How would I answer a passage question?

Passage questions appear really tricky from the outset, because you don't know what section of your text you might have to read and what may come up. Luckily, however, these questions actually give you a really strong starting base for you answer - the passage itself. What examiners are often most looking for is how you interact with the extract, so the best thing you can do is thoroughly the read what is in front of you. Within the question, they might be asking you to look for certain themes or concepts. So when you are reading, look out for words or phrases that link to this and point them out for yourself. Start to think about what opinion they hold e.g. if the question is about how love is examined look for whether they have positive or negative feelings, and to what extent. Once you have read the text, you'll be able to plan you answer around that extract. Remember to always work from the text out - each of your points must be based on something you've found in the text, and you can then expand your answer out from there. This will help you to keep it clear what you are arguing, while also convincing your examiner that you know that it you are arguing. Using the P.E.E.L system (Point, evidence, explanation, link) always helped me to keep my work focused on the text first, and then the other stuff later.
When you're answering one of these questions, there is a certain structure that they will expect of you. That is an introduction, then you argument, then your conclusion. Use your introduction as a way to show what you will be arguing e.g. in this extract, character a represents the difficulty in Elizabethan marriage and love. This helps you to focus and shows the marker you know where you're going. The conclusion should be similar, in that it brings in an ultimate opinion on the question, but don't forget to bring in references to what you argued in your essay. The argument section is where you should spend most of your time. As said before, working from the text is the most vital part of answering this question, as it is passage based. Every paper has a slightly different marking scheme, so I would really recommend reading up exactly what they are looking for, but there are some general points that you can use to guide your essay that will help you really hit all the marks. The first of these is responding to the text in a clear and focused way, while using relevant terminology. This means having your argument and evidence, but also being able to tell the reader what that is. If they have used a dramatic monologue, or rhetorical questions, point it out and explain the effect of it! This will show really strong knowledge. A list of literary devices can be found here - http://literary-devices.com/ . The next is analysing effects. This sounds really complex and scary, but it is explaining how the devices made you feel. Did the rhetorical questions, for instance, make you feel like they were doubting and unsure? If so, write that out, and talk about its effectiveness. If it only added a little doubt, that's fine. If it added tonnes, say. This will show you've really engaged with the text and thought about the impact. The next of thing to remember is context - when the text was written, who would have been receiving it, and how it fits into the text as a whole are all vital notes. If you know the character later goes back to a different viewpoint, which was the typical view at the time, can you find evidence of this beginning to happen in this text, or how the current argument conflicts with views of the time. Having these extra bits of historical knowledge and textual knowledge will really help to boost your grade! Another thing that is often looked out for is how the text fits with other texts from history. If you know your text was based on something else, or references some other concept, it is brilliant to mention this. Just by commenting on how Romeo and Juliet, for instance, mirrored the love story of a traditional classical love story rather than a Shakespearean (or contemporary) love story will really help the examiner to see that you know your stuff! The last thing that is often looked for is your understanding of different interpretations. For this, it doesn't necessarily mean that you need to argue 50/50 to opinons, but if you can see evidence of where your argument might not completely fit (e.g. they don't doubt love for the entirety of the passage or entirety of the play), by all means mention this. It will show that you understand that your argument is not the only reading that there is, and gives a lot more complexity to your answer. By incorporating all these into your argument, it will help you achieve top grades!