The big idea: When a writer repeats a word or a sentence pattern on purpose, they give the writing a beat and push one idea to the front of your mind.
You already use this to make things stick.
📣 A chant at a match — ‘We want more, we want more’ — or an advert's ‘Just do it’ said again and again. The repeat is what lodges it in your head.
Writers do the same two ways — here's each with an example:
One clear example of each
Repetition
The same word or phrase comes back — ‘I waited. I waited. I waited.’ The repeat hammers the feeling home and makes it hard to ignore.
Parallelism
The same sentence shape is repeated — ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people’. Matching patterns give a steady, powerful rhythm.
The key move: Don't just say ‘repetition’. Name whether it's a repeated word or a repeated pattern (parallelism), then say what the beat makes the reader feel.
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Why it matters in the exam: Repetition is easy to spot but often left un-analysed. You earn marks by naming what the repeat does — drives an idea home, builds a rhythm, or makes a line stick — not just by pointing at it.
Analyse the repetition: “No money for the schools. No money for the hospitals. No money for the buses. But always, somehow, money for the war.”
Model answer plan
See the mark-by-mark plan — for / against / judgement, with marking guidance — in study mode.
Watch out: Don't just label ‘repetition’. Say whether it's a repeated word or a repeated pattern, and what the beat does — drives an idea home, builds rhythm, or makes a line stick.