Notes · Chinese (Mandarin)UK · A-Levels

The literary text: Paper 2 Section B and the 50-mark essay

This topic covers the written response to a literary work in Paper 2 Section B of the Pearson Edexcel 9CN0 specification. Two discrete Chinese works must be studied and declared - either two literary texts, or one literary text and one film - taken from the list in Appendix 2. Answering on two films is not permitted, so at least one literary text is compulsory for every candidate. Each essay is marked out of 50 by three levels-based grids applied to it individually: critical and analytical response (AO4) out of 20, range of grammatical structures and vocabulary (AO3) out of 20, and accuracy of language (AO3) out of 10. Questions are printed in both English and Chinese and must be answered in Chinese, with a recommended length of 250 to 350 Chinese characters, though the whole essay is marked regardless of length. This topic teaches the METHOD - how to build an argument, how to use evidence without quotation, how to structure fifty marks - and names the Appendix 2 titles accurately without presenting any one of them as the set work.

5 sections~36 min reading time2 competenciesLevel Standard 2 · Advanced 3

T·111111 / 13

Exam profile

AO3 · Manipulate Chinese accurately in writing, using a range of lexis and structure appropriate to critical argumentAO4 · Respond critically and analytically to a literary work and to its cultural and social context

Operators:分析论证评价举例比较总结

basic level

At first-year standard the target is an organised essay in Chinese that answers the question, has a clear position, uses two or three pieces of evidence from the work, and is comprehensible throughout. Structure and relevance matter more than sophistication at this stage.

higher level

The full A-Level expects critical analysis rather than description: issues, themes and cultural or social contexts interpreted, points of view justified by appropriately selected evidence, arguments developed and conclusions drawn. Language should reach deliberately into Appendix 3, and evidence should be handled as the described episode with its location in the work stated.

Depth

Text

Contents · 5 sections

The literary text: Paper 2 Section B and the 50-mark essay

What Sections B and C ask, and the choice you have to make#

StandardPearson Edexcel 9CN0 Paper 2 Sections B and C - written response to works, 100 marks, 2 hours 10 minutesDfE GCE AS and A level subject content for modern foreign languages

The architecture first, because the choices are constrained in ways candidates often discover too late. Two discrete Chinese works are studied and declared. They may be two literary texts, or one literary text and one film. They may not be two films. Section B contains the literary-text questions and Section C the film questions; you write two essays in total, either both from Section B or one from each. There is a choice of two questions on each work and you take one. Sections B and C together carry 100 of Paper 2's 120 marks over a recommended 2 hours 10 minutes, so roughly 65 minutes per essay. Two consequences follow for the year rather than the paper. The two works are studied in parallel, not in sequence, because both essays are written on the same afternoon; and the declaration is made in advance, so a work you have merely read is not a work you have declared.

Each essay is marked out of 50 by three grids applied to it individually, and knowing their weights changes how you write. Critical and analytical response (AO4) out of 20. Range of grammatical structures and vocabulary (AO3) out of 20. Accuracy of language (AO3) out of 10. Notice the balance: range is worth twice as much as accuracy. A grammatically flawless essay that uses six structures repeatedly will score less than a slightly flawed one that deploys fifteen structures purposefully - which is exactly the opposite of what most candidates assume, and it is worth acting on. The weighting also tells you what to practise. Accuracy improves slowly and asymptotically; range improves quickly, because it responds to a list. A term spent drilling ten Appendix 3 structures until they arrive unbidden moves the 20-mark grid; the same term spent eliminating small errors moves the 10-mark one.

The questions are printed in both English and Chinese and must be answered in Chinese. Pearson recommends between 250 and 350 Chinese characters per essay to allow detailed analysis, and states that the whole essay is marked regardless of length. That recommendation is worth taking seriously as a target rather than as a limit: 250 characters is short - roughly the length of a substantial paragraph in English - and the discipline it enforces is that every sentence must do work. There is no room for an introduction that restates the question or a conclusion that summarises what you just said. Practise writing to the length rather than writing and then cutting. Count the characters in three of your own practice essays and learn what 300 looks like in your handwriting, so that in the examination you can tell at a glance whether you are at a third or at two thirds without stopping to count.

One rule catches people out every year and is stated explicitly in the specification: no credit is given for an essay on a literary text whose evidence comes from a film adaptation of that text. If you have studied a novel that has been filmed, the film is not admissible evidence for the Section B essay - the argument must rest on the original text. Nor may you take documentation relating to the works into the examination room, and no dictionary is permitted. Everything you use must be in your head, which is the practical reason for the evidence method taught later in this topic. The no-documentation rule has a quiet implication for revision too. Anything you plan to use must be recallable under stress in a foreign language, which means a small number of well-rehearsed pieces of evidence beats a large number of half-remembered ones. Three episodes you can locate precisely are worth ten you can only gesture at.

Worked example

Choosing between the two questions in ninety seconds

You have two questions on your literary text. Question 1: 分析这部作品中人物之间关系的变化 - analyse the change in relationships between the characters. Question 2: 你认为这部作品主要是在写个人还是在写社会? 请说明理由 - do you think this work is chiefly about the individual or about society? Give reasons. How do you choose, and why does the choice matter more than it looks?

Read both twice and identify the verb each demands
Question 1's verb is 分析 (analyse) applied to 变化 (change) - it wants a movement traced through the work. Question 2's verb is 你认为 plus 说明理由 - it wants a position argued between two named alternatives. These are different essays. The first rewards a candidate who knows the sequence of the work well; the second rewards one who has thought about what the work is doing.
Test each against your evidence, not against your interest
For each question, count the specific episodes you could cite. If you can name three moments in the work where a relationship visibly changes, question 1 is available. If you can name three moments that support a claim about individual versus society, question 2 is. Choose the question for which you have three, not the one that sounds more interesting - an interesting question with two pieces of evidence produces a thin essay.
Check the trap in each
Question 1's trap is narration: an essay that recounts what happened to whom is description, not analysis, and the AO4 grid will place it low however accurate the Chinese. Question 2's trap is the false binary: an essay that simply picks one side and ignores the other will not reach the top band, because the grid wants evaluation. Knowing which trap you are walking towards is half of avoiding it.
Sketch the thesis for the chosen question before committing
Ten seconds, in your head. For question 2: 表面上写的是一个人, 其实写的是一个时代 - on the surface it is about one person, in fact it is about an era. If a thesis sentence does not come, you have chosen the wrong question. A thesis you can say in one sentence is the single best predictor of an essay that will hold together.
Commit and do not revisit
Ninety seconds is the budget. Having chosen, do not reconsider at minute twenty; switching questions mid-essay is the most costly single error available in this paper, because it wastes both the writing already done and the planning time the second question never received.
Where the marks are
The choice is worth more than it appears because all three grids run on whichever essay you produce. A question you can evidence gives AO4 something to reward; a thesis you can state gives the essay a spine, which is what makes structures like 之所以…是因为… and 与其说…不如说… arrive naturally and earn AO3 range. A poorly chosen question depresses all three grids at once.

Result: Choose by counting evidence, not by preference: whichever question you can support with three specific episodes from the work. Name the trap in the question you chose - narration for an analyse-the-change question, false binary for an argue-between-two question - and state your thesis in one sentence before writing. Ninety seconds, then commit.

Typical mistakes

Planning to answer on two films. It is not permitted and the discovery is expensive.
Writing for accuracy at the cost of range. The grids are weighted 20 to 10 in range's favour.
Writing a long introduction. At 250 to 350 characters an introduction that restates the question consumes a tenth of the essay.
Citing the film version of a novel in a Section B essay. The specification gives it no credit.

Active revision

找一个你学过的作品的两道题目 (自己拟), 只写提纲, 不写文章. 每份提纲必须包括: 立场一句, 三个论点, 每个论点配一段作品中的具体情节, 以及三个你打算故意使用的附录三结构. 计时八分钟一份.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Appendix 2: the four literary texts, named accurately#

StandardPearson Edexcel 9CN0 Appendix 2 - prescribed literary texts and filmsDfE GCE AS and A level subject content for modern foreign languages

The prescribed list is the board's, centres choose from within it, and prescribed lists can be revised between issues of a specification - so the first thing to do is confirm the list current for your own examination series with your teacher or from the specification itself. As printed in the Issue 5 specification of 2026, Appendix 2 lists four literary texts, in both scripts. 北京折叠 (traditional 北京折疊) by 郝景芳, 2016, described as a novelette. 一只叫凤的鸽子 (一隻叫鳳的鴿子) by 曹文轩, 2014, a short story. 城南旧事 (城南舊事) by 林海音, 1960, an autobiographical novel. And 故乡 (故鄉) by 鲁迅, 1921. Note the range of forms on the list. A novelette, a short story, two chapters of an autobiographical novel and a short piece from 1921 span a century and four quite different kinds of writing, so the questions set on them cannot be uniform and the analytical vocabulary you need will differ from work to work.

One rule attached to the list must not be missed. For 城南旧事 the set work is not the whole book but two specified chapters, 惠安馆 (惠安館) and 爸爸的花儿落了 (爸爸的花兒落了), and the specification carries an explicit note that BOTH have to be studied for this set work. A candidate who prepares one of the two has prepared half a set work. Note also that the Appendix 2 list is short by the standards of this Edexcel family - four texts and four films, against Italian's larger list and Russian's six texts - which means the questions can probe more deeply into each. The shortness of the list has one more consequence worth planning around: with only four texts, examiners can and do set questions that assume close familiarity. A question about a single relationship, a single chapter or the way a work ends is entirely possible, and preparation pitched at the level of overall themes will not meet it.

Two of the four are notably brief - 故乡 is a short piece rather than a full-length novel, and 一只叫凤的鸽子 is a short story - and one, 北京折叠, is a novelette that won a Hugo Award for Best Novelette in 2016, which connects the works list directly to the 阅读 material in the artistic-culture topic. Brevity is a real advantage for a candidate: a short work can be read several times, and re-reading is worth more than any amount of secondary material, because the evidence you will use in the examination has to be in your memory rather than in your notes. There is a second argument for re-reading over secondary reading, and it is about language. Re-reading a Chinese text builds the vocabulary and the sentence patterns you will need to write about it; reading an English summary builds neither, and a candidate who has understood a work only in English will find the essay far harder than the analysis.

What does it mean to have studied a work well enough for this paper? Four things, and none of them is a summary you have memorised. First, you can locate any major episode in the work - roughly where it falls and what surrounds it. Second, you can state what each main character wants and how that changes. Third, you can name three or four things the work does formally - how it is narrated, whose viewpoint it takes, how it handles time, how it begins and ends. Fourth, you can connect it to at least one of the four themes, because the examiners' questions frequently ask about social and cultural context. Test yourself on those four rather than on plot recall. Add one further test to the four: can you say, in Chinese, what the work is about in a single sentence? Not what happens in it - what it is about. If that sentence will not come, the work is still a sequence of events to you rather than a thing with a subject, and no amount of episode recall will produce a thesis.

Worked example

Auditing your knowledge of a work in four questions

Whichever work you have studied, run this audit. It takes twenty minutes and it tells you precisely what to re-read. Answer each question from memory, then check.

Question 1 - can you locate five episodes?
Write five things that happen, and beside each write roughly where in the work it falls - opening, early, middle, late, close. Location matters because your essay evidence will be introduced as 在作品的开头 or 到了后半部分, and an examiner reading 在小说的最后 about something from chapter two will discount the whole point. If you cannot locate them, you have read the work once and remembered it as a heap.
Question 2 - can you state each character's want, and its change?
For each main figure: 他想要…, 后来… . A character who wants nothing is a character you have not understood, and a character whose want does not change is usually one you have only half read. This is also the raw material for the commonest essay question type, which asks about change - in relationships, in a person, in a situation.
Question 3 - can you name four formal features?
Who narrates, and in which person? Whose viewpoint do we have access to? How does the work handle time - continuous, jumping, retrospective? How does it begin, and how does it end? These four are the vocabulary of literary analysis, and they are what let you write about HOW a work does something rather than only about what happens in it. In Chinese: 叙述者, 视角, 时间处理, 开头与结尾.
Question 4 - can you connect it to a theme?
The specification's own questions frequently ask about cultural and social context, and the four themes are the context the whole qualification is built on. Which theme does your work touch - family and generations, tradition, a changing society, the consequences of reform? Write one sentence connecting them: 这部作品和主题…有关, 因为…. That sentence will earn AO4 marks in almost any question you are set.
Now score yourself and act
If question 1 was weak, re-read with a pencil and mark the position of each episode. If question 2 was weak, re-read tracking one character at a time. If question 3 was weak, you need not re-read at all - you need to think about the work for half an hour. If question 4 was weak, re-read the topic on the relevant theme rather than the work. Diagnosis first, then targeted work: re-reading the whole thing again indiscriminately is the least efficient response.
Where the marks are
Every one of the four questions maps onto the AO4 grid. Location and episode give you evidence that is appropriately selected. Want-and-change gives you interpretation. Formal features give you the analysis of technique the grid describes. Thematic connection gives you the cultural and social context. A candidate strong on all four will write a good essay on any question they are set, because the material is organised the way the grid reads.

Result: Five episodes with their positions in the work; each main character's want and how it changes; four formal features - narrator, viewpoint, handling of time, opening and ending; and one sentence connecting the work to one of the four themes. Weakness in any one of the four tells you exactly what to do next, and re-reading everything indiscriminately is the least efficient response available.

Typical mistakes

Studying only one of the two required chapters of 城南旧事. The specification's note is explicit.
Assuming the list is fixed forever. It is set by the board and can change between issues.
Relying on plot summaries. Summaries produce descriptive essays, which the AO4 grid places in its lower bands.
Reading about the work instead of the work. In an examination with no documentation, only what you have internalised is usable.

Active revision

为你学的那部作品做一份四栏的自测表: 一, 五个主要情节, 各写出它大概在作品的哪个位置; 二, 每个主要人物想要什么, 后来怎么变的; 三, 四个形式上的特点 (叙述者, 视角, 时间处理, 开头和结尾); 四, 它和四个主题中哪一个有关, 为什么. 不看书完成, 然后对照原作检查.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Evidence without quotation: the described-episode method#

AdvancedPearson Edexcel 9CN0 Paper 2 - critical and analytical response (AO4); no documentation permitted in the examinationDfE GCE AS and A level subject content for modern foreign languages

The AO4 grid asks for points of view justified by appropriately selected evidence from the work, and its top band asks for that consistently. But you may not take any documentation into the examination, there is no dictionary, and you are writing in Chinese under time pressure. A misremembered quotation is worse than no quotation at all: it is checkable, and an examiner who knows the work will see it. So the method this section teaches is to make your evidence the DESCRIBED EPISODE rather than the quoted sentence - and it is not a second-best substitute, it is what a strong literary essay in Chinese usually does anyway. It is worth being precise about what is prohibited and what is not. Nothing stops you referring to the words of a work in general terms - 作品用了很多短句, 对话很少 - which is an observation about style rather than a quotation. What is dangerous is the sentence placed between quotation marks and attributed, because that is the one an examiner can check.

The method has three moves and they always come in the same order. Location: where in the work the episode falls - 在作品的开头, 在故事的中段, 到了最后. Content: what happens, in one or two clauses and with no adjectives. Claim: what it shows, which is the sentence that earns the mark. So: 在作品的开头, 叙述者回到了很多年没有回过的地方; 这个安排让读者一开始就意识到, 距离和时间是这部作品的核心. Location, content, claim. Practise the shape until it is automatic and you will never again write an essay that recounts. The order matters as much as the three parts. Leading with the claim and then supplying the episode reads as assertion followed by illustration; leading with location and content and arriving at the claim reads as evidence producing an inference. The second is what the grid means by justified, and it costs nothing but a rearrangement.

Three refinements make it stronger. First, choose episodes that are structurally significant - beginnings, endings, turning points, repetitions - because a structurally placed episode supports a claim about the whole work, whereas an arbitrary one supports only itself. Second, use two episodes for one claim where you can: 这一点在开头和结尾都可以看到 is far more persuasive than one instance, and it is the difference between the grid's frequently supported and consistently supported. Third, prefer a formal observation to a plot observation - what the work does is stronger evidence than what happens in it. There is a fourth refinement, the negative episode: what the work does NOT do. A character who is never described, a scene that is skipped, an ending that refuses to resolve - each is a choice, each is safely evidenced because you are not claiming anything happened, and each is the kind of observation almost no candidate makes.

The Chinese for this is a small set of phrases worth learning as a block. Location: 在作品的开头 / 中段 / 结尾; 在第一部分; 到了后半部分. Introduction of evidence: 例如, 比如说, 我们可以看到, 值得注意的是 (it is worth noting that). Claim: 这说明, 这表明, 由此可见, 这一点体现了, 作者通过这个情节, 表现了…. Concession about evidence: 当然, 也可以有别的理解 (of course, another reading is possible), which shows the grid exactly the critical awareness it rewards. Ten phrases, and they will carry every essay you write on any work. Learn them by function rather than as a list, because under examination pressure you retrieve by purpose: I need to place this, I need to introduce this, I need to conclude from this, I need to concede here. Four functions, two or three phrases each, and the essay writes itself in the joints between them.

Worked example

The same evidence, used three ways

You want to argue that a work is more concerned with social change than with individual psychology. You have one episode in mind: near the end, a character returns to a place they knew and finds it altered. Show the weak, adequate and strong uses of that single piece of evidence.

Weak: narration with no claim
到了最后, 他回到了老地方, 发现那里已经不一样了. 他很失望. Everything is true and nothing is argued. Note also 他很失望, which is an assertion about a state of mind - the very thing the essay is claiming the work is not chiefly about. The AO4 grid's phrase for this is any evidence from the work is descriptive.
Adequate: episode plus a claim
到了最后, 他回到了老地方, 发现那里已经变了. 这说明作者关心的不只是一个人的经历, 而是整个环境的变化. Now there is a claim, and 不只是…而是… gives it a shape. This is a middle-band paragraph and most well-prepared candidates write at this level. What is missing is the reason the episode supports the claim rather than merely accompanying it.
Strong: add the structural argument
值得注意的是, 这个情节被放在作品的最后, 而不是中间. 如果作者主要想写这个人的心理, 变化应该发生在他身上; 但真正变了的是地方, 而他基本没变. 由此可见, 这部作品的重点在环境, 不在个人. Now the placement of the episode is itself the argument, and the reasoning - if the concern were psychological, the change would be in him - is a genuine inference. 值得注意的是 and 由此可见 frame it.
Stronger still: add a second episode for the same claim
同样的安排在开头也出现过: 作品一开始就先写地方, 后写人. 也就是说, 这种顺序在整部作品里是一致的. Two structurally placed instances of the same pattern make the claim about the whole work rather than about one moment, which is precisely the difference the AO4 grid marks between frequently and consistently supported.
Then concede once, which costs eight characters
当然, 也可以认为环境的变化正是为了写人的感受. 不过即使这样, 作者选择的仍然是从外部去写. Conceding an alternative reading and then answering it is the clearest signal of critical awareness available, and the grid's top band asks for exactly that - evaluation of issues rather than assertion of one.
Where the marks are
One episode, four levels. The difference between the weak and strong versions is not knowledge of the work - it is the same episode throughout - but the questions asked of it: where is it placed, what would be different if the claim were false, does the pattern recur, what would somebody who disagreed say. Those four questions are the whole technique, and they can be applied to any work and any question.

Result: 值得注意的是, 这个情节被放在作品的最后, 而不是中间. 如果作者主要想写这个人的心理, 变化应该发生在他身上; 但真正变了的是地方, 而他基本没变. 同样的安排在开头也出现过: 作品一开始就先写地方, 后写人. 由此可见, 这部作品的重点在环境, 不在个人. 当然, 也可以认为环境的变化正是为了写人的感受; 不过即使这样, 作者选择的仍然是从外部去写.

Typical mistakes

Quoting from memory. A wrong quotation is checkable and damages everything around it.
Describing an episode and stopping. Without the claim, the paragraph is narration.
Choosing episodes because you remember them rather than because they support the claim.
Piling up four episodes for one point. Two well-chosen ones with a claim outscore four recounted.

Active revision

从你学的作品里选五个情节, 为每一个写一个三步段落: 位置一句, 内容一句 (不许用形容词), 主张一句. 然后把五个主张读一遍, 看它们是不是可以合成一个统一的论点. 如果不行, 换掉两个情节再来一次.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

The three grids and the architecture of fifty marks#

AdvancedPearson Edexcel 9CN0 Paper 2 - critical and analytical response (AO4) 20, range (AO3) 20, accuracy (AO3) 10DfE GCE AS and A level subject content for modern foreign languages

Where each grid earns its marks

Fig. 1The five parts of a 50-mark essay and the route through them. The thesis and the conclusion frame; the two argument blocks and the concession carry the marks. The emphasised node is 举证, citing evidence, because it is the single point at which all three grids meet - it is where AO4 finds justification, where the range grid sees your best structures, and where a careless sentence costs accuracy.

Because the three grids are applied to the same essay individually, an essay is really three essays being read at once, and the practical consequence is that you can build a structure in which each grid is fed deliberately. AO4 is fed by thesis, evidence and evaluation. AO3 range is fed by the variety of structures you deploy and by the precision of your vocabulary. AO3 accuracy is fed by the checking pass at the end. None of the three is fed by length, and none of them is fed by an introduction that restates the question. The most useful practical consequence is that you can diagnose a weak essay by asking which grid it failed. An essay that is accurate, varied and says nothing failed AO4. One that is thoughtful and repetitive failed range. One that is thoughtful and varied but hard to follow failed accuracy. The three diagnoses have three different remedies.

A structure that works within 250 to 350 characters, tested against all three grids, has five parts. Thesis, one or two sentences, stating your position in answer to the question and signalling the shape of the argument - this is AO4's relevant response throughout. Argument one, roughly 70 characters: claim, evidence as a described episode, and what it shows. Argument two, the same. A concession, roughly 40 characters: another reading exists and here is why it does not displace yours - this is where AO4's evaluation lives. Conclusion, one or two sentences, which must add something rather than repeat: a consequence, a condition, a broader connection. Note what the structure deliberately omits. There is no introduction and no restatement, because at this length both are pure cost; and there is no separate paragraph of context, because context belongs inside the argument it supports. Every one of the five parts is doing work that at least one grid can see.

Feed the range grid on purpose while you write. Assign structures to the parts: the thesis takes 与其说…不如说… or 表面上…其实…; argument one takes 之所以…是因为… or 正是因为…才…; argument two takes 不但…而且… or 值得注意的是; the concession takes 当然…不过… or 就算…也…; the conclusion takes 只有…才… or 由此可见. Five parts, ten candidate structures, and you will use six or seven of them - which is a genuine range, deployed where the argument needed it rather than sprinkled. Assigning structures in advance also solves a problem candidates do not know they have: under time pressure the same three connectives recur because they are the most retrievable. Deciding beforehand which structure carries which move overrides that default, and it is the difference between a range you possess and a range you use.

Then feed accuracy at the end, mechanically, in four checks that take three minutes. Are all time and place phrases before their verbs? Does every numeral have a measure word? Is every attributive before its noun? Does every 把 sentence have material after the verb? These four catch the great majority of the errors that the accuracy grid describes as hindering clarity, and they are far more productive than re-reading for feel. Accuracy is only 10 of the 50 marks, so three minutes is the right investment - but three minutes spent this way recovers most of what is recoverable. Do the four passes separately rather than together. Each looks for a different thing, and a combined read finds fewer errors than four narrow ones - the same effect that makes proofreading for one error type at a time more effective than reading for correctness in general.

Worked example

A 300-character essay planned against all three grids

Question: 这部作品主要是在写个人还是在写社会? Plan and write a 300-character answer, showing which grid each decision feeds. The example is deliberately generic in its evidence, because the method is what transfers - your own work supplies the episodes.

Thesis, about 45 characters - feeds AO4 relevance and AO3 range
表面上, 这部作品写的是一个人的经历; 其实作者更关心的是他背后的社会变化. 表面上…其实… is the thesis structure, and it answers the question's own binary by refusing it in a controlled way. Note there is no introduction: the first sentence of the essay is already the argument. That alone saves thirty characters for evidence.
Argument one, about 80 characters - feeds AO4 evidence
之所以这样说, 是因为作品里最重要的变化发生在环境上, 而不是发生在人物身上. 在作品的后半部分, 主人公回到熟悉的地方, 发现那里已经完全不同; 而他自己的想法基本没有改变. 之所以…是因为… opens the reasoning; then location, content, claim. The contrast 而 does the analytical work.
Argument two, about 70 characters - feeds AO4 and adds range
值得注意的是, 作者在描写人物的时候, 常常先写周围的事物, 后写人的反应. 这种顺序不但出现了一次, 而且贯穿全篇. 值得注意的是 introduces a FORMAL observation rather than a plot one, which is stronger evidence; 不但…而且… escalates from single instance to pattern. This paragraph is where a good essay separates from an adequate one.
Concession, about 45 characters - feeds AO4 evaluation
当然, 也有人认为这些描写只是为了衬托人物的心情. 就算这样, 作者选择的仍然是从外部去写, 而不是直接写内心. Forty-five characters and it moves the essay a band. 当然 concedes, 也有人认为 attributes, 就算…也/仍然… answers. The concession is not a weakness; it is the demonstration of critical awareness the top band names.
Conclusion, about 55 characters - must ADD, feeds AO4 and AO3
由此可见, 这部作品的重点在社会. 不过只有把两者放在一起看, 才能理解作者的用意: 个人的经历是他观察社会的窗口. 由此可见 concludes; 只有…才… conditions; and the final clause offers a synthesis the question did not contain. That is a conclusion that adds - it answers the binary and then dissolves it.
Where the marks are
Audit: 表面上…其实…, 之所以…是因为…, 而 as contrast, 值得注意的是, 不但…而且…, 当然, 也有人认为, 就算…仍然…, 由此可见, 只有…才… - ten distinct Appendix 3 structures in about 295 characters, each attached to the job its part of the essay needed. AO4 has a thesis, two evidenced arguments, one of them formal, a concession answered, and a synthesising conclusion. The accuracy pass then takes three minutes and four checks. That is what a top-band essay is made of, and none of it required a quotation.

Result: 表面上, 这部作品写的是一个人的经历; 其实作者更关心的是他背后的社会变化. 之所以这样说, 是因为作品里最重要的变化发生在环境上, 而不是发生在人物身上: 在作品的后半部分, 主人公回到熟悉的地方, 发现那里已经完全不同, 而他自己的想法基本没有改变. 值得注意的是, 作者在描写人物的时候, 常常先写周围的事物, 后写人的反应; 这种顺序不但出现了一次, 而且贯穿全篇. 当然, 也有人认为这些描写只是为了衬托人物的心情; 就算这样, 作者选择的仍然是从外部去写, 而不是直接写内心. 由此可见, 这部作品的重点在社会. 不过只有把两者放在一起看, 才能理解作者的用意: 个人的经历是他观察社会的窗口.

Typical mistakes

Writing an introduction that restates the question. At 300 characters it costs a tenth of the essay for nothing.
Omitting the concession. It is the cheapest access to the AO4 top band and takes forty characters.
Ending with a summary. A conclusion that repeats adds nothing to any of the three grids.
Spending the last five minutes re-reading for feel. Four targeted structural checks recover more.

Active revision

写一篇三百字的作品论述文, 严格按照五个部分的结构, 并且在写之前就把十个附录三结构分配给五个部分. 写完后只做四项检查 (时间地点位置, 量词, 定语位置, 把字句), 计时三分钟. 最后数一数你实际用了几个不同的结构.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Exam technique: planning and writing 50 marks in sixty-five minutes#

AdvancedPearson Edexcel 9CN0 Paper 2 - Sections B and C, 100 marks in 2 hours 10 minutesDfE GCE AS and A level subject content for modern foreign languages

Paper 2 runs 2 hours 40 minutes in total: a recommended 30 minutes for Section A's translation into Chinese, then 2 hours 10 minutes for the two essays. That is about 65 minutes each, and the temptation is to give the first essay 80 minutes and the second 50. Resist it absolutely. The two essays are worth 50 marks each and are marked by the same three grids; an extra fifteen minutes on the first will not add fifteen minutes' worth of marks, and the deficit on the second will cost far more. Set a hard time and move. The temptation has a psychological source worth naming: the first essay feels like the one you can still get right, and the second feels distant. Setting a physical timer, or writing the finish time for essay one at the top of your answer booklet, is a crude device and it works precisely because the pull is not rational.

Within 65 minutes, a workable division is 8 minutes planning, 45 minutes writing, 7 minutes checking, and 5 minutes of slack. Eight minutes of planning sounds extravagant and is the highest-value part of the hour: it produces the thesis sentence, the two episodes with their locations, the concession, and the list of structures assigned to parts. A candidate who begins writing at minute two writes an essay whose shape emerges around minute thirty, which is thirty minutes of prose written before the argument was known. Eight minutes is also long enough to reject a plan. If at minute six the two arguments turn out to be the same argument twice, you still have time to find a second one; at minute twenty you do not, and the essay will visibly circle. Planning is partly insurance against that discovery arriving late.

Write in the order thesis, argument one, argument two, concession, conclusion, and do not go back. Chinese essay writing under time pressure rewards forward motion: crossing out and rewriting costs characters you do not have in a 300-character budget. If a sentence comes out badly, finish it and move on - the accuracy grid is only 10 marks and a slightly clumsy sentence costs a fraction of a mark, whereas a lost paragraph costs several. If you run short of time, cut the conclusion to one sentence rather than abandoning the concession, because the concession feeds AO4 and the conclusion mostly frames. Forward motion has a second benefit under a character limit. A crossed-out sentence has consumed thinking time as well as space, and its replacement is rarely much better, because the difficulty was usually in the idea rather than in the phrasing. Finishing the sentence and moving on lets the next sentence fix it.

The seven-minute check is mechanical and always the same. Four structural passes - time and place before the verb, measure words present, attributives before nouns, 把 sentences with post-verbal material - and then one content pass: does the first sentence answer the question, and does the last sentence add something? If you have time left after that, do not rewrite; add one more piece of evidence to whichever argument is thinner. Adding evidence feeds AO4 and range; rewriting a clause feeds only accuracy, which is worth 10. One addition to the check is worth making if you have the time: read your first and last sentences together, ignoring everything between. If they say the same thing, the essay has not moved; if the last one could not have been written before the first, it has. That two-sentence test takes fifteen seconds and finds a defect nothing else finds.

Worked example

Sixty-five minutes, planned and stress-tested

You have opened the paper, read both questions on your literary text and chosen one. It is minute zero of your 65. Plan the hour, then say what to do at each of three failure points.

Minutes 0 to 8: plan on paper, in note form
Write the thesis as one full Chinese sentence - this is the only sentence worth drafting in the plan, because it governs everything. Then: episode one with its location, episode two with its location, the concession in three words, and the ten structures assigned to the five parts. Nothing else. If the thesis will not come by minute four, you have chosen the wrong question and you still have time to switch.
Minutes 8 to 53: write forward, checking the character count twice
At minute 25 you should be finishing argument one; at minute 40, finishing argument two. If you are behind at minute 25, shorten argument two rather than compressing the concession. Count characters roughly at those two checkpoints - a page of your handwriting is a known quantity if you have practised, and knowing it prevents both the 180-character essay and the 600-character one.
Minutes 53 to 60: the four structural checks
Time and place before their verbs. Measure words present after numerals and demonstratives. Attributives before their nouns. 把 sentences with post-verbal material. Run them as four separate passes over the whole essay rather than as one combined read - a combined read finds fewer errors, because each pass is looking for something different.
Minutes 60 to 65: the content check and the slack
Does sentence one answer the question? Does the last sentence add rather than repeat? Then, if time remains, add one more located episode to the thinner argument. Stop at 65 regardless of how you feel about the essay: the second essay is worth exactly as much and is waiting.
Failure point one: the thesis will not come
At minute four, switch questions. This is the only moment at which switching is cheap, and a question you cannot state a thesis for will produce a descriptive essay whatever else you do. Having a rule for this decided in advance is what makes it possible to act on at minute four rather than at minute twenty.
Failure point two and three: behind at 40, or blank at 53
Behind at minute 40 with argument two unwritten: write the concession and conclusion first, then return to argument two if time allows - because those two feed AO4's evaluation and framing and a missing conclusion is more visible than a thin second argument. Blank at minute 53 on the checks because you are still writing: stop writing at 58 whatever happens and do two of the four checks. Half a check is worth more than two more sentences.
Where the marks are
The plan is not about efficiency for its own sake; it is about protecting the parts of the essay that feed AO4 and AO3 range, which together carry 40 of the 50 marks, from being squeezed by the parts that feed accuracy, which carries 10. Every contingency above sacrifices accuracy and framing first and evidence and evaluation last, which is the correct order in this mark scheme.

Result: 0-8 plan with the thesis written out in full, two located episodes, the concession and structures assigned; 8-53 write forward with character checkpoints at 25 and 40; 53-60 four separate structural passes; 60-65 content check, then add evidence rather than polish. Switch questions at minute four if the thesis will not come; if behind at 40, write the concession and conclusion before returning to argument two.

Typical mistakes

Giving the first essay the time the second needed. They are worth the same.
Starting to write within two minutes. The shape then emerges thirty minutes in, and the first third has to be carried by the rest.
Crossing out and rewriting extensively in a 300-character essay. It consumes the budget the argument needed.
Spending final minutes polishing prose rather than adding evidence. Evidence feeds two grids, polish feeds one.

Active revision

做一次完整的两篇作文模拟: 每篇严格六十五分钟, 中间不休息. 第一篇写完立刻开始第二篇. 事后比较两篇的字数, 结构数和证据数量; 如果第二篇明显弱, 说明你第一篇超时了, 下次把计时器调响.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

The literary text: Paper 2 Section B and the 50-mark essay

5 sections~36 min reading time2 competenciesLevel Standard 2 · Advanced 3

The literary text: Paper 2 Section B and the 50-mark essay

Key points

Choosing between the two questions in ninety seconds

Key points

Auditing your knowledge of a work in four questions

Key points

The same evidence, used three ways

Key points

A 300-character essay planned against all three grids

Key points

Sixty-five minutes, planned and stress-tested

The literary text: Paper 2 Section B and the 50-mark essay

Key points

Choosing between the two questions in ninety seconds

Key points

Auditing your knowledge of a work in four questions

Key points

The same evidence, used three ways

Key points

A 300-character essay planned against all three grids

Key points

Sixty-five minutes, planned and stress-tested