PLAY · GCSE · AQA 8702

Build the paragraph.

Click the evidence, name the method and watch a model analysis paragraph assemble itself, then take a sonnet apart into rhyme, metre and the line where it turns.

Analysis builder

FIG. 01 · AO1 · AO2 · AO3

WILLIAM BLAKE · “LONDON” · SONGS OF EXPERIENCE, 1794 · PUBLIC DOMAIN

1 · Your point
2 · Your evidencenone

Click words in the poem to build a quotation — short and embedded beats a whole line. Click again to drop one.

3 · The method
4 · The effect
5 · Context
AOs covered
0 / 3
Examiner would call it
Not started

Why this is worth marks. Every literature mark scheme is the same shape: AO1 for a point plus embedded evidence, AO2 for naming the method and its effect, AO3 for context that actually explains the writing rather than sitting in a bolt-on final sentence. The builder refuses to reach the top band until all three are joined into one paragraph — because a technique named without an effect earns nothing, and context glued on at the end earns almost nothing.

Sonnet machine

FIG. 02 · AO2 · FORM & STRUCTURE
Scansion bench · Shakespeare, Sonnet 18, line 1 (1609, public domain)
× / × / × / × / × /

Sonnet form

Same fourteen lines, different architecture. Watch the rhyme letters and the block boundaries move.

line 9

Where does the poem change its mind? Move it and the readout tells you what that placement does.

Foot
5 · pentameter
Rhyme scheme
ABAB CDCD EFEF GG
Metre
Iambic pentameter

Why this is worth marks. "It's a sonnet" is a zero-mark observation. AO2 pays for what the form does: a Shakespearean sonnet holds its turn back to the couplet so the last two lines can overturn twelve; a Petrarchan one splits eight against six, so the problem gets more room than the answer. Set the foot to a trochee and the demo line stops fitting — which is exactly the argument you make when a poet breaks their own metre on one important word.

Comparison mixer

FIG. 03 · AO2 · AO3 · PAPER 2

BLAKE, “LONDON” (1794) · SHELLEY, “OZYMANDIAS” (1818) · BOTH PUBLIC DOMAIN

 

Blake50 / 50Shelley

Shared idea
Linking connective

The connective is where the comparison mark actually lives. "And then" is not a comparison.

50 / 50

Drag it lopsided and see what the examiner sees.

Comparison
Explicit
Verdict
Balanced

Why this is worth marks. The anthology question is comparative, so the marks sit in the joins, not in the two halves. A paragraph that spends 90% on one poem and bolts the other on at the end is two answers pretending to be one — the examiner sees "two islands" and the AO3 comparison marks never arrive. Write the connective sentence first and the evidence second; it is the fastest structural fix at GCSE.

Six real questions

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