Paper 1 Question 2: language

What Question 2 rewards

Paper 1 Question 2 asks you to explain how a writer uses language in a specified part of a fiction extract to present something: perhaps a setting, a character’s appearance or someone’s feelings. It is worth 8 marks and assesses AO2: explaining and analysing how the writer’s choices create effects, supported by textual evidence and accurate terminology.

From June 2026, Question 2 retains this format. It identifies particular lines, prints that passage and asks how the writer uses language to describe a named subject. The prompts suggest discussing words and phrases, language features and techniques, and sentence forms. Older papers, including June 2023, used the same question format and prompts. The four marking levels and their mark ranges also remain unchanged, so the same close-analysis approach applies to both.

The important move is from what is described to how the description shapes our understanding. ‘The train passes a woman’ tells us what happens. Explaining how ‘trapped’ makes the woman seem powerless beside the train examines the writer’s language.

AQA’s timing guidance suggests about 10 minutes for Question 2, within the paper’s 1 hour 45 minutes.

Read the passage with a particular focus

The first paragraph of D. H. Lawrence’s Odour of Chrysanthemums (1914) introduces a landscape around a coal mine. A locomotive is a railway engine; a colliery is a coal mine; headstocks are the structures above a mine shaft that support the winding equipment.

Use only the paragraph below to answer: How does Lawrence use language to describe the industrial setting? [8 marks]

The small locomotive engine, Number 4, came clanking, stumbling down from Selston with seven full waggons. It appeared round the corner with loud threats of speed, but the colt that it startled from among the gorse, which still flickered indistinctly in the raw afternoon, outdistanced it at a canter. A woman, walking up the railway line to Underwood, drew back into the hedge, held her basket aside, and watched the footplate of the engine advancing. The trucks thumped heavily past, one by one, with slow inevitable movement, as she stood insignificantly trapped between the jolting black waggons and the hedge; then they curved away towards the coppice where the withered oak leaves dropped noiselessly, while the birds, pulling at the scarlet hips beside the track, made off into the dusk that had already crept into the spinney. In the open, the smoke from the engine sank and cleaved to the rough grass. The fields were dreary and forsaken, and in the marshy strip that led to the whimsey, a reedy pit-pond, the fowls had already abandoned their run among the alders, to roost in the tarred fowl-house. The pit-bank loomed up beyond the pond, flames like red sores licking its ashy sides, in the afternoon’s stagnant light. Just beyond rose the tapering chimneys and the clumsy black headstocks of Brinsley Colliery. The two wheels were spinning fast up against the sky, and the winding-engine rapped out its little spasms. The miners were being turned up.

A first reading gives an overall impression: the machinery is noisy and physically imposing, while the surrounding landscape seems bleak and unhealthy. That impression gives the answer a direction. Now find the choices that produce it.

Choose evidence by what it allows you to explain

Start with meaning rather than hunting for a particular technique. Ask: Which words make this setting seem noisy, oppressive or unhealthy?

‘Clanking’ evokes a harsh metallic noise: its onomatopoeia makes the engine audible. ‘Stumbling’ does something different. Usually associated with an unsteady person or animal, it personifies the engine as awkward rather than smoothly powerful. Together, the words give the machine an ungainly physical presence.

The phrase ‘loud threats of speed’ develops that impression. ‘Threats’ gives the engine an aggressive quality, but the colt easily outpaces it. This contrast makes its apparent power seem partly blustering: it is noisy and intimidating without being especially fast.

For the setting’s unhealthy appearance, ‘flames like red sores’ is especially useful. It is a simile, comparing flames to wounds. The effect is not simply that we can picture something red. ‘Sores’ carries associations of pain, damage and infection, making the pit-bank resemble an injured body. ‘Licking’ then animates the flames, suggesting that they spread across or touch its surface.

Notice how analysing a precise word produces a more convincing explanation than calling the whole passage ‘very descriptive’.

Connect words, grammar and effects

A useful thinking sequence is:

Impression → evidence → particular choice → meaning or association → effect in this passage.

For example, begin with the impression that the railway dominates the people beside it. Select ‘insignificantly trapped’. ‘Trapped’ suggests confinement, while the adverb ‘insignificantly’ reduces the woman’s importance beside the machinery. The result is a setting in which a person seems small and powerless.

You can develop this by connecting it to ‘slow inevitable movement’. ‘Inevitable’ suggests that the trucks cannot be stopped or avoided. Their threatening quality comes from their relentless progress, not from speed.

Sentence forms and punctuation can contribute too. The long sentence beginning ‘The trucks thumped heavily past’ follows the passing trucks while the woman remains confined. At the semicolon, the sentence turns from her position between the waggons and hedge to the coppice, where leaves drop ‘noiselessly’. Bringing these contrasting details together in one sentence sharpens the difference between the railway’s heavy noise and nature’s quiet movement. This examines the construction of a particular sentence, rather than the organisation of the whole extract.

By contrast, the short declarative sentence ‘The miners were being turned up.’ reports the workers’ return in a matter-of-fact way. Here, ‘turned up’ means hauled up the mine shaft by the winding engine. Its passive construction places the miners as the people being moved, rather than those controlling the action. Their movement depends on the machinery, reinforcing its dominance over human life.

You do not need every possible observation. Choose the ones that best answer the question and that you can explain convincingly.

Turn a quick plan into developed paragraphs

Within the suggested 10 minutes, a manageable approach is roughly two minutes selecting and planning, seven minutes writing, and one minute checking. Adjust this as you practise.

For this question, a brief plan might be:

• Noisy and awkward machinery: ‘clanking’, ‘stumbling’, ‘threats’ contrasted with the colt.
• Power over people: ‘insignificantly trapped’, ‘inevitable’, the sentence contrasting the passing trucks with quiet nature.
• An unhealthy landscape: ‘red sores’, ‘stagnant’, ‘spasms’.

The plan records interpretations and evidence, not a list of technique names. Each paragraph can then begin with an impression of the setting, embed a quotation and explain how its details produce that impression.

For instance, ‘Lawrence presents the pit-bank as damaged through the simile “flames like red sores”’ already connects the point, evidence and method. The next sentences should explain the associations of ‘sores’ and their significance here.

What separates the levels

AQA marks the response as a whole. There is no rule that one paragraph or one technique earns a particular number of marks.

• Level 1, 1–2 marks: a basic observation, supported by a simple reference, with little explanation of how the language works.
• Level 2, 3–4 marks: some relevant evidence and comments on effects, but explanations remain broad or only partly developed.
• Level 3, 5–6 marks: clear explanations of effects, a range of relevant evidence and accurate terminology.
• Level 4, 7–8 marks: detailed, perceptive analysis, carefully chosen evidence and precise, accurate use of terminology.
• Level 0, 0 marks: nothing relevant that can be rewarded.

The difference is depth and precision, not increasingly elaborate vocabulary. ‘“Sores” makes the setting seem unpleasant’ identifies an effect. Explaining that the comparison turns the pit-bank into a wounded body, associating industry with damage, shows how that effect is created.

Compare a Level 2 response with a developed model

First, consider this response to the same paragraph and question:

Lawrence makes the industrial setting seem noisy and unpleasant. ‘Clanking’ is onomatopoeia and shows that the train makes a loud noise. The woman is ‘trapped’, which makes the railway seem dangerous. The simile ‘flames like red sores’ makes the pit-bank sound unpleasant because sores are not nice to look at. The adjective ‘stagnant’ also makes the place seem bad. These descriptions give the reader a negative impression of the setting.

An examiner would award Level 2, 4/8. It selects several appropriate details and uses terminology mainly accurately. It comments on effects, but the explanations are broad: ‘unpleasant’ and ‘bad’ do not explore the particular associations of the words or show how choices work together.

The model below develops the three planned impressions:

Lawrence presents the industrial machinery as noisy and awkward. The onomatopoeic ‘clanking’ evokes the harsh sound of metal, while ‘stumbling’ personifies the engine as an unsteady creature rather than an efficient machine. Its ‘loud threats of speed’ make it seem aggressive: ‘threats’ suggests that its noise intimidates those around it. However, the contrast with the colt, which ‘outdistanced it at a canter’, undermines this apparent power. The machinery seems to bluster, while the animal moves easily.

Nevertheless, the railway dominates the people beside it. The woman is ‘insignificantly trapped’: ‘trapped’ suggests she cannot escape her confined position, while the adverb ‘insignificantly’ makes her seem unimportant beside the black waggons. Their ‘slow inevitable movement’ is oppressive because ‘inevitable’ suggests that their progress cannot be prevented. The long sentence holds her confinement alongside the trucks’ movement, before the semicolon turns towards the coppice, where leaves drop ‘noiselessly’. This contrast within the sentence makes the heavy noise of the railway seem more intrusive beside nature’s quiet movement. The machinery’s power is relentless rather than swift.

Lawrence also makes the landscape seem physically damaged. The simile ‘flames like red sores’ compares the burning pit-bank to an injured body. ‘Sores’ suggests pain and infection, making the industrial scene appear unhealthy rather than merely colourful. The adjective ‘stagnant’ reinforces the oppressive atmosphere because it suggests a lack of freshness or movement in the afternoon’s light. Even the winding-engine produces ‘little spasms’, a noun associated with involuntary bodily contractions. This echoes the image of the sores, connecting the machinery and the landscape through disturbing bodily imagery.

An examiner would award Level 4, 7/8. The answer analyses effects in detail, selects a range of well-chosen evidence and uses terminology accurately, including onomatopoeia, personification, simile and grammatical terms. Its connections are perceptive, particularly the machinery’s blustering speed versus its relentless dominance, and the repeated bodily imagery. It earns 7 rather than 8 because the analysis is not equally probing throughout: the comment on ‘stagnant’ is less developed than the strongest explanations of the engine and pit-bank.

What lifts the model above Level 2 is not simply its length. It explains how specific words create an impression: harsh metallic sound rather than just noise, infection rather than just unpleasantness, and human insignificance rather than just danger. It also connects choices, showing how they reinforce or complicate one another.

Question 2 essentials

8 marks · AO2 · about 10 minutes.

Analyse language in the specified lines, answering the exact focus. From June 2026, the format and four marking levels remain unchanged: words, phrases, techniques and sentence forms are suggested areas to discuss. Older papers use the same approach.

Recall the method

Impression → short quotation → precise choice → meaning or association → specific effect.

Connect choices where they reinforce or complicate an impression. Sentence construction belongs here when it creates a relevant effect; whole-extract organisation belongs to Question 3.

Quick plan

• Around 2 minutes: identify the focus and select useful evidence.
• Around 7 minutes: write developed analytical paragraphs.
• Around 1 minute: check relevance, quotations and terminology.

Level distinctions

• Level 1, 1–2: simple observations.
• Level 2, 3–4: some comments on effects.
• Level 3, 5–6: clear explanations, relevant evidence, accurate terminology.
• Level 4, 7–8: detailed, perceptive analysis, carefully selected evidence, precise terminology.

Quality and development matter more than a fixed paragraph count.