Paper 2 Section B: the literary text (پاسخ به آثار ادبی)

You have a choice of two questions on your prescribed text. Question one asks you to analyse how the work presents family relationships. Question two asks you to evaluate the importance of the setting to the work as a whole. Decide, and justify the decision by a method you can repeat under pressure.

1. 01Do not choose by interest. Choose by evidence.

   The question you find more interesting is the one you will write about more freely, and freedom is not what the AO4 grid rewards; located evidence is. So for each question, count silently: can you name three specific passages, episodes or moments in the work that bear on it? Not themes, not impressions — locations. If one question yields three and the other yields one, the decision is made regardless of which you would rather write.

2. 02Check that your evidence is evidence for that question

   A common error is to count evidence that is about the work generally rather than about the question. If question two is about setting and your three locations are all about a relationship that happens to occur in a described place, they are evidence for question one. Test each location by asking what claim it would support, in one clause: این صحنه نشان می‌دهد که ... — this scene shows that. If the clause you produce does not answer the question, the evidence is not for that question.

3. 03Check that you can write the argument in Persian you control

   A question about setting will pull you towards descriptive vocabulary; a question about relationships will pull you towards verbs of feeling and social nouns. Ask which field you can write accurately for three hundred and fifty words. Twenty-five of the forty-five marks are language, so a question you can evidence but not express is worse than one you can evidence a little less and express well. This is a legitimate and under-used selection criterion.

4. 04Commit, then plan four paragraphs before writing a word

   Once chosen, spend two minutes planning: paragraph one, the claim and the terms of the question; paragraphs two and three, one located piece of evidence each with a sentence saying what it shows; paragraph four, the counter-reading answered and the conclusion. Write the plan in Persian nouns in the margin. Candidates who plan in English translate under pressure; candidates who plan in Persian have already begun the essay.

Result: Choose by located evidence, not by interest: three locations that answer that specific question, expressible in Persian you control. Then plan four paragraphs in Persian nouns before writing.

You are choosing your two works at the start of the course and you also need to choose a research subject for Paper 1 Section C. Work through the decision in the right order, and account for each step.

1. 01Step one: verify the list, do not inherit it

   Begin with the current specification and its Appendix 1 for your series rather than with a teacher's handout or a revision site. Prescribed lists change between issues, and a work studied in error cannot be answered on. Write down the titles, the authors, the dates and the form of each — novel, play or film — exactly as the appendix gives them, since the appendix is what the examiners work from.

2. 02Step two: decide the combination before the individual works

   Two texts or one text and one film is a strategic decision, not just a preference. Two texts means both essays in Section B, one skill set, and a lot of reading. One text and one film means two different critical vocabularies and two different kinds of evidence — a located passage and a located scene — but substantially less reading time. Neither is better; deciding early is better, because it determines your whole year's preparation.

3. 03Step three: write the exclusion list immediately

   The moment the two works are fixed, write the exclusion list: both titles, both authors or directors, and — to be safe — the obvious research subjects those works would pull you towards. If one of your works is a novel by a woman writer, the Theme 3 research subject on women's participation in the arts becomes a hazard rather than an opportunity. The list takes two minutes to write and prevents an error that cannot be repaired in the examination hall.

4. 04Step four: choose the research subject against the exclusion list, not before it

   Only now choose from the four research subjects. Pick one whose three aspects can be researched entirely clear of the exclusion list, in one country, from at least two authentic Persian sources you can actually reach. Doing it in this order — works first, exclusions second, research third — makes the constraint free. Doing it in the other order means either changing a research subject you have started or, far worse, sitting Paper 1 with a research file you are not allowed to use.

Result: Verify Appendix 1 for your series; decide the combination before the individual works; write the exclusion list the moment the works are fixed; and choose the research subject against that list rather than before it.

Build a middle paragraph on a prescribed novel, arguing that the work presents a decision as inevitable while showing that it was not. Use the located-episode method and account for every move. Write it in Persian.

1. 01Move one: the claim, stated before the evidence

   رمان تصمیم اصلی خود را ناگزیر جلوه می‌دهد، اما در همان حال نشانه‌هایی به دست می‌دهد که خلاف آن را می‌گویند. The novel makes its central decision appear inevitable, while at the same time offering signs that say the opposite. جلوه دادن, to make appear, is exactly the right verb for a claim about presentation rather than about content, and به دست دادن, to furnish or offer, is a register lift over دادن. A paragraph that begins with its claim gives the examiner the argument at once.

2. 02Move two: locate the episode without retelling the book

   در بخشی از رمان که پیش از این تصمیم می‌آید، راوی گفت‌وگویی را نقل می‌کند و سپس بی‌درنگ به روزهای بعد می‌رود. In a part of the novel that comes before this decision, the narrator relates a conversation and then moves immediately to the following days. Two sentences of location and description, no plot summary, no quotation. Note بی‌درنگ, immediately, which is doing analytical work: the speed of the transition is the evidence.

3. 03Move three: say what the presentation shows

   همین شتاب، فاصله‌ی میان دو رویداد را پنهان می‌کند، و خواننده احساس می‌کند که یکی از دیگری برآمده است. This very haste conceals the interval between two events, and the reader feels that one arose from the other. The analysis is entirely about narrative technique — a gap in the telling produces an impression of causation — which is a claim about the author's craft rather than about the characters, and that is precisely what the AO4 grid means by responding critically and analytically.

4. 04Move four: answer the counter-reading with more evidence, then close

   می‌توان گفت که این شتاب تنها یک انتخاب سبکی است؛ اما اگر چنین بود، در جاهای دیگر رمان نیز دیده می‌شد، در حالی که راوی در صحنه‌های کم‌اهمیت‌تر بسیار آهسته پیش می‌رود. One could say that this haste is merely a stylistic choice; but if it were, it would be visible elsewhere in the novel, whereas the narrator proceeds very slowly in less important scenes. The counter-reading is raised with the impersonal می‌توان گفت, answered with a past counterfactual اگر چنین بود ... دیده می‌شد, and defeated with a second located observation rather than with an assertion.

Result: رمان تصمیم اصلی خود را ناگزیر جلوه می‌دهد، اما در همان حال نشانه‌هایی به دست می‌دهد که خلاف آن را می‌گویند. در بخشی از رمان که پیش از این تصمیم می‌آید، راوی گفت‌وگویی را نقل می‌کند و سپس بی‌درنگ به روزهای بعد می‌رود؛ همین شتاب، فاصله‌ی میان دو رویداد را پنهان می‌کند، و خواننده احساس می‌کند که یکی از دیگری برآمده است. می‌توان گفت که این شتاب تنها یک انتخاب سبکی است؛ اما اگر چنین بود، در جاهای دیگر رمان نیز دیده می‌شد، در حالی که راوی در صحنه‌های کم‌اهمیت‌تر بسیار آهسته پیش می‌رود.

The question is: «نویسنده مکان را تنها به عنوان زمینه به کار می‌برد.» تا چه اندازه با این گفته موافقید؟ Plan the whole essay in Persian, with word counts and with the grammar planted deliberately.

1. 01Paragraph one, about sixty words: refine and take a position

   Open by splitting the word زمینه, background. Setting can be background in the sense of being merely where things happen, or it can be a condition of what happens. پرسش این است که «زمینه» به چه معناست: جایی که رویدادها در آن رخ می‌دهند، یا شرطی که آن رویدادها را ممکن می‌کند؟ Then state the position in one sentence: به نظر من مکان در این اثر بیشتر شرط است تا زمینه. Plant here: a subjunctive is not needed yet, but the embedded question with که is already a subordinate clause.

2. 02Paragraph two, about ninety words: first located episode with a relative clause

   Locate, describe presentation, interpret. Plant a relative clause in the interpretation sentence, because that is where it falls naturally: در صحنه‌ای که ... , راوی ... ; همین توصیف چیزی را آشکار می‌کند که شخصیت‌ها خود درباره‌ی آن سخن نمی‌گویند. This description reveals something that the characters themselves do not speak about. One episode, one presentation observation, one interpretation — and the relative clause is doing genuine work rather than being inserted for display.

3. 03Paragraph three, about ninety words: second episode with a passive

   The second evidence paragraph should not repeat the shape of the first, or the essay reads mechanically. Vary it: where paragraph two argued from what is described, paragraph three can argue from what is omitted. Plant the passive here, since omissions invite it: در این بخش هیچ توصیفی از بیرون خانه داده نمی‌شود, in this part no description of outside the house is given. A negated passive present is a genuinely complex structure and it is the natural way to say this.

4. 04Paragraph four, about ninety words: counter-reading with a conditional, then conclude

   Raise the objection with the impersonal: می‌توان گفت که این توصیف‌ها تنها فضاسازی‌اند. Answer it with a counterfactual conditional, which is the natural home for the structure you planted: اگر چنین بود، حذف آن‌ها داستان را تغییر نمی‌داد، در حالی که بدون آن‌ها انگیزه‌ی شخصیت اصلی نامفهوم می‌شود. If that were so, removing them would not change the story, whereas without them the main character's motivation becomes unintelligible. Then conclude in one sentence tying back to the definition you made in paragraph one. Total: about three hundred and thirty words, four paragraphs, five planted structures, two located episodes and a counter-reading answered.

Result: Paragraph one, sixty words: split the word زمینه and take a position. Paragraphs two and three, ninety words each: one located episode apiece, the first arguing from what is described with a relative clause, the second from what is omitted with a negated passive. Paragraph four, ninety words: raise the objection with می‌توان گفت که, answer it with a counterfactual conditional, conclude against the definition set in paragraph one.

Translate into Persian and justify each decision. 'The narrator tells us almost nothing about the years between the two visits. It would be easy to read this silence as carelessness, but the same novel describes a single afternoon over twenty pages. What is left out has been left out deliberately.'

1. 01Sentence one: a negative quantifier and a critical noun

   راوی درباره‌ی سال‌های میان دو دیدار تقریباً هیچ نمی‌گوید. راوی is the narrator, the standard critical term, and using it rather than نویسنده is a real distinction: the narrator is a construct inside the work, the author is outside it, and confusing them is a substantive critical error as well as a lexical one. تقریباً هیچ, almost nothing, keeps the hedge; and درباره‌ی takes the ezafe on درباره written ه‌ی.

2. 02Sentence two, first half: an impersonal ease-construction

   آسان است که این سکوت را بی‌دقتی بخوانیم. It is easy to read this silence as carelessness. آسان است که governs a subjunctive بخوانیم; چیزی را چیزی خواندن is the two-complement pattern once more, with را on the specific object این سکوت. سکوت, silence, is being used as a critical term here — the silence of a text — and Persian takes it as naturally as English does.

3. 03Sentence two, second half: the counter-evidence, with a numeral spelled out

   اما همین رمان یک بعدازظهر را در بیست صفحه وصف می‌کند. But this same novel describes a single afternoon over twenty pages. همین before رمان is the emphatic this very and is what makes the sentence a rebuttal rather than a change of subject. یک بعدازظهر را carries را because it is a specific afternoon in the work. Note that the number is written in words here, as everywhere in these notes; in an examination script Persian numerals would be equally acceptable.

4. 04Sentence three: a cleft-flavoured passive that carries the whole argument

   آنچه حذف شده است، به‌عمد حذف شده است. What has been omitted has been omitted deliberately. آنچه heads the clause; حذف شدن is the passive of حذف کردن; the repetition of the verb is deliberate in both languages and should be preserved, because the rhetorical force is in the repetition. به‌عمد, deliberately, is a compound adverb with a half-space. This is three critical constructions in three sentences — a critical noun used precisely, an impersonal, and a passive cleft — which is exactly the kind of range the AO3 grid at Paper 2 is built to reward.

Result: راوی درباره‌ی سال‌های میان دو دیدار تقریباً هیچ نمی‌گوید. آسان است که این سکوت را بی‌دقتی بخوانیم، اما همین رمان یک بعدازظهر را در بیست صفحه وصف می‌کند. آنچه حذف شده است، به‌عمد حذف شده است.