In the modern prose question the specification sets a closed-book essay on your modern prose set text. You must remember quotations and embed them neatly. Our team of experienced English teachers built these tasks around a novel of our own invention.
Your child practises the argument and quotation skills without leaning on notes. Attempt each before revealing our notes. Check the current specification for the exact marks and timing.
1In our original novel, a father named Tomas answers every difficult question with a job that needs doing. Write the opening of a closed-book essay arguing how the writer uses his silence to present grief. Reach a clear thesis in your first few sentences.
Show plan, model opening & checklist
Plan: A strong opening turns the question into an argument. State what the writer shows, grief expressed as work and silence, not simply that grief exists. Signal how you will prove it, through Tomas's habits and how others respond, without listing the whole essay.
Model opening: The writer presents grief not as something Tomas speaks but as something he does: by having him meet every painful moment with a task, the novel suggests that for him, work is the only language mourning can safely take.
Checklist:
- A thesis, not a restatement of the question
- Focus on how the writer presents, not just what happens
- Signals the argument to come
- No plot summary as an opening
2Take this remembered line from our original novel, Marisa thinks 'the house learned to be quiet the year my mother stopped singing', and write two sentences that embed part of it smoothly inside your own analysis of the family's grief.
Show plan, model opening & checklist
Plan: Closed-book essays reward short, exact fragments woven into your grammar. Quote only the words that carry weight, such as 'learned to be quiet' and 'stopped singing', not the whole sentence. Follow at once with what they reveal about how the family mourns.
Model opening: That the house 'learned to be quiet' makes the silence feel taught rather than natural, as if grief had rules; the detail that it began when her mother 'stopped singing' quietly blames loss for taking the family's voice.
Checklist:
- Only load-bearing words quoted
- Quotation embedded in your own sentence
- Analysis follows the quotation at once
- No dropped or free-standing quotations
3Write a body paragraph tracing how Marisa changes across our original novel, from working silently in her father's failing cannery to deciding to leave the town. Show the change as a development, not a single moment.
Show plan, model opening & checklist
Plan: Development means before, turning point and after. Anchor each stage in a different part of the novel: her early obedience, the argument by the harbour, her final decision.
A trial lesson can start from your child's attempt at Modern prose essay practice for Pearson Edexcel 4ET1, with feedback from an experienced teacher.
Use linking phrases such as 'by the closing chapters' to show movement. Keep the writer's choices, not the plot, in focus.
Model opening: Early in the novel the writer keeps Marisa almost wordless, her days measured out in gutted fish and unspoken duty; by the closing chapters that same silence has hardened into a decision, so that her leaving reads as growth rather than escape.
Checklist:
- Change shown across the whole text
- At least three stages referenced
- Linking phrases mark the movement
- Writer's method kept in view
4In our original novel the cannery town is emptying as the fish stocks fail. Write a paragraph arguing how the writer uses this setting to shape the novel's ideas about change and loss. Refer closely to invented detail from the text.
Show plan, model opening & checklist
Plan: Context here is the dying industry, not a history lesson. Show how the failing town mirrors the family's decline, using specific invented details such as the boarded-up ice house and the shrinking crews. Argue that setting carries the theme, not just a backdrop.
Model opening: By setting the story in a harbour whose boats return emptier each season, the writer makes the town itself an image of loss, so that the family's private grief is quietly echoed in the boarded windows and thinning crews around them.
Checklist:
- Setting linked to theme, not described for its own sake
- Specific invented details used
- Argument about the writer's purpose
- Close reference throughout
5To support the point 'Tomas shows love through actions, not words', choose the strongest of these three remembered lines from our original novel and explain why: (a) 'He never said goodnight, but the porch light was always left on.' (b) 'He worked hard.' (c) 'The boat was old.' Write your choice and a sentence of justification.
Show plan, model opening & checklist
Plan: The best evidence is specific and does real work for the point. Line (a) shows love as a wordless act, matching the claim exactly; (b) is vague; (c) is irrelevant. Choose (a), quote only the porch-light detail, and say what it reveals about Tomas.
Model opening: Line (a) is the strongest: the detail that 'the porch light was always left on' turns an ordinary habit into an unspoken act of care, proving that Tomas expresses love through what he does rather than what he says.
Checklist:
- Most specific, relevant line chosen
- Vague or off-point options rejected with reason
- Only the useful words quoted
- Justification linked to the point
See the method and an annotated model on the modern prose essay page for Pearson Edexcel 4ET1, or the technique in our modern prose essay skills guide.