The task

The guide defines guided analysis as “an exploration of the passage supported by a guiding question”. The question points you towards a technical or formal aspect of the passage: how the writing works, rather than simply what happens in it.

In Paper 1, you receive two previously unseen literary passages from different literary forms. The possible forms are prose fiction, prose non-fiction, drama and poetry. Each passage may be a complete work or an extract from a longer one. Wherever possible, the selections avoid authors on the Prescribed reading list and works likely to have been taught in class. The task tests close reading, not the recall of prepared material.

SL and HL differ in how much you write, not in the standard of analysis expected.

At HL, write two independent analyses. You are not comparing the passages.

What the guiding question does

The guiding question gives you a route into the passage. If it asks about narrative voice, for example, explore how the telling shapes our understanding. Don't just collect every feature you can name.

You do not have to follow the supplied question. You may choose another important technical or formal element, provided your response keeps a clear focus. A broad discussion of the text's themes does not provide that focus.

What the criteria reward

• A: Understanding and interpretation rewards accurate reading and reasoned conclusions about implications and subtleties, supported by well-selected textual references.
• B: Analysis and evaluation rewards an explanation of how particular choices shape meaning and a convincing judgement of their significance.
• C: Focus and organization rewards a sustained direction and a coherent progression of ideas.
• D: Language rewards clear, precise, varied and accurate expression in a style suited to formal literary analysis.

You can read a passage accurately and still write a mostly descriptive response. You can also identify many techniques without explaining why they matter. Interpretation establishes what the passage suggests; analysis explains how the passage's construction makes that interpretation possible.

The learner portfolio

The portfolio helps you prepare, but it is not itself specifically assessed. Keep your first responses in it and use it to create guiding questions. Record practice across all four literary forms, and track the skills you feel less secure about. To see your development, compare an early response with a later one: look for stronger evidence and more exact explanations, as well as a clearer line of argument.

When you meet a new passage, establish the task in one sentence. Identify the literary form and the technical or formal focus, then state the kind of meaning your analysis will investigate.

Establish what the passage actually gives you

Interpretation is an evidence-based account of what a text means and implies. Start with the literal situation. Who speaks? What situation does the text present, what changes, and what remains uncertain? Answer these questions before making claims about significance.

Recognize the form: it affects what counts as evidence. In prose, how events are told may matter as much as the events themselves. Poetry's lineation and sound may qualify a statement; a pause or stage direction in drama may contradict what a character says. Prose non-fiction, too, selects and arranges material to construct a perspective. Factual subject matter doesn't remove the need to analyse craft.

Keep the writer separate from a narrator, poetic speaker or dramatic character. What these voices say is part of the work's construction, not automatically an expression of the author's personal beliefs.

Move from observation to inference

Look for connections among details, rather than treating one word as the key to the passage. Repetition or contrast may complicate an initial impression, as may changes of tone and shifts in pace. Several choices supporting the same inference make it stronger. So does accounting for details that seem awkward at first.

Consider an invented prose-fiction passage, described rather than reproduced. A visitor narrates a family dinner and repeatedly counts the place settings. The narrator reports other people's speech only briefly, then ends by noticing an unused chair. At the literal level, the narrator attends a meal. Taken together, the counting and the final absence might suggest that participation in the family remains insecure.

A defensible interpretation would be: “The visitor's attention to the arrangement of the table suggests that belonging is experienced as something to be measured rather than assumed.” The claim goes beyond the event, but it doesn't invent a hidden history for the character.

Use the question to select evidence

Read the guiding question closely. Identify both the element it names and the relationship it asks you to explain. An invented question such as “How does narrative perspective shape the presentation of belonging?” requires more than identifying first-person narration. You need to explain what that limited viewpoint lets readers notice and what it withholds, then show how those restrictions affect belonging.

In the invented dinner passage, the counting would serve this question, along with the restricted access to other people's thoughts and the closing focus on the chair. A weather detail would belong only if you could establish how it contributes to the same focus.

Turn reading into a workable plan

Within the available time, read the passage completely before annotating selectively and making a brief argument plan. Give each paragraph a distinct interpretive job. One might establish watchfulness; another could examine restricted social contact. The next could explain how the ending sharpens uncertainty. That sequence develops an argument rather than repeating the same claim three times.

Don't supply historical background or events outside an extract just because they would make your interpretation convenient. Work with the information supplied and the passage's own signals. If the writing sustains uncertainty, explain it rather than resolving it by assertion.

Finish the plan by pairing each paragraph claim with a precise reference and an explanation of how that detail supports the claim.

Make an interpretive claim

A thesis is the central claim your response develops and supports. It connects the technical or formal focus of your analysis to a particular understanding of the passage.

A topic names an area: belonging. A device list names features: first-person narration, repetition and a closing image. Neither explains what the passage makes of belonging yet. Your thesis needs to show how those choices produce meaning.

Compare these formulations for the invented dinner passage:

You could argue with the final formulation, but you can also test it against the described passage. It leaves room for explanation. Naming the choices hasn't done the analytical work for you.

Answer the relationship in the question

If the guiding question asks how perspective shapes belonging, say what perspective does to belonging. Turning the question into a statement—“Perspective shapes the presentation of belonging”—announces what you intend to discuss. It doesn't answer the question.

In the invented passage, narrative perspective is the focus. The choices include restricted observation, repeated counting and the final unused chair; the meaning is insecure belonging. Paragraphs could work through watchfulness, then restricted contact, then the ending's emphasis on absence. Each is a stage in the explanation, rather than a compartment for an unrelated technique.

Let the thesis control the response

The introduction establishes your reading. The body demonstrates it. Each paragraph needs a claim and textual evidence, along with an account of the relevant choice. It must also explain the effect and connect it to meaning. These moves may take several sentences; you don't have to put them in the same order every time.

For the invented passage, a model analytical sentence would be: “By repeatedly returning the visitor's attention to place settings rather than conversation, the narration turns a communal meal into an exercise in checking whether there is room for the self.” This explains an effect specific to the choices, rather than falling back on a general claim that the writing interests the reader.

Use the conclusion to sharpen the interpretation you've developed, not to introduce an unsupported theme. If close analysis shows that your original thesis was too absolute, qualify it. A precise claim about what the passage suggests is stronger than a sweeping claim about all families or all human relationships.

Write your thesis. Beneath it, place a paragraph claim for each distinct stage of the argument. Revise any claim that merely repeats the thesis or doesn't help establish it.

Name the thinking accurately

Literary vocabulary earns its place when it makes an explanation more exact. Use these terms to distinguish the different kinds of work a response needs to do.

Calling the writing successful or beautiful without support is not evaluation. In the invented dinner passage, you might explain how the final unused chair concentrates the earlier counting into a visible absence. That evaluates what the ending contributes to meaning.

Name the construction precisely

A technical element is an aspect of how writing is made, such as syntax or imagery. A formal element concerns the work's form and organization: narration, stanza arrangement or dramatic dialogue, for example. The categories overlap. Use them as routes into analysis, not as a rigid sorting exercise.

Make terminology serve an explanation

The guide describes register through “vocabulary, tone, sentence structure and terminology appropriate to the analysis”. Aim for precision and readability in formal analytical writing, not inflated language.

In the invented dinner passage, “The writer uses repetition” gives you a label. Add an effect: “Repeated counting makes the visitor appear watchful”. Then connect that effect to an interpretation: “Repeated counting makes the visitor appear watchful, presenting belonging as a position that must continually be checked”.

Don't assign a fixed effect to a device. Repetition does not always create emphasis in the same way; short sentences do not always create tension. What a choice does here depends on the surrounding language and situation, as well as its position in the passage.

Take a sentence that merely names a feature. Extend it with specific evidence, then explain the local effect and show how that effect contributes to your reading.