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A surprising number of students know the advice "analyse techniques" and still write at Grade 4. Why? Because they cannot see, on the page, what separates a Grade 6 response from a Grade 9 response. This lesson puts three responses to the same prompt side by side and annotates the band-language Edexcel uses to distinguish them. Once you can see the progression, you can self-diagnose — and self-diagnosis is the fastest route to improvement.
Edexcel's mark scheme for the 20-mark unseen uses recurring phrases across its five levels. The phrases are worth memorising, because they tell you exactly what each band looks like.
| Level | Marks | Signature phrases |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1–4 | limited, simple, largely descriptive, some awareness |
| 2 | 5–8 | some relevant points, some appropriate references, straightforward comparison |
| 3 | 9–12 | clear understanding, appropriate references, comparisons are made |
| 4 | 13–16 | thoughtful and developed, well-chosen references, thoughtful comparisons |
| 5 | 17–20 | sustained, critical and evaluative, perceptive, illuminating comparisons |
When you self-mark your own responses, literally ask: is this limited? Is this clear? Is this thoughtful? Is this sustained and critical? Those words are the graders' vocabulary, and they should be yours too.
The three sample responses below all answer the same question:
"Compare the ways the writers present nature in both poems. In your answer, you should consider the writers' use of language, form and structure."
Both poems are imagined. Poem A describes a storm over the sea in regular quatrains with full rhyme; Poem B describes a quiet moor in irregular free verse. Both use vivid imagery. You don't need to read them in full — the sample responses quote from both.
The first poem is about a storm at sea and the second poem is about a moor. Both poems use nature to show feelings. In poem A the writer uses the word "crashing" which is onomatopoeia and shows the storm is powerful. The writer also uses alliteration "wild wind" which makes it more dramatic. The poem has four-line stanzas and rhymes.
In poem B the writer describes the moor as "grey and still". This is a simile but it shows the moor is quiet. The writer uses lots of description to make you imagine the scene. There is no rhyme. The line lengths are different.
Both poems are about nature but poem A is noisy and poem B is quiet. I think the writers use good language to show different parts of nature. Both poems are interesting and show nature in different ways.
Limited analysis. Some awareness of techniques. Comparison is descriptive rather than developed. A few straightforward references. Errors in terminology. Personal response adds nothing for AO2.
Likely mark: around 7/20 — low Band 2.
Both poems present nature but with opposite moods. Poem A uses vivid imagery to show the power of the storm, while poem B uses quieter imagery to show the stillness of the moor.
In poem A the writer uses the onomatopoeic "crashing" alongside the alliteration of "wild wind" to create a sense of noise and violence. These plosive and sibilant sounds enact the storm, so the reader can almost hear it. In poem B the diction is much gentler, with the moor described as "grey and still" and "breathing like a held sleep". The simile of the held sleep makes the landscape feel like a living, quiet body, suggesting a calm that is almost watchful.
The form of the poems is different too. Poem A uses regular four-line stanzas with a steady rhyme, which gives a powerful, almost musical rhythm to the storm. Poem B uses free verse with irregular lines, which mirrors the openness of the moor. The structure of poem A builds to a climax at the end, while poem B does not seem to build anywhere — it just stays still.
Both poems use nature to express feeling, but poem A uses noise and rhythm, and poem B uses silence and space.
Clear understanding. Appropriate references. Comparisons are made but not always developed. Attempts at effect. Form and structure addressed but briefly.
Likely mark: around 12/20 — top of Band 3.
Both poems present nature as an emotional register, but where Poem A renders the sea as percussive, almost theatrical spectacle, Poem B withholds nature's voice, presenting the moor as a held breath. Both poets make form the engine of their argument: one hammers, the other hushes.
The opening stanza of Poem A compounds plosive alliteration "crashing", "wild wind" with the onomatopoeic verb "thundered", and the cumulative effect is that the storm is heard before it is understood; the phonic texture of the stanza is the storm. By contrast, Poem B's diction is attenuated to near silence — "grey and still", "breathing like a held sleep" — and the simile of the held sleep is crucial: it implies watchfulness, the moor as a body which has chosen not to exhale. Where Poem A grants nature noise, Poem B grants nature a deliberate, almost ethical restraint.
The forms divide along the same axis. Poem A deploys rhymed quatrains in near-regular iambic tetrameter, and the regularity is pressurising rather than soothing: the metre becomes the storm's pulse, so that the reader is forced into the storm's rhythm. Poem B refuses metre and rhyme entirely, and its irregular lines — some as short as two words — enact the moor's unhurried shape. Regularity in Poem A performs force; irregularity in Poem B performs spaciousness. Crucially, both poets use form against expectation: a violent storm held in neat quatrains, a vast moor held in broken half-lines. In each case, the form is disciplining what the content cannot.
Structurally, Poem A is vectored: stanzas 1 to 4 build through increasing verbs of impact ("battered", "ripped", "engulfed") toward a final stanza where the storm passes, leaving "a silence raw as a wound" — a simile that complicates the poem's earlier aurality, so that silence itself becomes painful. Poem B has no such vector. Its six stanzas hover around a single moment, and its closing line — "the moor did not answer" — refuses resolution, substituting withheld response for climax. Poem A's structure is thus argumentative; Poem B's is contemplative. The most interesting comparative point is that Poem A's ending uses silence to complete the storm's narrative, while Poem B's ending uses silence to refuse narrative altogether.
Both poems arrive, then, at silence — but they arrive at it by opposed routes, and for opposed purposes. Where Poem A's silence is a consequence of force, Poem B's silence is a constitutive condition.
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