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- Sentence Length (can be relative) / More complex structures
- Always check the mark allocation . As the question specifically asks that you focus on 2
5 Basics Kinds of Sentence
Sentence Length (can be relative) / More complex structures
The good thing about sentence structure questions is that there are often (though not always) several possible answers. For example, there are at least twelve features of sentence structure for you to write about in relation to the extract that follows. First, read the extract and the question carefully. This is an extract is from an article in ‘The Guardian’ by Will Hutton called ‘The Genius of Shopping’. On three floors almost every shop you pass excites another taste or way you might express yourself. Binoculars and telescopes; pocket DVD players; walking sticks; silk wall hangings; leather belts; mirrors; porcelain figurines—it was endless. The bargain prices were an invitation to the recognition that individuals have an infinity of wants, some of which we don’t even know about or have forgotten; I fell upon the binoculars with all the delight of a child. Much of the pleasure is not even the buying; it is acquiring the knowledge of the immense range of goods that exist that might satiate your possible wants. Shopping, as my daughters tell me, is life-affirming. Q: Identify two aspects of the writer’s use of sentence structure and explain how these help to convey the pleasure of his shopping experience in Hong Kong? (5) Firstly, you are required to discuss 2 features of sentence structure Secondly, the features you write about must in some way create a sense of the writer’s ‘pleasure’ Always check the mark allocation. As the question specifically asks that you focus on 2 features of sentence structure, you must do just that. However, you can gain up to 3 marks for a really strong answer, and 2 for an answer that is less well developed. Explain its impact / contribution to writer’s purpose Example: Look carefully at the marks awarded here: Identify feature Quote (if appropriate) 1. The use of balance (1) in “enormous fun and profoundly satisfying” introduces/captures the two equally important aspects of the writer’s view of shopping (1): this relates his enjoyment but also point to something more significantly, deeply meaningful (1) 2. The use of parenthesis “not one … £4” (1) emphasises that buying cheaply/getting a “bargain” is part of the enjoyment (1) 3. The positioning of “enjoy” at the end of this climactic sentence (1) stresses the sheer fun of shopping (1) Task: Read the extract over again and look at the rest of the model answers. This is an extract is from an article in ‘The Guardian’ by Will Hutton called ‘The Genius of Shopping’. On three floors almost every shop you pass excites another taste or way you might express yourself. Binoculars and telescopes; pocket DVD players; walking sticks; silk wall hangings; leather belts; mirrors; porcelain figurines—it was endless. The bargain prices were an invitation to the recognition that individuals have an infinity of wants, some of which we don’t even know about or have forgotten; I fell upon the binoculars with all the delight of a child. Much of the pleasure is not even the buying; it is acquiring the knowledge of the immense range of goods that exist that might satiate your possible wants. Shopping, as my daughters tell me, is life-affirming. Q: Identify two aspects of the writer’s use of sentence structure and explain how these help to convey the pleasure of his shopping experience in Hong Kong? (5) The use of the conversational “And on top of that” to start the sentence creates the impression of a spontaneous outpouring of enthusiasm, of a fresh idea about the joys of shopping springing into his mind The use of list “case … strap” emphasises the range of choices involved, an exciting bombardment of choices The use of the dash to introduce his explanation of the similarity, the shared enjoyment The use of list “binoculars … figurines” emphasises the eclectic range, great variety of goods to choose from The use of the dash to set up the punchy summation “it was endless”, which emphasises the seemingly infinite attractions of shopping The use of the semicolon in the antepenultimate sentence allows the writer to give an enthusiastic personal example, illustrating the point he makes in the first part of the sentence about self-discovery The use of the semicolon in the penultimate sentence allows the writer to explain what seems paradoxical in the first part of the sentence: shopping is more about self- knowledge than acquisition The use of parenthesis “as my daughters tell me” to delay the very positive climax of “life-affirming” and/or to recall the shared bond between father and daughters The short, punchy nature of final sentence to make “life-affirming” stand out, emphasising how truly significant/wonderful shopping is Task: Read the extracts and answer the questions. Remember to IDENTIFY - QUOTE - EXPLAIN Extract 1 One faction has cried constantly that the countryside is in mortal danger from greedy developers whose only motive is profit; another has kept on roaring that farmers are killing every wild thing in sight and threatening the very soil on which we stand through overuse of machinery and chemicals; still another has been continually heard ululating over a decline in the bird population, or the loss of hedgerows, or the disappearance of marshland, or the appearance of coniferous forest. Q: Explain how the sentence structure in the lines above emphasises the strong feelings of those who feel the countryside is under threat. (4) Extract 2: This sense of anticipation was above all generated in the mid-Fifties by the dawning realisation that, thanks to the miraculous advances of technology, an entirely new kind of material prosperity was coming into being. Hundreds of millions of people, for the first time in their lives, were able to own cars, buy fridges and washing machines, shop at supermarkets for detergents and frozen foods. Television passed into the centre of homes and our lives. There was suddenly much more money around than would have seemed imaginable to any previous generation, and every year that passed seemed to bring yet more technical marvels, more change – transistor radios, jet airliners, computers, motorways, new kinds of architecture in steel, concrete and glass. Q: Comment on how effectively the writer exploits one feature of sentence structure to help him describe the impact of this “material prosperity”. (4) Extract 3: The proliferation of Elvis sightings has become a collective joke since then, most now being propounded with tongue firmly in cheek. Sometimes the jokes are quite funny: only a few days ago, some punter laid a 5p bet at odds of 20 million to one that Elvis would one day ride into London on Shergar to play tennis against Lord Lucan in the Wimbledon finals. Always one for a laugh – like many in the 1970s, he could apparently recite various Monty Python routines by heart – Elvis himself would probably have appreciated the gag. Q: Explain briefly the function of the colon in line 2. (1) Q: Explain the function of the dashes in lines 5-6. (1) Extract 4 The Sixties were certainly a time when it was possible for most people to look forward in hope. But as that frenetic decade wore on, it became apparent that not all was well with the dream. After the world-wide shock of President Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, America in particular seemed to be floundering deeper and deeper into trouble. Year by year, as civil rights aspirations turned into riots, as the growing shadow of the escalating war in Vietnam lengthened across the world, as “youth culture” became shadowed by violence and increasingly lost glamour, the dream became more of a nightmare. Above all in the late Sixties there were the first signs of growing weariness with the relentless battering of change. Around 1967, we suddenly began to hear a new set of words – “conservation”, “the environment”, “pollution”, “ecology” – expressing a growing sense of horror at what our wonderful, runaway technology was doing to our countryside and rivers and seas, to other species, to the whole balance of nature on the planet. Somehow, the feeling ran, things seemed to have got out of hand. The paradise we had all been moving towards so rapidly in the late Fifties and early Sixties seemed to be proving curiously elusive. Q: Identify and comment on one feature of sentence structure used by the writer to reinforce the idea that his dream had become a nightmare. (2) Extract 5: (from passage ‘Binge Drinking: The Sky’s Not the Limit’) There must, nevertheless, be an acknowledgment of the mixed messages created by a society awash with alcohol. A tolerance of drunkenness now –co-exists with a migration of personal responsibility away from the drinker. There is a prevailing attitude which says over-indulgence is someone else’s problem. That someone else might be the driver on the night bus, who views with weary disgust the semi-human behaviour of his passengers. It might be the police officer responsible for scooping the sad, bad and mad off the city-centre streets, much as the cleansing department sweeps up rubbish. It might be the nurse at A&E on a Saturday night facing aggressive, drunken louts demanding priority treatment for their –self-inflicted injuries. It might be the courier on the sex-and-sangria holiday. Q: Explain how the writer’s sentence structure (“it might….holiday.”) reinforces the writer’s point of view regarding the effects of “over-indulgence”? (3) Extract 6: (from an article about racism) To all this, most of us (including government ministers) are content to turn a blind eye for most of the time, until some horrible incident – the Aston shootings, the murder of Damilola Taylor, the Bradford riots – reminds us that there is something rotten at the heart of what we erroneously call modern civilisation. We rage about a hiccup in exam results affecting a few hundred middle-class pupils, but whisper not a word of protest about the thousands dropping out of school unable to spell their own town. We want the authorities to be relaxed about cannabis and Ecstasy, since these are drugs favoured by rich teenagers in suburban discos, but then we expect the police to impose zero-tolerance on the same dealers when they peddle crack-cocaine on the estates. We organise our lives on the philosophy of unbridled me-first consumerism: instant gratification, unfettered by “fusty” notions of voluntary service or social responsibility – and then we profess horror when the same warped hedonism is aped by teenagers brandishing guns. 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