GCSE English Language Paper 1 Question 4: A Scaffolded Approach

GCSE English Language Paper 1, Question 4 (AQA board) presents several challenges for students – to say the least.  For a number of mine it means cognitive overload on the question even before they get to any kind of attempt to answer it. Of course, it is the only question that explicitly assesses Assessment Objective 4 (AO4: Evaluate texts critically and support this with appropriate textual references) and so has to tick all the right  boxes in terms of the skills that the markers need to see the students using.  This set of scaffolded resources covers the skills needed for this question.

Why develop a scaffolded resource? The question itself contains a sometimes overwhelming number of instructions, a quotation reflecting a “student’s” opinion, and a specific placement within the exam that can be daunting.  By the latter, I mean that it’s almost perfectly positioned for short answers to be offered by learners as it is the fourth and last of the reading questions.  However I advise, whatever I say, there are still kids in my cohort who will spend twenty minutes on the more approachable Question 2 instead (but which is only worth 8 marks).  There’s a research paper crying out to be done on that particular, peculiar psychology…

The scaffold asks students some multiple choice questions and then goes on to give them some options to consider when writing their own paragraph.

Yet it’s not all doom and gloom. It is good news that AQA has decided to reword the question, beginning in the Summer of 2026.  Even so, I still have to get “my lot” through this year – and even with the rewording it still remains (in my opinion) the most challenging question in the entire qualification.  I know that some of you will disagree and point out its counterpart in Paper 2, but this one is worth four more marks, and when you consider that a grade boundary between a 5 and a 6 (for example) is usually around ten marks, doing well on this question could really impact on a learner’s final grade.  

Let’s face it, this question is one of the reasons, in my view, why we don’t have or need a Higher Tier for this qualification!

As such, I wanted a way to introduce the question and enable the cognitive load to be lowered by ensuring that the expectations of the question (and answers that could be given) are thoroughly established.  As such, a few years ago, I put considerable thought into how to engage students with this question and developed a structured approach to support their responses. These scaffolded exercises are particularly useful for lower sets but work well for all ability levels. They provide an excellent starting point for tackling this question. In fact, when I first designed this resource, I completely rethought my approach, pressing the “reset” button and starting afresh. The results have been encouraging, with noticeable improvements in my students’ exam performance for this question.  This booklet is 24 pages long in total.

The scaffolding works for a number of reasons.  First and foremost, I can show my students any number of WAGOLL examples and they will nod earnestly (or blithely scan it) and the method... doesn't sink in.  The scaffold here asks them to make decisions about the response and then to write it out - in the first instance.  The writing part of this alone ensures that something might stay in their heads for longer than five minutes!  However, the second "more evidence" part of the scaffold where they are presented with choices about what to write about is the one which really starts to make them think about what they are committing to paper.  Altogether, I have found that students retain quite a lot of this scaffold when they attempt "past papers" and even go on to develop their own style of including everything that the skills descriptors damand!

Answers are provided in a separate document.  Perfect for teachers to be one step ahead but also if you are an adult learner studying for this qualification or in a "home ed" environment.

To complement the scaffolded exercises, I have created an additional answer document. This includes explanations of the correct responses for the multiple-choice questions, along with sample answers for each of the three scaffolds included in the set.  Although the students were going to build up their own responses through a system of multiple choice questions and suggestions about what to write, I needed complete answers for myself (to start with, more or less) so I knew where to begin building the scaffold. So these are included in this set (example above).  Plus this is really useful for other teachers who may wish to use the resources, as well as "Home Ed" parents who could  use this too.  Let's not forget adult students - a friend used these at her institution and apparently they loved them and demanded more!

As we are almost finished with the “original” format of the question, I have created two sets.  One is the original and the other (using the same the texts and methods) has the questions in the 2026 format.  You can see an example of the new question format for 2026 below.

An example of how the question will look in 2026 (not before so don't panic!).  The quote from a student has gone, agree and disagree now appears in the question - plus "evaluate" has been replaced with "comment".  All sensible changes - at least that's what staff room chit-char indicates.

What the Scaffold Provides

The structured approach helps students to:

• Express an opinion on the statement and stay focused on it throughout their response.  This means mentioning it quite a lot!
• Develop a five-paragraph answer, including in each:
• textual evidence – short, well-chosen quotes,
• an understanding of the writer’s methods, and
• an evaluation of the effect on the reader.

By using these scaffolded exercises, students can produce a well-structured response to this exam question. Yes – and of course – this is not strictly speaking their “own” work but I have discovered that after completing two of these exercises, students feel much more confident when faced with a real exam question without a scaffold. While this approach is highly structured, it consistently helps students to navigate this challenging question.

Classroom Use

These scaffolded exercises are designed for classroom use, serving as an introduction to tackling Question 4 in a structured but flexible way. The Word documents can be easily adapted if you wish to modify them.

I have deliberately used older texts, primarily to avoid copyright restrictions. Each passage starts from Line 20, allowing students to imagine a prior section of the text, while the first paragraph is omitted to ease them into the passage. Some minor edits have been made to enhance accessibility, but nothing as drastic as the modifications AQA sometimes applies!  Two examples – in one text I changed “hitcher” to “boat hook” and in another, “ejaculations” changed to “shouts” (because I am not going to give teenage boys the opportunity…).  So the edits are minimal – and nowhere near the knifework AQA does on the texts it uses.  Just have a read of the original “Tiredness of Rosabel” as an example of their surgery!

Please don’t roll your eyes at the mention of “older” texts.  I spent an age an a half looking for them (involving lots of reading which I didn’t mind at all, frankly!).  They are quite different to each other but involve elements that teenagers engage well with and enjoy.

Use outside of the classroom

These scaffolded exercises can be used by parents in a Home Ed situation.  Likewise if you are an adult student preparing for this exam, you will probably find these more useful than a mark scheme!  The answer books, in this scenario, will be the go-to, but please try the scaffold too!

The Three Texts

The texts have been carefully curated to ensure they fit the question perfectly (that was a search and a half!), and have been designed to be a little more visually stimulating than in the exam.

• Dracula – Jonathan Harker encounters three beautiful but dangerous (vampire) women.  This involves an element of horror plus the three women are presented as seductive (in a Victorian manner, yes, but there’s quite a lot of implicit stuff going on, more than enough to engage your average teen in a “won’t get the teacher sacked” kind of way).
• Three Men in a Boat – The three men struggle to open a tin of pineapple chunks.  Ah, the ridiculous lengths that we go to when we haven’t got a tin opener.  It’s happened to most of us (maybe not specificaly with pineapples but you know what I mean!) and this is a very entertaining account of how things can so easily get out of control.
• Jane Eyre – A terrifying scream breaks the silence of the night.  This has elements of both mystery and horror.  It’s a great text for GCSE English and it gives so much but also withholds so many things from the reader.  A textbook example of how to keep one’s (dear) reader in suspense!

To my knowledge, these extracts have not appeared in previous GCSE exams. I have compiled them into a single booklet (which is how I use them), but each question is also available as a separate file.

As I have said, these work very well with my students.  I now feel the need to unleash them on the wider world.  You can buy them here.