The ladder of abstraction

Here's the whole idea. Every good analytical sentence climbs the same four rungs. When I write "this is descriptive" in the margin, it means you stopped on rung 1 or 2. When I write "so what?", it means you skipped rung 3. You don't need fancier words to climb. You need the next rung.

Watch one climb happen

Bennett writes Hell no. I have eyes. rung 1 Two blunt sentences, two and three words long, in a colloquial register. rung 2 You hear a plain man refusing to be intimidated, and because the sentences are so short, he sounds like he's already decided. rung 3 That refusal is the column's opinion in miniature: you don't need experts to judge art, you need eyes, and that's exactly why an ordinary newspaper reader is willing to follow him into a history lesson. rung 4

If you're stuck on a rung

Can't get off rung 1? Say what kind of thing you quoted. Is it a question, a list, a short sentence, a comparison, a color, a font? That's rung 2. You don't have to know the Greek name.

Can't get to rung 3? Finish this sentence: "When I read this, I ______." Then swap "I" for "the reader". That's rung 3.

Can't get to rung 4? Look at the guiding question. Finish this: "This helps the writer ______ because ______." That's rung 4.

A test for anything you write: which rung is this sentence on? If two sentences in a row sit on the same rung, climb.

Techniques by text type

Use this when you're staring at a text and nothing is jumping out. Find the text type, read what it's trying to do, then go looking for the techniques listed. The "possible effect" column is a starting point, not an answer: the effect in your text might be different, and saying how is where the marks are.

Paper 1 rubric

Each criterion is marked out of 5; 20 marks total. Level 0: the work does not reach a standard described below. Grade boundaries (Lang & Lit, 2026–27): 0–2 · 3–5 · 6–7 · 8–10 · 11–13 · 14–16 · 17–20.

My work

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