English exam

Assessment Objectives AO3 (i) Read and understand texts, selecting material appropriate

to purpose, gathering information from different sources and making comparisons and cross-references as appropriate

AO3 (ii) Develop and sustain interpretations of writers’ ideas and perspectives

AO3 (iii) Explain and evaluate how writers use linguistic, grammatical, structural and presentational features to achieve

effects and engage and influence the reader

Quick Summary

English paper

2 hours 15 minutes2 sections - A and BSpend 1 hour 15 minutes on section A, 1 hour on section BA = Reading and analysing 3 unseen texts linked by a common theme, idea or conceptB = Writing - write 2 pieces for specific audience with specific purpose

At the start of the exam

Read through all the questions in section A and underline the key words in each question SO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU SHOULD BE LOOKING FOR WHEN READING THE EXTRACTS.

• -Write TAP at the top of the page to remind you to think about Text Type, Audience & Purpose.

READ WHAT YOU NEED • As you read the 3 texts

remember to highlight or underline the main points of the article (what you learn about).

• -As you read underline language techniques

• -As you read circle presentational techniquesRemember – read what you need

Section A (Reading non-fiction texts 1 hour 15 minutes)

What you have to do Tips to get a good grade

Question 1 requires you to read item 1 (text 1) and list 4 things that you learn from the text. Keep your responses short and clear.

Question 2 will ask you to show you understand the article by explaining one

aspect of it e.g. why is the writer so interested in …………

Use some quotes to show you understand - make at least 3-4 points with quotations to

support your response.

Question 3 will ask you to look at item 2 (text 2). You are being asked to show that you understand the article, can spot the main

things that you learn from the article and back up what you say with short quotes.

This is an 8 mark question so you need to make at least 8 points with short quotes.

Section A (Reading non-fiction texts 1 hour 15 minutes)

What you have to do Tips to get a good grade

Question 4 will ask you to explain how the writer uses language techniques to engage

the reader.

Read the question carefully so you know exactly what you are looking for. You need to

use quotes to support your points. This question is split into two section with each section focused on one aspect of the text

e.g. how it is shocking or persuasive or informative. Remember to use the key words

of the question in your response.

Question 5 will ask you to explain how the writer uses presentational techniques to

engage the reader. You will be given one item and you will have to choose a second one.

You will be asked to focus on several important presentational aspects of the texts

e.g. the use of subtitles and pictures.

You will need to give examples from the text to show you understand.

Section B (Writing non-fiction texts 1 hour)

• Before you start writing you should

write TAP on the top of the page to remind you that you need to

be thinking about:• Text Type, • Audience • Purpose.

This will help to guide your writing.

Section B is the writing section and you will be

asked to answer 2 questions. You should spend 30 minutes on

each question.

Remember that question 6 is worth

more marks so do that one first.

You are being tested on your ability to

show a range of writing techniques

which will engage your reader and

achieve your purpose.

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Travel doesn’t need to cost the earthFocus question:

• What are the main points of this article?

What is the worst part of the day for you? I’m willing to bet most of you would say it’s your journey to work or to school. For may of us it’s become an ever increasing nightmare. It’s a hassle, it’s exhausting and time consuming and worst of all it’s expensive! The problem of course is the traffic slowing everything down and creating pollution. Traffic on Britain’s roads has more than doubled in the past 25 years and nowhere is this more evident than in our towns and cities during the rush hour. A recent report shows that hundreds of local authorities in Britain break EU regulations on the emission of nitrogen dioxide which has been linked with asthma, stunted lung growth in children and even premature death.

There has to be a solution to this early morning misery. One town in Belgium appears to have found it. Hasselt, the fourth largest town in Belgium, had the largest congestion problem. However this was rapidly eliminated when the town introduced free public transport for all. Unlike British towns the priority was not traffic, but people – a philosophy which we should certainly try to emulate . If one town in Belgium can do it, then why can’t we?

At present, public transport is unreliable and often infrequent which is why many avoid it, using cars instead. Free, reliable and very frequent bus and train services would remove our ridiculous dependence on the car. Free public transport would guarantee every person’s undeniable right to mobility – from schoolchildren to workers, the disabled and the unemployed, families and young people. There would be a decrease in risks to health and surely much welcomed improvements for businesses as more people shop in traffic – and congestion – free streets. Traffic chaos would be eliminated once and for all and that fume- spewing monster, the car, would be banished from the streets of our towns. The result of free public transport would be a dramatic increase in cutting vehicle emissions and global warming. All it would take is a little bit of nerve for town councils across the land to say ‘No more cars in our town.’ So why don’t they do it now?

Musician and activist Bob Geldof describing his experience of the 1984 Ethiopian famine

All day I had been on the phone trying to promote a single from the album. I went home in a state of blank resignation and switched on the television. But there I saw something that completely changed my perspective.

The news report was of famine in Ethopia. From the first seconds it was clear that this was a horror on a monumental scale. The pictures were of people who were so shrunken by starvation that they looked like beings from another planet. Their arms and legs were as thin aFocus question: What was Bob Geldolf’s reaction to the news broadcast about the Ethiopian famine?

s sticks, their bodies spindly. Swollen veins and huge blankly staring eyes protruded from their swollen heads. The camera wandered around them like a mesmerised observer, occasionally dwelling on one person so that he looked directly at me, sitting comfortably in my living room. And there were children, their bodies as fragile and vulnerable as premature babies but with the consciousness of what is happening to them gleaming dully from their eyes. All around was the murmur of death like a hoarse whisper, or the buzzing of flies.

From the first few seconds it was clear that this was a tragedy which the world had somehow contrived not to notice until it had reached a scale which constituted an international scandal. You could hear that in the tones of BBC reporter Michael Buerk. It was the voice of a man who was registering despair, grief and disgust at what he was seeing. At the end the newscaster remained silent. Paula burst into tears and then rushed upstairs to check on our baby Fifi, who was sleeping peacefully in her cot.

The images played and replayed in my mind. What could I do? Did not the sheer scale of the thing call for something more? A horror like this could not occur today without our consent. We had allowed this to happen. I would send money. But that was not enough. I had to withdraw my consent. What else could I do? I was only a pop singer – and by now not a very successful pop singer. All I could do was make records no one brought. But I would do that, I would give the profit of the next Rats record to Oxfam.

What good would that do? It would be a pitiful amount. And I would withdraw my consent.

Yet that was not enough.

• Focus question: What was Bob Geldolf’s reaction to the news broadcast about the Ethiopian famine?

Musician and activist Bob Geldof describing his experience of the 1984 Ethiopian famine

From the first few seconds it was clear that this was a tragedy which the world had somehow contrived not to notice until it had reached a scale which constituted an international scandal. You could hear that in the tones of BBC reporter Michael Buerk. It was the voice of a man who was registering despair, grief and disgust at what he was seeing. At the end the newscaster remained silent. Paula burst into tears and then rushed upstairs to check on our baby Fifi, who was sleeping peacefully in her cot.

The images played and replayed in my mind. What could I do? Did not the sheer scale of the thing call for something more? A horror like this could not occur today without our consent. We had allowed this to happen. I would send money. But that was not enough. I had to withdraw my consent. What else could I do? I was only a pop singer – and by now not a very successful pop singer. All I could do was make records no one brought. But I would do that, I would give the profit of the next Rats record to Oxfam.

What good would that do? It would be a pitiful amount. And I would withdraw my consent. Yet that was not enough.

• Focus question: What was Bob Geldolf’s reaction to the news broadcast about the Ethiopian famine?

Extract from 'The Road to Wigan Pier' (1937) Written by George OrwellIn his non-fiction work the writer shares his opinions of the industrial cities in the

north of ENgland during the economic depression of the 1930s

I remember a winter afternoon in the dreadful environs of Wigan. All round was the lunar landscape of slag-heaps, and to the north, through the passes, as it were, between the mountains of slag, you could see the factory chimneys sending out their plumes of smoke. The canal path was a mixture of cinders and frozen mud, criss-crossed by the imprints of innumerable clogs, and all round, as far as the slag-heaps in the distance, stretched the ‘flashes’—pools of stagnant water that had seeped into the hollows caused by the subsidence of ancient pits. It was horribly cold. The ‘flashes’ were covered with ice the colour of raw umber, the bargemen were muffled to the eyes in sacks, the lock gates wore beards of ice. It seemed a world from which vegetation had been banished; nothing existed except smoke, shale, ice, mud, ashes, and foul water.

Extract from 'The Road to Wigan Pier' (1937) Written by George OrwellIn his non-fiction work the writer shares his opinions of the industrial cities in the

north of England during the economic depression of the 1930s

But even Wigan is beautiful compared with Sheffield. Sheffield, I suppose, could justly claim to be called the ugliest town in the Old World.

One scene especially lingers in my mind. A frightful patch of waste ground (somehow, up there, a patch of waste ground attains a squalor that would be impossible even in London) trampled bare of grass and littered with newspapers and old saucepans. To the right an isolated row of gaunt four-roomed houses, dark red, blackened by smoke. To the left an interminable vista of factory chimneys, chimney beyond chimney, fading away into a dim blackish haze.

Example Student Analysis• George Orwell begins his description in a very negative way. When

he says: ‘I remember a dreadful afternoon’, the word ‘dreadful’ makes me think he does not have happy memories of the place he is about to describe. This is confirmed when he begins to write in detail about his visit to Wigan. The landscape described is almost alien – ‘a lunar landscape’ from which ‘vegetation has been banished’. He selects unpleasant details such as ‘mountains of slag’ and pools of ‘stagnant water’ to encourage readers to share his opinion. He seems surprised by the ugliness of the landscape and yet at the same time the detail in which he writes about it possibly sug gests he is also fascinated by it. Perhaps he has not seen a city in the north of England before. I wonder why he went on to visit Sheffield which he describes as the ‘ugliest town in the Old World.’

Section B - writing Below are three practice questions for section B.

1. Write a letter to your local council persuading them to build a new shopping centre

2. Write a letter to your head teacher advising him/her how to improve morale amongst the student body.

3. Write an article for inclusion in the National Wildlife Magazine explaining how people can do more to help the environment

Question: Write a letter to your head teacher advising him/her how to improve morale amongst the student body.

Dear Miss Tinderbox, Ask any teacher what the most important aspect of teaching is and they will

unhesitatingly respond with the three R’s: results, results, results! Now, it might be the case that a student’s academic success is also very closely related to the enduring future of a school, but isn’t there something just a little depressing about school’s relentless, all-consuming obsession with exam results? Look around you and what would you expect to see in the bright young faces of your students, the bright young faces of the next generation? You might be tempted to say ‘hope’ or maybe ‘ambition’, but look into the faces of your students and what do you see? The answer will shock you: the cold, empty expression of someone suffering from advanced nervous exhaustion. It’s a sad, but unfortunately true fact of life at our school that so many bright young people are being pushed, driven even towards the edge. True, you supply us with a wonderful array of after school activities, but who has time to attend them when we have homework set each day across all subject areas? Morale is at an all time low and with winter just settling in things can only get worse, or will they? If we act quickly there may still be time to resuscitate the life and ambition of these poor wretches, but we need your help now!

Question: Write an article for inclusion in the National Wildlife Magazine explaining how people can do more to help the

environment

Stop! Look! Think Green!It’s easy to be wasteful, far too easy in fact, and that’s precisely the problem we face as a highly productive

but massively wasteful species. One could even argue that the driving purpose behind many of the technological and scientific breakthroughs of the last two centuries, and probably beyond, has been to make life just that little bit more comfortable. But no sooner have we nested down into our luxurious leather sofa, flicked on the 72” widescreen and reached for an extra large bucket of buttery popcorn than some fool is screaming in our ear that we need to start thinking about the environmental cost of all this comfort and good living. At first it might shock you to realise that pretty everything you own has cost the environment in some way and that you, yes you, are contributing to the gradually increasing collapse of life on Earth. Then again, X-Factor is on in a minute you’ll be dead before the ice caps melt, so really, who cares, am I right? Wrong! This is an issue which affects every living thing clinging to this planet, and of the billions of different animal species scratching out an existence on this planet, only one is threatening to ruin the party of everything, and that’s you and me I’m afraid.

Michael Lambert, Professor of zoology at Stanford University has called human wastefulness ‘a tax on all life, everywhere’, and has described our current wasteful behaviour as ‘not my problem syndrome’. Now, I don’t want you to throw this article down and immediately swap all your fancy DFS furniture for wicker, hand woven man-baskets, not do I want you to announce to your assembled family that you are all going to live up a tree from now on, I just want to you start reflecting your ecological bank balance as if it actually was your bank balance and you just three withdrawals away from bankruptcy, because then you would probably listen..