নির্ধারিত সাহিত্যকর্ম: the prescribed texts and Paper 2

Two essays, 40 marks each, 120 minutes. Work out the plan and defend it.

1. 01Split the time equally and then protect the split

   Sixty minutes each, and write the clock time on the paper at which you will move to the second essay. The commonest way to lose marks in Paper 2 is to write a very good first essay and a rushed second one; because the grids are per-essay, the marks lost on the second are not recoverable by the first.

2. 02Inside each hour, plan for ten minutes

   Ten minutes of planning for a 300-word essay sounds disproportionate and is not. The plan fixes the claim, the two pieces of evidence, the objection and the conclusion - and an essay with those four things decided writes itself in forty minutes, while an essay without them takes fifty and arrives nowhere.

3. 03Write for forty

   Three hundred words in forty minutes is about seven and a half words a minute, which is slow enough to compose carefully and fast enough not to stall. If you are writing faster than this you are probably narrating.

4. 04Check for ten, in two passes

   One pass for AO4: does every paragraph answer the question set, is there evidence for each claim, and is the conclusion drawn rather than restated? One pass for AO3: honorific level consistent, tenses deliberate, classifiers present, নুক্তা and চন্দ্রবিন্দু in place, connectives varied.

5. 05Choose which essay to write first, in advance

   My recommendation is to write the work you find harder first, while you are fresh and while the full hour is genuinely available. A candidate who leaves the difficult work until last discovers at minute seventy that they have half an hour for the thing they were least sure of.

6. 06Decide the question choice fast

   Two questions per work, and you may spend two minutes deciding. Choose the one you have evidence for, not the one that sounds more interesting. The AO4 grid rewards evidence used to justify conclusions, and interest is not evidence.

Result: Sixty minutes each: ten planning, forty writing, ten checking, harder work first. The single biggest avoidable loss in Paper 2 is an unequal split between the two essays, because the grids do not average across them.

Whatever your text is, build the map that every subsequent essay will draw on. Do it once, properly.

1. 01Fix the form

   Is it a novel, a collection of stories or a collection of poems? This determines what an essay can claim. A claim about the whole of a collection is almost always unsupportable; a claim about the whole of a novel usually is supportable.

2. 02Fix the date and what it implies

   A work of the 1940s and a work of the 1890s belong to different moments and different registers, and the date is a checkable fact you can put in an essay. It also tells you whether to expect সাধু.

3. 03Fix the register and test it

   Open the work at three places and note which register each is in. Some works change register between narration and dialogue, which is itself a technique worth arguing about.

4. 04Fix the structure

   For a novel, the sequence of its parts in one line each. For a collection, a list of what is in it, with two lines on each of the ones you will use. This list is the most valuable page you will make all year.

5. 05Choose your evidence parts and describe them

   Three or four episodes, scenes or poems, each described in two or three lines: where it comes in the work, what happens or what it does, and what claim it could support. Describe, do not quote - the exam does not permit the text and a misremembered quotation is worse than none.

6. 06Write two possible claims and test them against the map

   One about the concepts and issues, one about form and technique. For each, check that at least two of your evidence parts actually support it. If they do not, change the claim - that is what the map is for.

Result: A one-page map: form, date, register, structure, three or four described evidence parts, and two tested claims. It takes an afternoon and it is what an essay in the exam is written from, because in the exam you will have the map in your head and nothing else.

You remember an episode in your text clearly but cannot recall its wording. Convert it into evidence that would score on the AO4 grid.

1. 01Sentence one: locate it

   গল্পের শেষ অংশে একটি দৃশ্য আছে যেখানে … In the last part of the story there is a scene in which. Location can be as loose as it needs to be: শুরুতে, মাঝামাঝি, শেষ অংশে, একটি পর্যায়ে. Precision that you cannot guarantee is not worth having.

2. 02Sentence two: describe it in your own Bengali

   Describe what happens in one or two clauses, in the present tense, which is the convention for writing about a text. Do not use quotation marks and do not reach for a phrase you think you remember; write what you would say if you were telling somebody about it.

3. 03Sentence three: state the claim it supports

   এই দৃশ্য দেখায় যে …, this scene shows that. And here the claim must be about the question you were asked, not about the work in general. Evidence that supports a true claim you were not asked about earns nothing.

4. 04Add the technique observation

   The specification wants form as well as content, so add one clause about how the episode is presented: কথকের দৃষ্টিকোণ এখানে বদলায়, the narrator's point of view shifts here; অথবা লেখক এখানে সংলাপ ব্যবহার না করে বর্ণনায় থেকে যান, or the writer stays in narration here rather than using dialogue. One clause is enough and it moves you into the second half of the requirement.

5. 05Check the three risks

   No quotation marks anywhere. No detail you are not sure of. No claim about what the author wanted. If all three are clear, the evidence is safe.

6. 06Count the words

   Three sentences plus a technique clause is about fifty words of Bengali. A 300-word essay has room for two such blocks plus a claim, an objection and a conclusion, and that is exactly the architecture the next section sets out.

Result: A four-part evidence block - locate, describe, claim, technique - of about fifty words, entirely safe because nothing in it is reproduced and nothing is invented. Two of these blocks are the evidential core of a 300-word Paper 2 essay.

The question on your text asks how the writer presents the relationship between an individual and their community. Plan the 300 words.

1. 01Minute one to two: read both questions and choose

   Two questions are offered on each work. Choose the one for which you already have two different pieces of evidence on your one-page map. Do not choose on interest; choose on evidence.

2. 02Minute three: write the claim

   One sentence, taking a position, in your own words, answering the question asked. For example: লেখক ব্যক্তি ও সমাজের সম্পর্ককে সরাসরি সংঘাত হিসেবে নয়, বরং নীরব চাপ হিসেবে দেখান। The writer presents the relation not as open conflict but as silent pressure. That claim is arguable, which is what makes it a claim.

3. 03Minutes four to six: choose two different evidence blocks

   From your map, pick two that are different in kind - one about what happens, one about how it is told. Write four words for each: where, what, claim, technique. Not sentences; four words. The sentences come later.

4. 04Minute seven: write the objection in five words

   What is the strongest thing that could be said against your claim? Perhaps that one episode does show open conflict. Note it. An objection you can name is an objection you can answer in two sentences.

5. 05Minute eight: write the conclusion in one clause

   Not a restatement. Something the argument earned: perhaps that the technique of narration is itself what makes the pressure feel silent. Write the clause now, while you can see the whole shape.

6. 06Minutes nine to ten: choose the five structures

   Relative clause in the claim; impersonal passive in evidence one; concessive in the objection; compound verb in evidence two; conditional in the conclusion. Write the five words in the margin. Now write for forty minutes.

Result: A ten-minute plan consisting of one claim sentence, two four-word evidence notes, a named objection, a conclusion clause and five structure words in the margin. From that, 300 words takes forty minutes and arrives where it intended to. The plan is the essay; the writing is transcription.

Here is a candidate's evidence paragraph. Run both passes on it: উপন্যাসের মাঝামাঝি একটা দৃশ্য আছে যেখানে গ্রামের লোকেরা চুপ করে থাকে। এই দৃশ্য দেখায় সমাজের চাপ কত বড়। লেখক দেখাতে চেয়েছেন যে মানুষ ভয় পায়। তবে এটা একটা উদাহরণ মাত্র। তবে এটাই সবচেয়ে গুরুত্বপূর্ণ।

1. 01AO3 pass, honorific

   গ্রামের লোকেরা … থাকে and লেখক … চেয়েছেন - the villagers take the plain third person and the writer the honorific, which is defensible. But চেয়েছেন is the perfect, and elsewhere the paragraph is in the present. Fix the tense convention rather than the honorific.

2. 02AO3 pass, classifiers and register

   একটা দৃশ্য is correct but একটা is the colloquial classifier; একটি is the register an essay wants. কত বড় is spoken register; কতটা গভীর or কতখানি প্রবল is written register. Two small changes, visible on the AO3 grid.

3. 03AO3 pass, connectives

   তবে appears twice in consecutive sentences and the second one is not adversative at all. Replace the second with বরং or ফলে. A repeated connective used wrongly is exactly what caps an AO3 mark in the middle bands.

4. 04AO4 pass, the intention problem

   লেখক দেখাতে চেয়েছেন - the writer wanted to show - is a claim about a mind. Replace with a claim about the text: লেখাটি যেভাবে গড়া, তাতে ভয়ের চেয়ে অভ্যাসই বেশি স্পষ্ট হয়ে ওঠে. The way the piece is built makes habit clearer than fear.

5. 05AO4 pass, the missing technique

   The paragraph describes an episode and states a claim but says nothing about how the episode is presented, which is half the requirement. Add one clause: এখানে কথক কোনো ব্যাখ্যা দেন না, ফলে নীরবতাই বর্ণনার প্রধান উপাদান হয়ে দাঁড়ায়. The narrator offers no explanation, so the silence itself becomes the main element of the narration.

6. 06AO4 pass, the false objection

   তবে এটা একটা উদাহরণ মাত্র followed by তবে এটাই সবচেয়ে গুরুত্বপূর্ণ raises an objection and dismisses it in one clause. Either develop it - are there episodes that point the other way? - or cut it. A concession that is immediately withdrawn scores nothing.

Result: উপন্যাসের মাঝামাঝি একটি দৃশ্য আছে যেখানে গ্রামের লোকেরা চুপ করে থাকে। এই দৃশ্য দেখায় সমাজের চাপ কতখানি প্রবল। এখানে কথক কোনো ব্যাখ্যা দেন না, ফলে নীরবতাই বর্ণনার প্রধান উপাদান হয়ে দাঁড়ায়। লেখাটি যেভাবে গড়া, তাতে ভয়ের চেয়ে অভ্যাসই বেশি স্পষ্ট হয়ে ওঠে। Four sentences instead of five, and both grids better served - because the two passes were run separately and each looked for one thing.