Section A: To Kill a Mockingbird (whole-novel essay) · Section B: ‘The Cockroach’
School Unit Assessment scope · by 18 Sep
90:000 / 50
Instructions
Answer both questions. Each is worth 25 marks; spend about 45 minutes on each.
Section A has no passage: you choose your own moments from across the whole novel and quote from memory — exactly as in the real general essay question.
For Section B, open the anthology at ‘The Cockroach’ and refer to it by line number.
All four AOs carry equal weight: knowledge with support (AO1), deeper meanings (AO2), the writer’s methods and their effects (AO3), informed personal response (AO4).
Essays save automatically. Press Finish & mark when done, then mark yourself honestly against the criteria and band table.
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Self-marked against the band criteria. In a no-passage essay, range across the novel is what separates the top bands from a trial-only answer.
Section ATo Kill a Mockingbird — general essay (no passage)25 marks
Question 1.
How does Lee vividly convey the injustice of Maycomb society?
Do not limit yourself to the trial: draw on at least three episodes from different parts of the novel, and quote from memory. [25]
Marking guidance — Section A
What a good answer draws on (indicative content, not a checklist)
Injustice is in the town’s bones before the trial begins. The opening chapter’s “a tired old town” establishes a Maycomb where habits — including habits of contempt — are old, slow and unexamined; Boo Radley, condemned by gossip as “a malevolent phantom”, is the town’s first victim of judgement without evidence, a child’s-scale rehearsal of what the courtroom will do to Tom.
The trial as demonstration, not contest. Atticus tells Scout as early as Chapter 9 that “we were licked a hundred years before we started”. In court, Lee has Scout notice that Tom’s “left arm was fully twelve inches shorter than his right” — the physical impossibility is displayed to the jury and to the reader at the same moment, so the verdict convicts the jury, not Tom. Tom’s fatal sentence, “I felt right sorry for her”, condemns him for the crime of pitying a white woman.
The aftermath widens the lens. Scout’s realisation that “in the secret courts of men’s hearts Atticus had no case” relocates the injustice from one jury room to the private convictions of a whole society; Dolphus Raymond’s “the simple hell people give other people” names it plainly for the children.
Lee’s measured counterweight. Miss Maudie’s reading of the long deliberation — “we’re making a step—it’s just a baby-step, but it’s a step” — shows Lee refusing both despair and easy hope; the injustice is vivid partly because the progress against it is so small.
Method points worth making: the child narrator who reports injustice without understanding it, forcing the reader to supply the outrage; the structural echo between Boo’s persecution and Tom’s; Atticus’s blunt statement to Jem that “white men cheat black men every day of your life” as the adult gloss on everything Scout half-sees.
Band descriptors (25 marks)
Band
Marks
What it looks like
Band 8
23–25
Sustained critical argument ranging across the novel; methods analysed for effect; memory quotations exact and embedded; individual response.
Band 7
20–22
Perceptive understanding with well-chosen episodes from different parts of the book; clear sense of Lee shaping the reader’s judgement.
Band 6
17–19
Clear understanding; several episodes; some method analysis; support mostly apt.
Band 5
14–16
Relevant answer with support, but narrow range or intermittent analysis.
Band 4
11–13
Some relevant comment; leans on one episode; explains content more than method.
Band 3
8–10
Mostly retells the trial with occasional comment.
Band 2
5–7
A little surface understanding; little support.
Band 1
2–4
A few simple facts about the novel.
Three answers to the same paragraph — see the band difference
Weak — around Band 3
Injustice is shown at the trial. Tom Robinson is accused by the Ewells even though he did not do it. Atticus proves he could not have done it but the jury still finds him guilty because he is black. Later Tom is shot trying to escape. This shows that Maycomb society is very unjust and racist.
Why this stays in Band 3: it is a plot summary of one episode with a theme-label stapled to the end. There is no quotation at all — fatal in a no-passage essay, where remembered quotation is the main evidence of knowledge — no method, no range beyond the trial, and “this shows” doing the work analysis should do. The question’s word vividly is never touched: how Lee makes us feel it goes unasked.
Middling — around Band 5
Lee conveys injustice most powerfully at the trial. She makes Scout notice that Tom’s “left arm was fully twelve inches shorter than his right”, so the reader can see the accusation is physically impossible, which makes the guilty verdict shocking. Tom is also condemned for saying “I felt right sorry for her”, because a black man is not allowed to pity a white woman. This makes the reader feel the unfairness of Maycomb’s racism.
Why this reaches Band 5 but not higher: genuine strengths — two exact quotations, both embedded, and the second point edges into real analysis of why the words condemn Tom. But the essay lives entirely inside Chapter 18–19: a no-passage question rewards range, and a trial-only answer caps itself however well it reads. There is also no writer at work outside the phrase “she makes Scout notice” — one method, used once.
Strong — Band 7–8
Lee builds the injustice into Maycomb before any charge is laid: the “tired old town” of the opening page is a place where judgements, like everything else, are inherited rather than examined, and its treatment of Boo — convicted by rumour as “a malevolent phantom” — rehearses in miniature what the courtroom will later do to Tom. That is why the trial can be staged as demonstration rather than contest: Atticus has already conceded that “we were licked a hundred years before we started”, so when Scout registers Tom’s “left arm was fully twelve inches shorter than his right”, the evidence is not building suspense but indicting the jury in advance. Lee then refuses to let the verdict be an aberration: Scout’s later understanding that “in the secret courts of men’s hearts Atticus had no case” moves the tribunal out of the courthouse and into every parlour in Maycomb — and Miss Maudie’s “baby-step” is all the consolation Lee permits, which is precisely what makes the injustice vivid rather than melodramatic.
What lifts this into the top bands: range — Chapter 1, Chapter 9, the trial, Chapter 22 and Chapter 25 in one argument, each earning its place; a structural claim (Boo’s persecution as rehearsal for Tom’s) rather than a list of examples; five memory quotations, all exact, all folded into the writer’s own syntax; and an evaluative close that answers vividly directly — the restraint is what makes it vivid. Every sentence has Lee as its agent: builds, stages, refuses, permits.
How this question loses marks:
Camping in the trial — the question says Maycomb society; an essay that never leaves the courtroom has answered a smaller question. Boo, the Cunninghams, the missionary circle and the town’s opening portrait are all evidence.
No quotation from memory — with no passage printed, remembered quotation is your proof of knowledge; paraphrase alone reads as Band 4 however accurate it is.
Ignoring the key wordvividly — you are asked how Lee makes injustice felt, which is a question about technique: narrator, structure, irony, understatement.
Character-led paragraphs — topic sentences about Tom or Bob Ewell describe the world of the book; topic sentences about Lee analyse the book. Start paragraphs with the author.
Turning the essay into a history lecture — context earns nothing by itself; a sentence of Jim Crow background only pays when it explains a choice Lee makes.
Mark your Section A essay — 25 marks. Tick what you actually did.
AO1 — knowledge and textual support (6)
AO2 — deeper meanings (7)
AO3 — the writer’s methods and effects (7)
AO4 — informed personal response (5)
Section BKevin Halligan, ‘The Cockroach’ — poetry essay25 marks
Have the poem open
Open your Songs of Ourselves Volume 1 anthology at Kevin Halligan’s ‘The Cockroach’. This question is about the poem’s form and structure, so read it aloud once, listening for the rhymes, before you write.
Question 2.
How does Halligan make the ending of ‘The Cockroach’ so surprising and so revealing?
In your answer you should consider how the poem’s form and structure prepare — or refuse to prepare — the reader for the final line. [25]
Marking guidance — Section B
What a good answer notices (indicative content, not a checklist)
Name the form accurately. Fourteen lines in loose iambic pentameter: a sonnet — but not a Shakespearean one. The octave rhymes in the familiar alternating way, ABAB CDCD, promising an English sonnet; the sestet then runs EFG EGF, so there is no closing couplet at all. An English opening with an irregular Italianate sestet — or, safest of all, “a sonnet” followed by a description of what the rhyme actually does.
The withheld chime. An English sonnet warns the ear that it is ending: the couplet rings and the poem shuts. Halligan removes that handrail. The final line — ‘I thought I recognised myself’ — finds its rhyme not in the line beside it but four lines back (‘shelf’ … ‘myself’), so thirteen lines of pressure release into a line the ear has not been prepared for: a trapdoor opening rather than a conclusion being reached.
The blurred turn. The sentence spills over line 8 into the sestet, smudging the usual octave/sestet break — the form loses its footing at the same moment the cockroach does. The poem’s one clean structural turn is saved for the final line, where the subject itself changes from insect to self.
Order against chaos. A tightly controlled container — fixed fourteen lines, rhyme, metre — holding an aimless, circling subject. The gap between tidy form and disorderly content is the poem’s emotional atmosphere, and the ending is where the container quietly fails.
Why revealing as well as surprising: the sonnet is the traditional form of self-examination and love; spending one on an insect looks like a joke until the last line shows it was a self-portrait all along — the form was accurate and the reader’s condescension towards the creature turns back on the speaker, and on us. The hesitancy of ‘I thought’ makes even the revelation unstable.
Band descriptors (25 marks)
Band
Marks
What it looks like
Band 8
23–25
Sustained critical analysis of form as meaning; the rhyme scheme’s behaviour traced precisely and tied to the ending’s effect; individual response.
Band 7
20–22
Perceptive engagement with structure and the turn; accurate formal observation serving an argument.
Band 6
17–19
Clear understanding of the sonnet shape and the surprise; some analysis of how the effects are produced.
Band 5
14–16
Identifies form correctly; comments on the ending; the two not yet connected into one argument.
Band 4
11–13
Form described (line count, rhyme) without effects; the ending discussed separately.
Band 3
8–10
Mostly paraphrase with a mention that it is a sonnet.
Band 2
5–7
A little surface understanding; little support.
Band 1
2–4
A few simple points about the poem.
Three answers to the same paragraph — see the band difference
Weak — around Band 3
The poem is a sonnet because it has fourteen lines and it rhymes. Sonnets are usually about love but this one is about a cockroach, which is unusual. At the end the speaker says ‘I thought I recognised myself’, which is surprising because the poem was about an insect before that. This makes the reader think about the meaning.
Why this stays in Band 3: form is counted, not read — fourteen lines and “it rhymes” are facts, and no effect is attached to either. The surprise is asserted (“which is surprising”) instead of explained: nothing about the rhyme scheme, the missing couplet, or how the ear is misled. “Makes the reader think” is an empty formula that earns nothing.
Middling — around Band 5
Halligan uses the sonnet form but breaks its rules. The poem opens with an alternating rhyme scheme like a Shakespearean sonnet, but there is no rhyming couplet at the end, which means the reader does not get the neat conclusion a sonnet promises. This reflects the fact that the speaker’s life has no neat conclusion either, and it makes the last line, ‘I thought I recognised myself’, feel more sudden.
Why this reaches Band 5 but not higher: the formal observation is accurate and an effect is attempted — a real step up. But the analysis stays at the level of the whole poem: it never traces how the ending is sprung (where the last line’s rhyme actually is, what happens at line 8), so “feel more sudden” hangs unsupported. Form-mirrors-content is claimed in one sentence when the top bands show it happening, sound by sound.
Strong — Band 7–8
Halligan builds the surprise into the rhyme scheme itself. The octave’s tidy ABAB CDCD promises an English sonnet, training the ear to expect a closing couplet that will ring the poem shut; instead the sestet wanders into EFG EGF, and the last line — ‘I thought I recognised myself’ — must reach four lines back to ‘shelf’ for its rhyme. The chime the ear was promised never comes, so the recognition lands like a trapdoor opening rather than a conclusion being reached. The structure misbehaves earlier too: the sentence spills over line 8 into the sestet, blurring the one break a sonnet guarantees — the form loses its footing exactly when the insect does. And the ending is revealing, not just surprising, because the sonnet — the form of self-examination — turns out to have been the right container all along: what looked like a joke about an insect was a self-portrait, and the flinch of ‘I thought’ leaves even that self-knowledge trembling.
What lifts this into the top bands: the formal facts are exact — ABAB CDCD, EFG EGF, the shelf/myself reach, the enjambment over line 8 — and every one of them is converted into an effect on the reader’s ear before being tied to meaning. The paragraph answers both key words separately (surprising via the withheld couplet, revealing via the form’s ironic aptness), sustains one argument, and closes on a single-word analysis (‘thought’) instead of a summary.
How this question loses marks:
Counting instead of reading — “it has fourteen lines and a rhyme scheme” is measurement, not analysis; every formal fact must be cashed in for an effect.
Calling it Shakespearean — there is no closing couplet; that mislabel is a factual error an examiner will notice. Name the octave’s English pattern, then show the sestet abandoning it.
Treating the last line as separate from the form — the question joins them on purpose; an essay with a “form paragraph” and an “ending paragraph” that never touch has missed the question’s point.
Retelling the insect’s journey — this question is not asking for the movement essay; content belongs here only where it collides with structure (the circling inside the tidy container, the blurred turn).
Ignoring the second key word — revealing asks what the ending exposes and at what cost; surprise alone is half the answer.
Mark your Section B essay — 25 marks. Tick what you actually did.