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Using context in your answers

Context earns marks in four of the five Literature sections and in neither Language paper. It works when it explains the writer’s purpose, and it wastes time when it turns into a history lesson.

Quick guide for students · 3 minute read

Context is the world a text came from: when it was written, what was happening, and what its first readers or audience believed. AQA’s assessment objective for context, called AO3, asks you to show “understanding of the relationships between texts and the contexts in which they were written”.

Where context gets marks

In English Literature, context is worth 6 of the 30 marks in four sections:

  • Paper 1, Section A: the Shakespeare play, such as Macbeth.
  • Paper 1, Section B: the 19th-century novel, such as A Christmas Carol.
  • Paper 2, Section A: the modern text, such as An Inspector Calls.
  • Paper 2, Section B: the poetry comparison.

It earns no marks in two places:

  • Unseen poetry (Paper 2, Section C), which is marked on your response and the poet’s methods only.
  • English Language Papers 1 and 2. In English Language, AO3 means something different: comparing writers’ ideas and perspectives.

So in those four Literature essays, context is a fifth of the marks. A sentence or two in the right place is usually enough.

What goes wrong

A common problem is a sentence of history that could sit at the end of any paragraph. For example: In Victorian times many people were poor. That may be true, and it tells the examiner nothing about the text.

AQA’s examiners pointed this out in their 2025 report. They wrote: “Information about King James 1 and The Gunpowder Plot appeared frequently but added very little to explanations about the extent of Macbeth’s ambition.” On A Christmas Carol, they found that some students “generalise Dickens’ message” without naming “the specific social problems he was reacting to”, such as the Poor Law or the workhouses. Their advice to students was: “Try not to repeat lots of historical information, as this isn’t helpful to your answer.”

Context that explains the writer’s purpose

Ask one question: why did the writer make this choice, for these readers, at this time? Put the answer in the Why part of your paragraph, where you explain the writer’s purpose. How to write a What–How–Why paragraph shows where it goes.

A Christmas Carol

In Stave 1, when two gentlemen ask Scrooge to give to the poor, he asks, “Are there no prisons?” Then he asks about the workhouses: “Are they still in operation?” In 1834 Parliament passed the Poor Law Amendment Act. After it, in many areas, poor people were given help only inside the workhouse, where, in the words of UK Parliament’s own history, “the regime was deliberately harsh and often cruel”.

A context sentence that earns marks links that fact to Dickens’s choice. For example: Dickens puts the language of the workhouse into Scrooge’s mouth, so that readers who thought the workhouse was enough help for the poor hear how cold it sounds. In Stave 3, the Ghost of Christmas Present throws the same words back at him.

An Inspector Calls

Mr Birling tells his family that “there isn’t a chance of war”. The play is set in 1912. Priestley wrote it in the last winter of the Second World War, and it was first staged in 1945.

For example: Priestley’s first audience had lived through two world wars since 1912, so Birling’s confidence makes him look foolish from his first speech. They are then less likely to trust his view that “a man has to mind his own business and look after himself and his own”.

A quick test

Read each context sentence you write and ask: does it say why the writer made this choice? If you could move it to any other paragraph without changing a word, it is bolted on. Cut it, or link it to the quotation in front of it.

Context does not get marks in the unseen poetry section, so do not guess at a poet’s life there. Write about the poem in front of you.

Sources

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