For both Paper 1 and Paper 2, there are 3 key areas that you need to cover to ensure that you get those marks.
1) A clear understanding of the story overall.
Show the examiners that you have read and understood the texts that you have been given to read over a short period of time in an exam situation. If you don't understand the story on first reading, READ IT AGAIN. Don't start trying to answer questions you are being marked on after reading a story you didn't understand because you won't be clear and relevant which is the pass mark. We know the question paper, it's the insert we don't know, so read carefully, your mark is dependent on it.
2) Full analysis of the characters in detail.
It's extremely important that you treat the characters in Paper 1 as real people as much as the narrators in Paper 2 are actually real people. What do the people in the story feel, think, say, do? The deeper you question the characters and narrators in the story the higher your mark can rise because you will be moving from clear to perceptive (Level 4 answer). Know the story overall, and know how it affects the people in the story, as much as how the people in the story affect the story overall. Think about cause and effect - what do the people in the story do? How do you know? How does that affect others in the story? How does that affect you as the reader? Make links between story and the people in the story to gain higher marks.
3) Writer's methods - language features and structural features.
Once you have told the examiner about the story and the people in the story, you need to tell the examiner how the writer created the story. This is the 'making of'. In order to give you the text to read the writer has used language features (words) and put them into a specific order to create engagement and meaning (structure). What words are interesting to you as the reader? What words have impact? What structural features has the writer used to order the story you are reading to engage you? Know your terms and know how to find them in your reading and how to tell the examiner all about them in P.E.E. (Qs 2/3 on both papers) and P.E.T.E.R. (Q4 on both papers).
You need to analyse language and structure and tell the examiner all about them in full detail because this is an English Language exam, so tell the examiner how much you have understood about the story, the people in the story and how the writer has created it. Once you do these 3 things with clarity and relevance as best you can, you will have given yourself every opportunity to pass.
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