EnglishReading like an examiner: language and structure30 min★★★ difficulty

Structure: tracking what changes across a whole extract

The structure question asks how a writer has ordered a text and what that ordering does. Most answers talk about language again by mistake. This lesson gives you a method that only looks at shape: where the focus is at the start, where it moves, and where it lands.

Lesson overview

What you'll learn in this lesson

Read critically, knowing how language, including figurative language, vocabulary choice, grammar, text structure and organisational features, presents meaning

Key learning points

• Read for the focus, not the words
• Naming the shifts
• The paragraph shape for a structure answer
• The cyclical ending

This lesson at a glance

30 minutes
18 parts to scroll through
4 quick checks
Marked quiz at the end
Gentle pace: short sittings with pauses

Words to know

criticallyknowinglanguagefigurativevocabulary

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Structure: tracking what changes across a whole extract

An English teaching video on this topic from First Rate Tutors. Watch it, then scroll down for the lesson.

In a nutshell

Read critically, knowing how language, including figurative language, vocabulary choice, grammar, text structure and organisational features, presents meaning

What you already know

Part 2 of 18

Before we start

What you already know

You can already zoom in on a single word choice and explain its effect on the reader.

Recap: What a single word choice does

Key words

Part 3 of 18

Key words

Words you'll need today

Structure: The order the writer puts things in, and how the focus shifts through a text.
Focus: What the reader is being made to look at in a particular part of the text.
Shift: The moment the focus changes - outside to inside, wide to narrow, calm to sudden.
Cyclical: A structure that ends where it began, so the reader notices what has changed.
Withholding: Keeping information back so the reader keeps asking a question.

Learning cycle

Part 4 of 18

Learning cycle 1 of 2

Mapping the shape of an extract

A short piece of teaching, then a check to make sure it has landed.

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Read for the focus, not the words

Take this original extract. Paragraph one: a wide view of a flooded valley from a hillside. Paragraph two: the water at the bottom of the road, one car half-submerged. Paragraph three: a single hand pressed against the inside of a window. Paragraph four: back to the hillside, and the rain still falling. Notice that you can describe that whole shape without quoting a single word - wide, closer, tiny detail, wide again.

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Naming the shifts

Structure marks come from the moments of change. Here there are three: wide to close between one and two, close to a single human detail between two and three, and back out to the landscape at the end. The narrowing pulls the reader in until the danger becomes one person. Returning to the hillside makes the rain feel indifferent - nothing outside has changed, even though what we now know has.

Quick check

Part 7 of 18

Quick check

In the extract, the focus moves...

Reset break

Part 8 of 18

Pause

That's sitting 1 of 2 done

Stretch, get a drink, look out of the window. There is no timer and nothing is counting down — your place is saved, so you can come back in five minutes or tomorrow.

Stop here for now

Quick check

Part 9 of 18

Quick check

Narrowing the focus to a single hand mainly makes the reader...

Learning cycle

Part 10 of 18

Learning cycle 2 of 2

Writing about structure without slipping into language

A short piece of teaching, then a check to make sure it has landed.

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Part 11 of 18

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The paragraph shape for a structure answer

Write it in this order: where the focus is, where it moves to, and what the movement does to the reader. For example: the extract opens with a wide view of the valley, then narrows to one car and finally to a hand at a window, which forces the reader to move from seeing a flood as scenery to seeing it as one person's emergency. You can reference a phrase, but the point must be about position and order.

Explore the idea

Part 12 of 18

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The cyclical ending

When a text ends where it started, the writer is inviting comparison. Here the rain is still falling on the same hillside, but the reader now knows somebody is trapped below. Nothing in the setting changed; only our knowledge did. That is the effect worth writing about - and it is a structural point, because it depends entirely on where the paragraph sits.

Quick check

Part 13 of 18

Quick check

Which sentence is a structural point?

Quick check

Part 14 of 18

Quick check

The best way to start a structure paragraph is with...

Common mix-ups

Part 15 of 18

Common mix-ups

Things people often get wrong

Structure is not punctuation or sentence length on its own - that belongs in the grammar question.
'The writer uses short paragraphs to make it flow' is not a structural point; it says nothing about focus.
You do not need long quotations for structure - position matters more than wording.
A cyclical ending is only worth marks if you say what the repetition makes the reader notice.

Challenge round

Part 16 of 18

Game · Sort it

Which of these are true?

Drag each card into the right column. Tap a card first if dragging is fiddly.

True

Not true

Mastery quiz

Part 17 of 18

Marked quiz

End of lesson quiz: Structure: tracking what changes across a whole extract

6 questions, marked with the reasoning shown. No timer.

1. A 'shift' in structure means...
2. Cyclical structure means the text...
3. Which comment would lose marks in a structure answer?
4. Withholding information makes the reader...
5. Why is position more important than wording in this question?
6. The strongest structure paragraph ends with...

Lesson round-up

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Lesson round-up

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Your written work for this lesson

This is the part you'd do in your book at school. Pick the pieces below, write here or on paper, and photograph anything you draw or work out.

Extract

The last bus

The bus shelter smelled of wet coats. Mira pressed her timetable flat against the glass, as though staring at the numbers might make the 9:42 appear. Rain tapped the roof in small, impatient fingers. Somewhere behind her, a shop shutter came down with a sound like a full stop.

She had been brave all day. She had been brave in the corridor, brave at lunch, brave when the register reached her name and nobody looked up. Being brave, she decided, was mostly a matter of keeping your face still.

Headlights swung around the corner and lit the puddles gold. Mira picked up her bag. Tomorrow she would say something. Tonight she would simply go home.

Original extract written for Good Learning Co.

Reading questions

Find two words or phrases that show how Mira is feeling, and explain what each one suggests.
How does the writer use the weather and the sounds to build the mood? Use a short quotation.
Write the next paragraph in the same style, keeping the writer's short sentences at the moments that matter.

Reading response
Reading
Read the extract again, then write about how the writer makes you feel that way. Use a short quotation and explain your choice of words.
2 paragraphs (PEE)
Extended writing
Writing
Write your piece in full, then redraft the opening so it hooks the reader.
250–350 words
Reading log
Reading
Note the book, the pages you read and one thing you noticed about the writing.
20 minutes' reading

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