Examine how the writer presents loss in lines 33 to 48.

This question tests analysis of language and its effect (R4). 'Examine how the writer presents loss' is a methods question, so naming a feature earns almost nothing; the marks live in the effect you can demonstrate.

1 to 3 marks: identification only

Spotting the verbs 'swallowed' and 'eaten into', or noting that there are two maps, without saying what those choices do to the reader. Feature-spotting is the single most common reason a capable candidate scores 3 on an 8-mark question.

4 to 6 marks: explaining how loss is conveyed

1. The sandbank 'had been swallowed almost entirely by the widening channel' (lines 34 to 36). The passive construction puts the sandbank in the object position, so the land is something done to rather than something that acts, while 'swallowed' gives the channel an appetite. Loss is presented as consumption. [1]
2. 'Coastal erosion had eaten into the outer marsh' (line 37) continues the same feeding image, which turns a slow geological process into a creature at work and makes it feel deliberate. [1]
3. The visitor centre maps show 'one from thirty years ago and one from last winter, and the difference between them was startling' (lines 38 to 40). This shifts loss out of memory and into measurement. It can now be seen by anyone, not only by the man who remembers the picnic rug. [1]

7 to 8 marks: evaluation

The top band asks you to judge the writing, and the judgement available here is structural. The writer refuses to present loss on its own. The vanished sandbank is immediately answered by the little egret, 'pure white and impossibly delicate' (lines 43 to 44), stalking through ground that did not exist in his childhood. Loss and arrival occupy the same paragraph, so the reader is not permitted to settle into elegy. Then comes the flat six-word sentence: 'My grandfather would never have believed it' (line 46). After the long, subordinated sentences around it, the abruptness does the work. It carries wonder at the egret and, in the same breath, the absence of the one person who would have valued the sight, and it does so without a single emotive adjective. Evaluating that restraint, rather than cataloguing more verbs, is what separates 8 from 6.

Examination takeaway

When a question says 'examine' or 'evaluate', reserve your last paragraph for a claim about the writer's overall handling of the subject, supported by one short quotation. Analysis of three features plus one such claim beats analysis of six features.