The extract question is a central feature of IGCSE English Literature: you’re given a passage from a text you’ve studied and asked to analyse how the writer achieves particular effects. It rewards close reading above all else: the ability to look at specific words and explain, precisely and perceptively, what they’re doing.
Read the Question Before the Extract
Before you read the extract, read the question. Know what you’re looking for. If the question asks about how the writer presents conflict, read the extract looking for conflict — its presence, its absence, its expression in specific language choices. Reading without a question in mind means you’ll note everything and select nothing.
Mark the Extract As You Read
Read through once for overall understanding. Then read again, marking specific words and phrases that seem significant in relation to the question. You’re not looking for “techniques” first — you’re looking for moments where the language seems chosen rather than accidental. The technique is secondary to the effect; name it only when it helps your analysis.
What to Look For
- Word choice: why this word and not a synonym? What does it suggest?
- Imagery: what is being compared, and what does the comparison reveal?
- Sentence structure: where does the writer speed the reader up, or slow them down?
- Narration and setting: whose eyes are we seeing through, and does the place mirror the mood?
Knowing which of these matters most for a particular question, and which to leave out, is a skill in itself. It’s one we spend a lot of time on in class.
How to Write Your Response
Work through the extract systematically — usually from beginning to end, though you can group related moments together. For each point:
- Make a specific observation about the language
- Quote the specific words (short quotations embedded in your sentence)
- Analyse: what do those specific words suggest, connote, imply? What effect do they create in the reader?
- Connect: how does this relate to the broader question or theme?
The word “suggests” is your friend — it signals that you’re interpreting rather than merely describing, which is what close reading is.
The Trap to Avoid
Spot the technique, name the technique, and then stop. “The writer uses a simile here” earns very few marks. “The writer compares X to Y — a comparison that suggests…” earns marks. Naming the technique is not analysis. Analysis is explaining the effect of the technique on the reader.
What That Looks Like in Practice
Here’s a short example from Dickens’s Great Expectations, where Pip sees Miss Havisham for the first time and notices that the bride inside the wedding dress had “withered like the dress, and like the flowers”.
Weak: Dickens uses a simile to describe Miss Havisham, which makes the reader imagine what she looks like.
Strong: Dickens compares Miss Havisham to her dress and her flowers, things meant to be fresh for a single day, and the verb “withered” makes her decay sound natural and slow, like a plant left to die. The moment that should have been the start of her life has become the place where it stopped.
Both answers spot the same simile. Only the second explains what it does, and that’s where the marks are. If you’re planning your revision around extract practice, my post on how to revise for IGCSE English sets out a week-by-week plan.
Close reading and extract analysis are practised in every Thorogood English IGCSE English Literature session. Find out more about my live classes, or join the waiting list for January 2027.
