Exam Skills

The task

In the Modern Prose section of Paper 1 you answer one essay question from a choice of two on Klara and the Sun, typically one theme question (‘Discuss the theme of…’) and one character or relationship question (‘How does Ishiguro present…’). The question is worth 40 marks, you have about 45 minutes, and every question tells you: you must consider the context of the novel in your answer. You may take a clean copy of the novel into the exam, which means examiners expect precise, well-chosen references, not vague ones.

What examiners reward

Two assessment objectives share the 40 marks equally. In plain language:

AO1, knowledge, critical style, personal engagement. You know the novel closely, you argue rather than retell, and a reader can hear you thinking, not a revision guide being recited.
AO4, text and context. You understand how the novel speaks to its world (AI, gene editing, class, faith, Ishiguro’s own preoccupations) and you integrate that understanding into your argument.

The ladder between weak and strong responses runs roughly: retelling the story → making relevant points with some support → sound, engaged argument with clearly relevant examples and contextual comment → sustained critical argument, fully supported, with context threaded through → perceptive, assured, discriminating: an essay with its own ideas, where context is inseparable from the reading. Notice what climbs the ladder: not longer essays, but more argued ones.

The analytical paragraph

Forget rigid formulas; think of a paragraph as a single idea taken seriously. The strongest paragraphs tend to move through five gears:

Claim. One arguable sentence that answers the question. Not ‘Klara loves the Sun’ but ‘Ishiguro presents Klara’s faith as both touching and transactional.’
Evidence. A short quotation, embedded in your own sentence, chosen because its words repay attention.
Analysis. The heart of the paragraph, and the step most writing skips. Naming a device is labelling, not analysis: ‘Ishiguro uses personification’ earns nothing by itself. The marks live in effect: what this exact choice makes the reader see, feel, suspect or reconsider, and which word achieves it.
Context, if it earns its place. One woven clause connecting the point to the novel’s world or Ishiguro’s concerns.
So what. Zoom out: why this point matters to the novel’s larger argument, and back to the question.

A model paragraph, annotated

Ishiguro presents Klara’s faith as sincere devotion built on a machine’s logic. ← arguable claim, already two-sided
In the barn she offers the Sun a bargain, destroy the polluting machine and ‘his special help’ may come, praying, in effect, in the language of a contract. ← short quotation, embedded; method named
The childlike possessive ‘his’ personifies the Sun as a kindly god, yet the deal-making structure of her plea reveals a mind built for service and exchange. ← word-level analysis doing AO1’s heavy lifting
Writing amid the rise of real AI companions, Ishiguro lets the oldest human impulse (sun worship) surface in his newest kind of mind. ← context woven into the argument (AO4)
Her faith is thus neither mocked nor endorsed: it is the novel’s test of whether belief itself is what makes someone human. ← the ‘so what’: back to the big question

The full essay

Interrogate the question (2 minutes). Circle its key words and turn it into your own: ‘Discuss the importance of hope’ becomes ‘Whose hope? What does hope do? What would the novel be without it?’
Plan an argument, not a list (5 minutes). Three or four paragraph-ideas in a deliberate order, each moving your answer forward, drawn from across the whole novel, store, house, barn, city, Yard.
Open by answering. Your first paragraph states your line of argument in two or three sentences. No throat-clearing, no biography of Ishiguro.
Write your paragraphs (30 minutes). Five gears each. Vary your evidence: dialogue, narration, a structural point (mirrored opening and ending, the six-Part shape).
Conclude by looking outward (3 minutes). Not a summary, a final thought: what Ishiguro leaves the reader holding. Then two minutes to proofread.

Practice questions

Modelled on the style of the Edexcel paper: each pair offers a theme question and a character question, and every one carries the instruction ‘You must consider the context of the novel in your answer.’ (40 marks each.)

Either (theme	Or) character / relationship
Discuss the theme of love in Klara and the Sun.	How does Ishiguro present Klara as more than a machine in the novel?
Discuss the importance of hope in Klara and the Sun.	How does Ishiguro present the relationship between Klara and Josie?
Discuss the theme of artificial intelligence and humanity in Klara and the Sun.	How does Ishiguro present Rick in the novel?
Discuss the theme of sacrifice in Klara and the Sun.	How does Ishiguro present the Mother (Chrissie Arthur)?
Discuss the significance of the Sun in Klara and the Sun.	How does Ishiguro present faith and belief through Klara?
Discuss the theme of identity in Klara and the Sun.	How does Ishiguro present Mr Capaldi in the novel?
Discuss the importance of memory in Klara and the Sun.	How does Ishiguro present the ending of the novel?
Discuss the theme of family in Klara and the Sun.	How does Ishiguro present Manager in the novel?
Discuss the presentation of technology and society in Klara and the Sun.	How does Ishiguro present the relationship between Rick and Josie?
Discuss the importance of choice and free will in Klara and the Sun.	How does Ishiguro present loneliness and companionship in the novel?

Now write one