Welcome to the 2004 guide to the Key Stage 3 Shakespeare
Paper. What started in 1996 as the supplement to Making Assessments in English at Key Stage Three, one of our bestselling books, has become an annual publication with a small but enthusiastic readership. Presenting the Shakespeare extracts in an easy-to-use format so that teachers can adapt them for test practice and for close study has proved popular, while the
provision of tasks enables the English Department to create a trial examination with the minimum of fuss.

Over the years, this booklet has also had an uncanny knack of forecasting the types of questions that are likely to be posed which means that students have a chance to engage beforehand in something which is similar in format and approach to the real test.

2003 was no exception. Here is QCA’s question on Twelfth Night:

In these extracts, how does Viola use language to hide her true feelings from Orsino and Olivia?

And this is our one:

In these extracts how does Viola use language to keep up her deceptions with Orsino and Olivia?

And, for Macbeth, here is the QCA task:

What impressions might an audience get of Lady Macbeth from the different ways she speaks and behaves in these extracts?

And this is our alternative:

If you were directing the extracts, how would you advise the actress playing Lady Macbeth to show what she is feeling?

For the shorter writing task we suggested some spoof tasks for pupils to play around with context and audience. This was the one on Twelfth Night:

Imagine you are like Malvolio. Write an article titled, ‘How to be Cool’ for your favourite teenage magazine.

However, millions of pounds of investment by QCA came up with an equally banal option on clothes and what they say about you in the real test for, as you may have guessed, the ubiquitous teenage magazine!