The exam-style question
This is a theme analysis question, in the style of the Literature in English papers. Read it as you would in the exam, then compare your plan with the model.
Read our original extract below. Write an analysis following how the theme of belonging develops across the passage.
Trace it from beginning to end. This is our own teaching passage.
The New House
For the first month, the house refused to be theirs. The rooms held the smell of other people's cooking, and the stairs creaked in a rhythm no one in the family recognised as their own. Meera set her books on the shelf and they looked, she thought, like guests.
At night the unfamiliar streetlight through the curtains kept her awake, drawing a stranger's shapes on the ceiling. Slowly, without anyone deciding it, the house began to give in. Her father's chair wore its dent into the sofa.
The kitchen learned the smell of her mother's cooking and forgot the last family's. A crack appeared in the hallway paint and became, simply, their crack, the one they stepped around. One evening Meera came in late, tired and cross, and found herself, without thinking, reaching for the light switch in the exact dark place where it was, and understood, with a small shock of gladness, that her hand had finally learned the house, and the house had learned her back.
Model response: Theme analysis
Following a theme means tracing how it grows from start to finish. Here, you show the writer's design as belonging shifts from absence to arrival.
A trial lesson can compare your child's own answer with this model on Theme analysis.
Common errors we see
- Naming the theme but not tracing how it develops
- Listing where the theme appears without analysing the writer's design
- Ignoring the details through which the theme is built
- Not linking the ending back to the beginning
- No embedded evidence for the theme's key moments
How this maps to the mark scheme
Examiners mark against assessment objectives. These are the skills the paper rewards.
For theme analysis, the objectives in play are listed below. The wording is summarised for Cambridge IGCSE Literature in English (0475) on our qualification page.
- Show detailed knowledge of the content of literary texts across the three forms (drama, poetry and prose), supporting points with reference to the text.
- Analyse the ways writers use language, structure and form to shape meaning and create effects.
- Communicate an informed, sensitive personal response to literary texts.
Marks reward tracking the theme through the text with evidence, analysing the methods that carry it and giving a personal response.
Other boards word their objectives differently, but the same skills earn the marks. Your board's official syllabus gives the exact weighting.
Where to go next
Learn the method in our guide to theme analysis, then try the theme analysis practice tasks. You can browse every annotated model response or see how we teach this in our Literature in English tuition.
When you have written your own answer, take it to a paid one-hour trial lesson and the teacher who would continue will mark it with you.