What a Black Belt Club student gets: two real emails

Forensic: from a weak thesis to a top-level one

Skill for this text: decoding the question and building a thesis

1. Decode the wording. "Explore how..." and "explore how far..." both ask for an argument, not a description. AQA's top-level descriptor for AO1 is "critical, exploratory, conceptualised response". Conceptualised means arguing about an idea (for example, reluctance that ambition overrides) rather than listing events.

2. Underline the key word. Take: "Starting with this speech, explore how Shakespeare presents Macbeth's attitude to killing Duncan." Key word: attitude. Every paragraph must be about his attitude, not just about the murder.

3. The thesis ladder

• Weak: "Macbeth does not want to kill Duncan at first." (a statement of fact)
• Better: "Shakespeare presents Macbeth as reluctant to kill Duncan because he knows it is wrong." (an argument, but one idea)
• Top level: "Shakespeare presents Macbeth's attitude as informed reluctance that his ambition overrides: he understands the crime completely, and it is that understanding that makes his choice tragic rather than merely villainous." (a conceptualised idea that can run through the extract AND the play)

4. Vocabulary upgrades

• "shows" > "foregrounds", "dramatises"
• "he doesn't want to" > "he is morally reluctant"
• "he does it anyway" > "his ambition overrides his conscience"
• "bad" > "morally transgressive"

5. Sentence stems

• "Shakespeare's use of [technique] foregrounds the idea that..."
• "This is compounded when..." (linking extract to whole play)
• "Yet a more critical reading suggests..." (your top-level move)

Your task (10 minutes): write your own top-level thesis for: "Explore how Shakespeare presents Macbeth as a violent character." Then compare it against the ladder above.

This week's question: planned, answered and marked

THIS WEEK'S QUESTION (original, AQA format)

Starting with this speech, explore how Shakespeare presents Macbeth's attitude to killing Duncan.

Write about:

• how Shakespeare presents Macbeth's attitude to killing Duncan in this speech
• how Shakespeare presents Macbeth's attitude to killing in the play as a whole.

[30 marks, plus 4 for spelling, punctuation and vocabulary (AO4)]

The extract is Macbeth's soliloquy beginning "If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well / It were done quickly" (Act 1 Scene 7). Use the speech as printed in your copy of the play.

THE 5-MINUTE PLAN

• Key word: attitude
• Thesis: informed reluctance that ambition overrides
• Extract point: the euphemism and repetition of "done", then the case against himself, "as his host"
• Whole-play point 1: guilt after the murder, "Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hand?" (Act 2 Scene 2)
• Whole-play point 2: the hardening, "I am in blood / Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o'er" (Act 3 Scene 4)
• Closing judgement: his attitude moves from reluctance to guilt to habit

MODEL PARAGRAPH (the extract)

[1] Shakespeare presents Macbeth's attitude to killing Duncan as one of acute moral clarity that is nonetheless powerless against desire. [2] The opening conditional, "If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well / It were done quickly", repeats "done" three times, as though the verb were a euphemism that spares him from naming murder; the repetition circles the act without landing on it, exposing a mind that cannot yet look at what it contemplates. [3] Yet the case he builds against himself is devastatingly complete: Duncan is there "as his host, / Who should against his murderer shut the door, / Not bear the knife myself", and the collapse from the abstract third person of "his murderer" into the first person of "myself" closes the distance between the deed and the doer. [4] That he can articulate the betrayal so precisely makes his decision more culpable, not less, a point reinforced by the image of "vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself / And falls on th' other", in which desire is a rider who overshoots and falls. [5] For a Jacobean audience, who saw the killing of both a guest and an anointed king as an offence against divinely ordained order, this is a man reasoning his way to damnation with his eyes open. [6] Shakespeare therefore presents Macbeth's attitude not as ignorance or blind ambition but as informed reluctance overridden by ambition, a tragedy of the will rather than of the intellect.

EXAMINER COMMENTARY

• [1] AO1: a conceptualised thesis that answers the key word ("attitude"). This is the top-level "conceptualised response".
• [2] AO2: word-level analysis (the euphemistic verb "done") with the effect explained. The repetition is treated as a deliberate method.
• [3] AO1/AO2: a quotation embedded in the argument. The shift of person ("murderer" to "myself") is the fine-grained point the top-level AO2 descriptor rewards.
• [4] AO1/AO2: the second image deepens the argument instead of adding a technique to a list.
• [5] AO3: context is woven into the analysis and tied to the quotation.
• [6] AO1: an evaluative close that returns to the key word.

WHERE THE MARKS ARE WON AND LOST

• Lost: writing about the murder in general instead of Macbeth's attitude. Also lost: no whole-play point at all (AQA can limit the mark if a response ignores the whole play).
• Won: a thesis with a "but" or "yet" in it, and one moment of close word analysis in every paragraph.
• AO4 (4 marks): keep one minute at the end for spelling and punctuation.

THE FULL ANSWER

Members also get the complete five-paragraph model answer as a PDF to download and keep.

Your task: write paragraph 2 (Act 2 Scene 2, guilt) in 10 minutes and show a parent. The parent email explains how to check it.

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