Common Module Question Bank

The Common Module, Texts and Human Experiences, never repeats a question - but it does repeat its propositions. This question bank gathers the kinds of question the module actually sets, rewritten so that each one works for any prescribed text, whether you study a novel, play, poetry, film or non-fiction. The point is not to predict the exact wording of your paper; it is to drill the underlying moves, so that whatever the question asks, you recognise the proposition behind it and can build an argument around your own text in minutes.

Almost every Common Module question is a variation on one of six propositions: anomalies, paradoxes and contradictions; the individual and the collective; the threshold of change; memory, time and the past; human qualities and emotions; and storytelling, representation and seeing differently. This page takes each of the six in turn, with a sample question and advice on the thesis it calls for.

The working method is simple: work out which of the six propositions a question is built on, draft a one-sentence thesis for it in under two minutes, then write full timed responses to different types of question against your prescribed text and mark them honestly.

Every strong Common Module response answers the same two things: what does your text reveal about people, and how does its construction make that revelation? The six question types each press on that pair from a different angle.

Questions about anomalies and contradictions ask you to read people acting against what they know, want or claim - "It is the contradictions in human behaviour - the ways people act against what they know or want - that tell the truth about human experience." The strongest answers treat the gap between knowledge and conduct not as a flaw but as the most honest register of a life.

Questions about the individual and the collective test the self against the many: "We understand ourselves only in relation to others; the solitary self is a fiction texts expose." Here the particular life becomes the lens, not the limit, of shared experience.

Questions about the threshold of change sit at the hinge of a life - "Human experience is most powerfully represented at the threshold of change, when one way of living gives way to another" - and reward responses that pressure the proposition, showing the turning point as a place of cost as well as intensity.

Questions about memory and the past treat remembering as need-driven rather than neutral: "Memory is never a neutral record; texts show the remembered past reshaped by the needs of the present." Questions about human qualities and emotions look for what people most value, revealed under pressure: "It is in moments of loss that texts reveal what human beings most value." And questions about storytelling and seeing differently ask what a text sends us back to our own lives understanding: "We tell stories not to escape suffering but to survive it."

Whatever the group, the directive verb sets the task. "How far" and "to what extent" demand a genuine judgement that concedes the counter-position real force; "Evaluate" and "Assess" demand you weigh the claim, not simply agree with it. Any of these can be turned into an opening in four moves: take the side the verb demands, define the key term on your own terms, name the engine driving the experience in your text, and land the thesis with its qualification signalled. Each body paragraph then runs claim, evidence with named technique, effect, and the link back to the proposition and outward to human experience.