Putting It All Together: Point Evidence Analysis and Development
A step-by-step guide to putting each part of a PEAD paragraph together.
What is this Guide for?
This guide is to help people who aren’t sure what to write in their PEAD paragraphs when answering exam questions for GCSE and A-Level. It’s highly recommended you use the PEAD method to organise your argument. PEAD stands for Point, Evidence, Analysis, and Development, and using this structure makes it much more likely that you will talk about all the things you need to for those high-level scores.
Note: Other teachers and organisations use different acronyms to describe PEAD; you might see PEAL, PEA, PEEL, or something similar. They all mean the same thing.
Our Example: Remains by Simon Armitage
To give examples of what I am talking about, I will be using an extract from the Simon Armitage poem “Remains”. The BBC have a helpful AQA revision guide with a full audio reading if you want to see more of the poem.
Remembering All the Acronyms
To help you remember all the acronyms for writing great PEAD paragraphs, I’ve created this beautiful picture. I want you to imagine that you are standing by a road and you see an ATM ahead of you on the road, driving a car. Then I want you to imagine how big your halo is when you absolutely do not think about how much money you could get if that car crashed.
If you have no idea what I am talking about, you might want to start your PEAD journey with the PEAD Introduction.
All Our PEAD Sections Together
Here are all of the different parts of our PEAD paragraph. You will notice that they are all written as separate paragraphs because we created them individually here on the website:
“Armitage uses violent verbs in the sixth stanza to demonstrate the threat the soldier still feels under after returning from war.”
“At the end of stanza five, and throughout the sixth stanza, Armitage combines a semantic field of rest comprised of the words, “blink”, “sleep”, and “dream”, with the violent verbs, “burst” and “torn apart”.”
“… Armitage creates a semantic field of rest with the words, “blink”, “sleep”, and “dream”, and each time any form of rest is mentioned for the soldier, it is paired with violent verbs such as “burst” and “torn”. This combination gives the reader the impression that whenever the soldier attempts to rest, he feels attacked by his memory of the man he shot at the bank, which highlights the inescapability of PTSD.”
“…Armitage likely combined the pairing of rest and attack with the first-person account of a soldier’s traumatic war-time experiences to place the public in his position, as it was written for the PTSD awareness TV Documentary “The Not Dead” in 2007. This would help the public feel more empathy for the soldier at a time when mental illness and treatment were heavily stigmatised.”
This is messy, and I repeat myself a lot here, so let’s look at the section below where we have worked at making the paragraph flow better.
Our Final PEAD Paragraph
When you write your PEAD paragraphs in real life, you will not be answering 4 different questions; they will all work together as a single paragraph. This means we can make it a little bit more concise for the final paragraph example (simplify it with no repetition):
“Armitage uses violent verbs at the end of the fifth stanza, and throughout the sixth, to demonstrate the threat the soldier still feels after returning from war. Armitage creates a semantic field of rest with the verbs “blink”, “sleep”, and “dream” and pairs them each time with violent verbs such as “burst” and “torn apart”. This gives the reader the impression that whenever the soldier attempts to rest, he feels attacked by his inescapable memory of the man he shot at the bank. Armitage likely combined rest and attack with the first-person account of a soldier’s traumatic wartime experiences to place the public in the soldier’s position. As it was written for the PTSD awareness TV Documentary “The Not Dead” in 2007, it is more than likely that Armitage wanted the public to feel more empathy for the soldier at a time when mental illness and its treatment were still heavily stigmatised.”
Need More GCSE or A-Level English Support?
If you have read this far, congratulations, because I wrote a lot. And, if you would like a little more support with your GCSE or A-Level English Language or Literature, you can always learn with me privately online!
GCSE and A-Level English Literature and Language Sessions for Native English Speakers - Click here to find out more about the highly successful private online GCSE and A-Level English sessions I provide for native English speakers who would like a boost for their grades.
GCSE and A-Level English Literature and Language Sessions for Non-Native English Speakers - Click here to find out more about the highly successful private online English School Tutoring sessions I provide for non-native English speakers 7 years old and older. This also includes specialised GCSE and A-Level sessions!
Need More Help with PEAD?
If you need any support for your Point, Evidence, Analysis, or Development paragraphs that you can’t find here, there are other resources below that might help you:
Introduction to PEAD and Courtroom Tutorial - a detailed walkthrough of how to write a good or bad PEAD paragraph for GCSE and A-Level English Literature and Language.
PEAD: Point Section - a helpful guide to writing a high-level Point section in your PEAD paragraphs for GCSE and A-Level.
PEAD: Evidence Section - a step-by-step guide to choosing and giving good quotes in context.
PEAD: Analysis Section - a step-by-step guide to analysing quotes.
PEAD: Development Section - how to develop your analysis and link to historical context.