The approach
How to meet an extract cold
An unseen rewards a reader with a routine. The order below is a way of making sure the first minutes of reading produce material an essay can use, rather than a highlighted page and no argument.
First: the situation
Before anything technical, settle the plain facts: who is here, where, when, and what is happening. Most weak unseen answers go wrong at this level, misreading the event and building analysis on sand. Two careful minutes establishing the situation buys every later paragraph its accuracy.
This section grows as the class materials arrive.
Voice and narration
Ask who is telling this and what they want you to feel. First or third person; close or distant; knowing or limited; steady or unreliable. In prose, narration is the master method: every image and sentence rhythm arrives through it, so a paragraph on voice nearly always earns its place.
This section grows as the class materials arrive.
Method: sentence, image, structure
Work from the writing outwards. How do the sentences move, long or clipped, delayed or abrupt? Which images repeat or turn? Where does the extract shift, and what changes on either side of the shift? Method questions come alive only when each answer ends in an effect on the reader.
This section grows as the class materials arrive.
From noticing to arguing
A list of observations is not an answer. The last step is to choose the two or three noticings that point the same way, and build them into a claim about what the passage is doing. That claim, stated early and tested against the extract, is what an examiner recognises as reading.
This section grows as the class materials arrive.