Aspects of tragedy - creating your own questions

Below you will find instructions on how to use the accompanying resources to create your own exam practice questions. This example shows you how to use the Aspects of tragedy - resource package C to set questions for Paper 1A, Section C.

Paper 1A, Section C

If you have used the relevant question from the specimen assessment materials or want to set a question on a different text combination or a different aspect of tragedy, you can use these documents in the following way:

1. Look at how the relevant questions from the specimen assessment materials are constructed, for example:

'At the heart of the tragic experience is an overwhelming sense of shame.'

To what extent do you agree with this view in relation to two texts you have studied?

Remember to include in your answer relevant comment on the ways the writers have shaped meanings.

The question wording (To what extent…have shaped meanings.) can remain unchanged. You will need, however, to construct a different 'view' depending upon the aspect of tragedy you want the students to explore.

2. Read the relevant Text Overviews to help you construct a different 'view' to debate. Look for aspects of tragedy which occur in both texts but don't forget that the absence of aspects in a text is equally valid for debate. Other sources can be used to construct a view:

• Look at the list of aspects of tragedy in the specification and make up a critical view around one of these
• Take a view from one of the writers in the Critical Anthology around which to structure a debate
• Research critical views on another Tragedy text, for example a quote from Harold Bloom on King Lear, and adapt the quote in a more general sense so that students can consider how far this can be said to be true of the two texts they have studied.

This resource is part of the Aspects of tragedy resource package.