Finding a way through the panels
Both texts are newly written practice sources about invented people, places or projects.
Text One: An original account of an invented comic-page workshop.
Our first page contained every event in the story, yet two readers followed the panels in different orders. One crossed the page before moving down; the other entered a tall panel immediately and missed a small image beside it. Neither had failed to read the words. The arrangement had offered competing routes.
We drew arrows on a copy to record the paths readers had taken. Then we changed the panel positions without adding an explanation to the story. The second version made the intended sequence easier to follow, but one pause had become too brief. A silent image that had once occupied a wide space now felt like a detail to pass quickly.
The final page was tested again. We kept the arrows and comments in our process folder so the finished layout would not conceal the decisions behind it. Including all the information had been different from arranging an experience of reading it.
Text Two: An original report about a different fictional comics exhibition.
The exhibition displayed selected pages at their original scale and as enlargements. Visitors could compare the pattern of panels before reading the dialogue. The curator's captions discussed sequence, page turns and the space given to a quiet moment, rather than treating pictures only as containers for speech.
A separate activity offered the same four images on movable cards. Different arrangements produced different expectations about what had happened first. The activity did not suggest that every order was equally clear for every story. It asked visitors to explain the effect of their chosen sequence.
The report also noted a limit of the display. A framed single page could not reproduce the surprise of turning to the next page in a book. A nearby reading copy allowed that experience. The exhibition therefore combined close attention to a page with a way to encounter its place in a longer sequence.
Synthesise what you learn from both texts about how the arrangement of comic images affects reading.
528 exam-style questions on WJEC GCSE English Language 3.1 Section A (20%) – Reading, covering 3.1.1 Understanding description, narration and exposition texts, 3.1.2 Range of continuous and non-continuous texts, 3.1.3 Short and extended response question types, and 3.1.4 Editing task at word, sentence and text level. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.