English Lit Paper 1 Answer Structure

For 'starting with this extract...' questions, how much of our answers should be focused on the extract and then the whole text?
My teacher said we should be doing around 3-4 paragraphs on the extract, then 1 on the whole text, but that seems a bit limiting to me.

Depends on you to be honest, and how big your paragraphs are haha (for example some people do 3 big paragraphs). So long as you consider both the extract and the wider text, you can't lose marks: it's not like you get 75% of the marks for doing the extract, as an example, it's just something that needs to be done.

I would personally say that's very limiting, even to the point where I'd switch it to 1-2 paragraphs on the extract and 2/3/4 paragraphs on the Wider Text. The extracts aren't very long after all, and you might want to make some different points.

To conclude though, it just depends on you. You could do 70% on the Wider text and 30% on the extract or vice-versa, and still get brilliant marks. I would definitely recommend analysing the wider text more though, as you may be more familiar with those quotes you have memorised, so you can pick up more marks. Hope that helps! Best of luck with your exams

Thank you! I tend to write larger paragraphs, so I'll probably only get around to doing about 3 in total haha