret / That you are so”.^[9] One reading is that this reminds the audience that they are watching actors, and so invites them to wonder whether such beings exist off the stage. In 1584, about twenty years before Shakespeare wrote Macbeth, Reginald Scot published a book that attacked “this barbarous conceipt of witches omnipotencie”.^[10] And in the speech after his wife’s death, which includes the lines “all our yesterdays have lighted fools / The way to dusty death”, Macbeth does not mention the witches at all.^[9]

The play also gives evidence for the popular reading. Near the end, Macbeth calls the witches “juggling fiends / That palter with us in a double sense”.^[9] So a strong answer has to weigh both sides. None of this proves that the popular reading is wrong. It shows that the reading has a serious rival, and a student who has only met the popular one cannot choose between them. Two students could argue opposite sides here and both write excellent answers. What the exam asks for is a reading the student has weighed.

Free to interpret, bound to the text

Does this mean that any idea will do? It does not. The limits matter as much as the freedom. Look again at the words the boards place beside personal: an informed response, a critical style, an evaluative engagement, where evaluative means judging how well the writer’s choices work. AQA tells its examiners to “reward any valid interpretations”.^[4] Pearson Edexcel’s International GCSE tells them to “reward points that are clearly based on evidence from the play”.^[7] A valid reading is one the text supports, so the text is where the evidence comes from, and a reading with no evidence under it earns very little.

The 2023 report also warns against the opposite mistake. Some students try to offer a second meaning for every quotation, “the ‘it could mean this but it could also mean the opposite’ type of approach”. Sometimes, the report says, “the first interpretation can be the most fruitful”.^[1] Here, fruitful means the most useful. An interpretation of your own is one you can defend from the text, which is very different from one you invented only to look original.

So we test a student’s reading with three questions. First, is it weak, meaning vague, thin, or resting on too little of the text? Second, is it logical, so that each step follows from the evidence before it? Third, is it coherent, so that the ideas fit together into one argument instead of pulling against each other? A reading that passes all three tests belongs to the student, while a reading that fails one of them needs more work, whoever first thought of it.

Write first, read second

Our process follows from all of this, and the order is the point. First, the student writes their own reading of the text. Next, they get feedback on that writing. Then they read further, which can include other people’s interpretations of the same text. Last, we discuss the student’s interpretation with them: whether it is weak, whether it is logical, and whether it is coherent.

Reading other interpretations is part of this process, and it comes after the student has a reading of their own to compare them with. We think a student who reads the other interpretations first will often simply adopt the first one they meet. A student who has already written can hold two readings side by side and judge which one the text supports better.

Why the unseen poem went better

The question at the start was how a student can do better with less preparation. The answer is simple. In the unseen section, every student had to do what the mark scheme rewards everywhere else: read closely, form a view and support it from the text. AQA’s advice to students on the other paper says the same thing directly.

“The examiners are looking for your interpretation of the texts you have studied, not some stranger’s views on social media.”^[2]

And the report that began this article gives students one short sentence before any other advice.

“You own your own interpretation of the text.”^[1]

It then tells them that they “do have the skills” to answer a question about a literary text “without any help”, because the unseen poem has already shown it.^[1]

Four things to do this week

1. Write before you read. Choose one important scene from your set text. Before opening any notes, guide or video, write one paragraph on what you think the scene shows about a character or a theme, and why.

2. Put the text under every claim. Beside each sentence of that paragraph, write the quotation or the moment in the text that supports it. A sentence with nothing beside it is the first thing to fix.

3. Ask the three questions. Read the paragraph again and ask whether it is weak, whether it is logical, and whether it is coherent. Mark the sentence that fails first, and rewrite only that one.

4. Then read one other interpretation. Find one other reading of the same scene. Where it disagrees with yours, decide which one the text supports better, and keep your own if the evidence holds.

If you would like to know where your child’s own writing stands today, our free assessment takes five minutes.

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