Paper 1

Paper 1 is a guided analysis of previously unseen non-literary material. The guiding question gives you a productive way into the text: use it to build a focused interpretation rather than attempting to catalog everything you notice.

SL students choose one of the two texts. HL students analyze both. In either case, the central job is the same: explain how deliberate choices shape meaning for a particular audience and purpose.

First principle: establish what the text is doing as a whole before examining individual details. Technique only matters when it helps explain that larger purpose.

Unpack the guiding question before selecting your evidence.

Writing an introduction: step-by-step guidance and a worked example

1. Read the context and question

• Read the contextual information and identify the text type, creator, audience, purpose, and situation.
• Record your first response. What seems urgent, unsettling, persuasive, intimate, comic, or controlled?
• Read the guiding question closely. Put what it asks you to analyze into your own words.

2. Trace the text’s structure

• Divide the text into meaningful sections and note shifts in tone, argument, focus, scale, or visual emphasis.

• Identify the overall movement of the text before concentrating on isolated devices.

• For multimodal texts—those combining forms such as words and images—trace the relationship between words, image, layout, typography, framing, and sequence.

• If the text is an infographic, consult the Infographic guide for questions about hierarchy, scale, labels and source.

• For commercial advertising, use the Advertisement guide and its separate FIJI Water example to examine appeals, product claims and visual contrast.

• For sponsored or native advertising, use the Advertorial guide to connect narrative voice with commercial purpose.

• For fundraising, use the Charitable appeal guide and its Elephant Sanctuary and WWF examples to connect need, trust and participation.

• For drawn commentary, use the Cartoons guide and its Andy Singer example to connect text, image and panel arrangement.

• For online personal writing and advice, use the Blog post guide and its Emberton example to connect voice, illustrations and the development of an argument.

• For arguments and columns, use the Opinion/commentary guide and its netball example to connect tone with the development of a position.

• For public addresses, use the Speech guide and Helen Clark’s eulogy to connect language, occasion and audience.

• For reporting and explanation, use the Articles guide to connect an article’s angle, sources and language.

• For digital layout and routes through a page, use the Webpages guide and the Redwoods Treewalk example.

• For addressed writing, use the Letters guide to connect purpose, recipient and relationship.

• For spoken exchanges, use the Podcasts/interviews guide to follow how speakers develop and qualify ideas.

3. Select evidence

• Choose patterns and details that directly support your interpretation.
• Prefer brief, precise evidence over long quotations or inventories of techniques.
• Ask what each choice does, why it suits this audience and purpose, and how it contributes to the text as a whole.

4. Develop your argument

• State a focused thesis that answers the guiding question and offers an interpretation.
• Organize paragraphs around ideas or effects. Do not organize the essay as a tour of devices.
• Move from evidence to choice, effect, and significance. A useful test is: what does this detail help the creator make the audience think, feel, notice, or accept?

5. Check your response

• Check that every paragraph advances the thesis.
• Remove claims that the evidence cannot support.
• Proofread for precise vocabulary, integrated quotations, sentence control, and clear transitions.

Need another way in?

If the initial method leaves you unsure where to begin, try SOAPSTone: Speaker, Occasion, Audience, Purpose, Subject, and Tone. It gives you prompts for an initial rhetorical reading; use the resulting observations to build your argument.

For poetry in Literature, TPCASTT offers a different scaffold. Choose the tool that suits the text. Neither framework is a required essay structure.

Use this as a quick diagnosis when a response is not working.

Interpretation problems

• Retelling the content without interpreting its significance.
• Making broad claims about symbolism without considering context.
• Discussing only the “big picture” or only tiny details, rather than connecting the two.
• Selecting evidence that is interesting but unrelated to the guiding question.

Analysis problems

• Naming a device and stopping there.
• Using effects that could apply to almost any text: “grabs attention,” “creates an image,” or “makes the reader want to read on.”
• Treating every feature separately instead of noticing patterns and combinations.
• Assuming the creator’s intention when the text itself does not support the claim.

Organization problems

• Beginning without a defensible thesis or clear line of inquiry.
• Organizing paragraphs by device instead of by an interpretive idea.
• Starting body paragraphs with line references or quotations before establishing the point.
• Repeating the introduction in the conclusion instead of explaining the larger significance of the reading.

These practical explanations help you use the criteria while planning and revising. They do not replace the full rubric.

A · Understanding and interpretation

What is the text communicating? Show that you understand both its literal meaning and its larger implications. Develop a convincing interpretation and support it with well-chosen references. A textual reference can be a quotation or another precise reference to the text.

What A looks like in Language & Literature Paper 1: Establish what the text communicates and develop a supported interpretation of its purpose and audience. For an advertisement, distinguish what it claims about the product from what its evidence actually establishes.

Check your work: Does each claim about meaning, audience, or purpose have support in this particular text?

B · Analysis and evaluation

How does the text communicate it? Explain how textual features and authorial choices create meaning. Evaluation means showing how and why those choices work within this particular text. Precise terminology can help, but naming a technique never substitutes for developed analysis.

What B looks for in Language & Literature Paper 1: Move from identifying a choice to explaining how it works. In the CDC example, naming the headline and photograph is a start; explaining how “attached” connects a smoking habit with visible oxygen tubing develops the analysis.

Check your work: Have I explained how the choices work together and why that relationship matters to the text’s purpose?

C · Focus and organization

Establish a clear line of argument, develop it logically, and keep every paragraph relevant to the guiding question. There is no single required structure. Context belongs only where it advances the interpretation rather than interrupting it.

What C looks like in Language & Literature Paper 1: Build paragraphs around ideas that develop your answer. For example, establish how an advertisement presents a problem, then explain how it offers a response. Words, images, and layout can contribute to both stages.

Check your work: Does the order develop my argument, or could I swap the paragraphs without changing anything?

D · Language

Communicate the analysis clearly with precise, varied, and appropriately formal language. Aim for control rather than ornate jargon. Integrate evidence smoothly and leave time to correct errors that interrupt meaning.

What D looks like in Language & Literature Paper 1: Choose precise wording over elaborate vocabulary. Identify the relevant detail, explain its contribution, and qualify claims about audience response. Use terminology when it makes that explanation clearer.

Check your work: Have I said exactly what the text invites readers to think or do, without assuming that everyone responds identically?

Use short, repeatable drills before attempting another full paper:

1. Five-minute orientation: identify audience, purpose, text type, context, and first impression.
2. Guiding-question rewrite: express the question as a direct analytical task in your own words.
3. Pattern hunt: find three connected choices and explain the larger effect they create together.
4. Thesis test: write a thesis, then underline the part that offers an interpretation rather than a topic.
5. Paragraph audit: label the evidence, analytical verb, effect, and larger significance in one paragraph.

Bring a non-literary text from class to the Close reading lab for guided self-review, or use the Analysis Refinery for optional feedback on your own analysis.

Use a compact check before revising:

• Is my interpretation supported by precise references?
• Have I explained how choices shape meaning?
• Does each paragraph advance the response to the question?
• Is my language clear and precise?

For additional prompts, open SOAPSTone or From observation to analysis.

Explore Becky’s CDC advertisement in the worked-example panel alongside this guidance (below it on smaller screens). Follow the five steps, then open the analytical paragraph to see how a verbal choice and a visual detail support a single interpretation. Try transferring the method to the Amanda or Brian advertisement using the comparison prompts.