Short story study

You open Unit 6 and find a composite Section A and a Section B with questions on two of the four stories plus a synoptic part. Build the plan.

1. 01Five minutes reading, deciding before writing

   Read both sections completely. Decide which story the Section B questions actually suit — not which story you like best, but which the questions can be answered on. That decision made calmly at minute three is worth far more than the same decision made anxiously at minute sixty.

2. 02Fifty-five minutes on Section A

   The composite language question has finite parts and will not expand. Give it its share and stop when the time is up, even mid-part, because Section B’s marks are distributed across an argument and cannot be recovered by finishing one more exercise. Write the finish time at the top of your booklet.

3. 03Eight minutes planning Section B

   Six lines: the position, two or three developed points with the located episode named for each, the other reading, and the close — plus a separate line for the synoptic part, because it needs different material and forgetting to plan it is how candidates run out of things to say in the last paragraph.

4. 04Forty-seven minutes writing Section B

   Enough for a full literature answer in a second language, including the synoptic element. If the rubric asks for separately numbered parts, allocate proportionally and label them clearly; an examiner should never have to work out which part of the answer belongs to which question.

5. 05Ten minutes sweeping both sections

   Section A first, because its errors are discrete and easy to find; then Section B for treiglo, verb systems, agreement and register. In a paper marked AO3 10 as well as AO2 10, this is not spare time — it is the last ten marks, and they are cheaper than any others in the paper.

Result: Five reading, fifty-five on Section A with a hard boundary, eight planning and forty-seven writing Section B, ten sweeping. The load-bearing decisions are the hard boundary and the separate plan line for the synoptic part.

You have eight weeks and four stories. Build a routine that produces knowledge you can use without the text.

1. 01Weeks one and two — the sequence

   For each story, write the sequence of what happens in eight numbered Welsh sentences with the book open. Then close it and rewrite them. Compare. Eight is a constraint that forces selection, and what you drop on the second attempt tells you which part of the story has not yet become yours.

2. 02Weeks three and four — the turn and the ending

   Two Welsh sentences on the moment the situation changes — what changes and what makes it possible — and two on the ending, what it resolves and what it leaves open. In a short story these two places carry almost all the interpretative weight, and examination questions cluster there in any language.

3. 03Weeks five and six — style, which the specification names

   Two Welsh sentences per story naming ONE feature of the author’s style and saying what it achieves. Not ‘the style is simple’ but, for example, that the story is told entirely in dialogue, or that it withholds a name, or that it uses a very short final paragraph. A named feature with an effect is what the specification means by the author’s style.

4. 04Week seven — the fragments

   Two short exact quotations per story, eight in all, checked character by character. Choose them for usefulness: one that reveals a character or a tone, one that marks the turn. Eight accurate fragments is plenty; thirty approximate ones would be a liability in a closed-book paper.

5. 05Week eight — the pairings and the closed-book write

   Two comparison paragraphs — the two Cariad Pur? stories are the obvious pair — and then a full timed closed-book answer on one story. Mark it against the text afterwards, noting what you misremembered and, more usefully, what you avoided saying because you were unsure. Those avoidances are the last gaps and there is still time to close them.

Result: Eight weeks: sequence, turn and ending, style, fragments, pairings and a timed write. About ninety minutes a week for four stories, and every output is something that survives the book being shut.

Build the reusable frame for a paragraph about an author’s style, and show what a weak version and a strong version look like.

1. 01The weak version

   Mae’r awdur yn defnyddio arddull syml ac effeithiol. Mae llawer o ddeialog yn y stori. Mae hyn yn gwneud y stori’n ddiddorol. (The author uses a simple and effective style. There is a lot of dialogue in the story. This makes the story interesting.) Three sentences, no location, no specific observation, and a claim — ‘interesting’ — that nobody could dispute.

2. 02Move one — locate

   Yn rhan olaf y stori, yn union ar ôl i’r ddau gyfarfod eto, mae rhywbeth yn newid yn y ffordd mae’r stori’n cael ei hadrodd. (In the last part of the story, just after the two meet again, something changes in the way the story is told.) Note the nominal clause with i and the periphrastic impersonal cael ei hadrodd — feminine stori, so ei plus the aspirate, and adrodd takes the h-prefix after ei.

3. 03Move two — describe the observable feature

   Mae’r brawddegau’n mynd yn fyrrach ac yn fyrrach, a does dim deialog o gwbl am dudalen gyfan. (The sentences get shorter and shorter, and there is no dialogue at all for a whole page.) Two observable facts, both checkable by anybody with the book, neither of them an interpretation yet.

4. 04Move three — claim what the style achieves

   Ac felly dw i’n meddwl bod yr awdur yn gwneud i ni deimlo’r tawelwch yn hytrach na’i ddisgrifio fe. Dyna, yn fy marn i, ydy cryfder mawr y stori. (And so I think the author makes us feel the silence rather than describing it. That, in my opinion, is the story’s great strength.) An arguable claim, an emphatic sentence, and a judgement.

5. 05Add the qualification if there is room

   Ond dydy hynny ddim yn wir am ddechrau’r stori, lle mae popeth yn cael ei esbonio’n glir iawn. Efallai mai dyna’r pwynt — bod y stori’n dawelu wrth iddi fynd yn ei blaen. (But that is not true of the beginning of the story, where everything is explained very clearly. Perhaps that is the point — that the story grows quieter as it goes on.) A qualification that turns into a better claim is the strongest move available in a literature answer.

Result: Locate, describe two observable features, claim what they achieve, then qualify into a better claim. The weak version made three unarguable statements; the strong one made one checkable observation and one judgement — and the qualification improved the judgement rather than weakening it.

The synoptic question asks how the works you have studied reflect the position of the Welsh language today. Build an answer that uses a story and something that is not a text.

1. 01Announce the connection you intend

   Dw i am gysylltu un o’r straeon â rhywbeth nad ydy’n destun o gwbl — sef sefyllfa’r Gymraeg ei hun. (I want to connect one of the stories with something that is not a text at all — namely the situation of the Welsh language itself.) Announcing that the second element is not a text signals immediately that you have read the rubric properly.

2. 02The first element, with located evidence

   Take the story and locate the evidence: where does English appear inside the Welsh, or where does a character choose a register or a language? Describe it in your own Welsh, without quoting if you are not certain of the wording, and say what you notice about it — for instance that the borrowing is not marked as strange by the story itself.

3. 03Name the relationship in its own sentence

   Mae hynny’n cyfateb yn union i’r hyn sy’n digwydd y tu allan i’r stori. (That corresponds exactly to what happens outside the story.) One sentence, doing nothing but naming the link. It feels redundant while you write it and it is the sentence the examiner is looking for.

4. 04The second element — the language, not a text

   Ers y Mesur yn 2011 mae gan y Gymraeg statws swyddogol, ac eto Saesneg ydy iaith y rhan fwyaf o fywyd bob dydd i lawer o siaradwyr. Dydy’r straeon ddim yn cwyno am hynny; maen nhw’n ei gymryd yn ganiataol. (Since the 2011 Measure Welsh has had official status, and yet English is the language of most of daily life for many speakers. The stories do not complain about that; they take it for granted.) Unit 5 material, used inside a Unit 6 answer.

5. 05Close on the connection

   A dyna, dw i’n meddwl, ydy’r peth mwyaf diddorol amdanyn nhw: nid dweud beth ddylai’r iaith fod, ond dangos beth ydy hi. (And that, I think, is the most interesting thing about them: not saying what the language ought to be, but showing what it is.) The answer ends on the relationship, and the second element was never a text — which is precisely what ‘connections between various aspects of Welsh’ invites.

Result: One story, one non-textual element from Unit 5, a naming sentence between them, and a close on the connection. The answer used two units’ material in one paragraph — which is what combining and co-ordinating the knowledge developed in the subject actually looks like.

The question asks how one of the prescribed stories presents a relationship, and how you respond to it. Plan the answer in eight lines and write the opening and the close.

1. 01Line 1 — the position

   Position: the story presents the relationship almost entirely through what the two characters do NOT say to each other, and that is what makes it convincing. A position that names a technique as well as a subject gives the essay something to analyse rather than merely to describe.

2. 02Lines 2 to 4 — the developed points, evidence named

   Point one: the opening establishes the silence — evidence, the first exchange and how short it is. Point two: the middle tests it — evidence, the located episode where one of them nearly speaks. Point three: the ending refuses to resolve it — evidence, the final paragraph and its length. Each line names WHERE, because the book will not be there.

3. 03Line 5 — the other reading, line 6 — the close

   Other reading: some read the ending as a reconciliation. Answer: nothing is said in it, and the story has spent its whole length showing that saying nothing is the problem. Close: the story is less about the relationship than about what a relationship can survive without being spoken.

4. 04Lines 7 and 8 — the synoptic bridge

   Bridge: the same silence appears in the prescribed play, but there it is broken; connect and contrast. Second bridge in reserve: silence and language choice — what people do not say in Welsh, and to whom. Planning these separately is what stops the synoptic part becoming an afterthought.

5. 05Write the opening and the close

   Opening: Mae’r stori hon yn cyflwyno perthynas heb i’r ddau gymeriad ddweud fawr ddim wrth ei gilydd. Dw i am ddadlau mai’r distawrwydd hwnnw, yn hytrach na’r hyn sy’n cael ei ddweud, sy’n gwneud y berthynas yn gredadwy. Bydda i’n edrych ar dri pheth: y dechrau, y foment bron â siarad, a’r diwedd. Close: Felly, i gloi, dydy’r stori ddim yn gofyn i ni ddeall y berthynas — mae’n gofyn i ni sylwi arni. A dyna, yn fy marn i, pam mae’n aros gyda’r darllenydd. (So, to conclude, the story does not ask us to understand the relationship — it asks us to notice it. And that, in my view, is why it stays with the reader.)

Result: Eight planned lines including two for the synoptic bridge, a three-sentence opening built on name-position-announce, and a close that answers the question in its own terms. Note ei gilydd, mai, tri pheth and bron â — four A2 items planted in the opening alone.