The extract-based question — Answering the Shakespeare 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 Shakespeare presents an idea, character or relationship in a printed extract and elsewhere in the play, one of the two questions on your play, 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) as the play shows it and the question needs it; 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 play elsewhere; an answer that never leaves the extract is held at Level 3, and one that touches the rest of the play only briefly at Level 4.
Writing about drama: the audience, staging, entrances and exits, verse and prose, soliloquy and dramatic irony.
The worked example: the June 2025 Macbeth question on the dangers of knowing too much about the future, from the extract in Act 5 Scene 5, 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 play in June 2025 and June 2024, and what examiners said about them.
Common mistakes: sweeping context about patriarchy or the divine right of kings, terms such as hamartia used without understanding, essays prepared for earlier years' questions, and quoting a modern translation instead of Shakespeare.
