The extract-based question — Answering the 19th-century prose question — OCR GCSE English Literature J352
OCR GCSE English Literature · J352
The extract-based question
What you need to know
How the extract-based question works: how the writer presents a theme, character or relationship in a printed extract of about a page and elsewhere in the novel, one of the two questions on your novel, for 40 marks in about 45 minutes, closed book.
What earns the marks: response (AO1) and language, form and structure (AO2), equally weighted and carrying the most weight; context (AO3) where it is relevant to the question; and 4 marks for vocabulary, sentence structures, spelling and punctuation (AO4).
Balancing the essay: close analysis of the extract, then a fair share of the answer on the novel elsewhere; an answer that never leaves the extract is held at Level 3, and one that touches the rest of the novel only briefly at Level 4.
Planning in five minutes: a thesis that answers the question, the extract's key moments, two or three moments from elsewhere in the novel, and context tied to the question.
The worked example: the June 2025 Jekyll and Hyde question on terror, from the extract in which Utterson and Poole break down the cabinet door, with a model answer of about 800 words, the level and mark an examiner would give and why, and a Grade 5 and a Grade 8 paragraph side by side.
The extract-based questions OCR set on each novel in June 2025 and June 2024, and what examiners said about them.
Common mistakes: retelling, labelling word classes for their own sake, paragraphs of background such as Darwin or Dickens's childhood, calling a novel a play, misspelling the author's name, and long quotations.
