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Grade 8 answers conceptualise - they see the text as doing something bigger. You argue with confidence, choose evidence precisely, and track the writer's method across the whole text. Your context is part of your argument, not a tacked-on paragraph. You can hold two interpretations at once and weigh them.
A Grade 7 essay might say "Shakespeare presents jealousy as destructive." A Grade 8 essay says "Shakespeare presents jealousy as a constructed performance, not an innate emotion - Iago teaches Othello how to feel it." Lead with argument, not theme.
Grade 8 essays spot what the text leaves out, what it shifts away from, what's unspoken. Ask: what's missing? What's the writer avoiding?
Instead of "Victorian society was patriarchal, which is why...", write "Dickens both reproduces AND troubles the Victorian patriarchal frame by..." Context becomes part of the argument.
Mention an alternative interpretation and show how your reading is stronger. "While some argue X, the text more clearly supports Y because..."
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