AQA GCSE English Language: Paper 1 Q1: List Four Things

This extract is from the opening of a story by the (fictional) writer Cora Welland, titled The Salt Road. A young woman, Edith, arrives at a coastal cottage she has inherited.

The cottage stood at the very end of the lane, where the tarmac gave up and became a track of crushed shell. Its walls were the grey of a winter sea, streaked with green where the gutters had failed, and one window upstairs had lost its glass entirely, so that the dark inside seemed to breathe. A rusted gate hung from a single hinge. Edith pushed it, and it shrieked. Around the door, somebody — long ago — had planted roses, but they had run wild and now clawed across the path in thorny ropes. A single boot, swollen with rain, lay on the step. From the chimney no smoke rose, of course; nobody had lived here for eleven years. Yet a gull stood on the ridge of the roof as though it had been waiting, and it watched her with one cold yellow eye, and did not fly.

Read again the opening paragraph (lines 1 to 11). List four things about the cottage from this part of the source. (4 marks)

This extract is from a story by the (fictional) writer Marcus Eaves, titled Low Cloud. A boy named Sam is out on the moor as the weather turns.

The morning had been bright, but by noon the cloud came down off the tops like a lid being lowered onto a pot. First the far ridge vanished. Then the drystone wall that Sam had been following thinned to a grey suggestion and was gone. The temperature dropped so suddenly that he felt it on his teeth. Mist beaded on the wool of his jumper and ran in cold threads down the back of his neck. Sound changed too: the bleat of a sheep, which should have come from his left, seemed now to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. He could see, at most, ten paces ahead. The path beneath his boots had turned to a sucking black peat that pulled at each step, and somewhere below the cloud, far off, a stream he could not see was rising into a roar.

Read again the opening paragraph (lines 1 to 12). List four things about the weather and conditions on the moor from this part of the source. (4 marks)

This extract is from a story by the (fictional) writer Priya Nandakumar, titled The Lock-Keeper's Daughter. The narrator describes an old man she meets at a canal lock.

The lock-keeper was older than anyone I had ever spoken to. His beard was white and reached the second button of his coat, and his hands, when he laid them on the great iron lever, were spotted brown like the underside of a leaf. He wore a cap so faded that no colour remained in it, only the memory of green. One of his boots was mended with a strip of bicycle tyre, bound round and round with garden twine. When he smiled, which he did slowly, I saw that he had kept very few of his teeth. He smelled of pipe smoke and engine oil and something sweeter underneath, like apples kept too long in a drawer. Around his neck, on a bootlace, hung a brass key worn smooth and bright by sixty years of use.

Read again the opening paragraph (lines 1 to 11). List four things about the old lock-keeper from this part of the source. (4 marks)

This extract is from a story by the (fictional) writer Daniel Oduya, titled The Night Shift. A girl named Femi describes the hospital corridor where she waits.

The corridor was longer than any corridor needed to be. Strip lights ran the whole length of the ceiling, and one of them, near the far doors, flickered with a faint electrical buzz, on and off, on and off, like a thought that would not settle. The floor had been polished to a shine that threw back a smeared reflection of the lights. A row of plastic chairs, bolted to the wall, stood empty except for a single abandoned coat. Somewhere a trolley wheel squeaked, drew closer, and then turned away down another passage. The air smelled of disinfectant and, faintly, of cut flowers going over. A clock above the doors had stopped at twenty past three. On the wall a poster, curling at one corner, urged everybody to wash their hands.

Read again the opening paragraph (lines 1 to 11). List four things about the hospital corridor from this part of the source. (4 marks)

This extract is from a story by the (fictional) writer Helen Ashby, titled The Attic Year. A child, Joe, explores the attic of a new house.

The attic was reached by a ladder that folded down from the landing ceiling like a stiff grey tongue. Up there the air was thick and warm and tasted of dust. A single bulb hung from a flex, but it had no shade, and when Joe pulled the cord it lit only a small circle, leaving the corners in deep shadow. Boxes were stacked everywhere, taped shut and labelled in handwriting he did not know. Against one slanting wall stood a rocking horse with a missing ear and one glass eye. The roof slates were so close above his head that he could hear, very clearly, the patter of starlings walking on them. A water tank gurgled in the dark. Across the rafters, like silver washing, hung curtain after curtain of old cobweb, and at the small round window the glass was furred with grime so thick that the afternoon outside had turned to dusk.

Read again the opening paragraph (lines 1 to 12). List four things about the attic from this part of the source. (4 marks)

This extract is from a story by the (fictional) writer Rosa Lindqvist, titled The Ice Comes In. The narrator describes a frozen harbour at first light.

By dawn the harbour had locked solid. Where, the evening before, black water had slapped against the quay, there was now a sheet of grey ice, dull and unmoving, with the masts of the trapped fishing boats standing up from it at angles, like the fingers of someone reaching out of a frozen lake. Frost had furred every rope and every railing white. A single set of footprints crossed the ice from the harbour mouth to the steps, and then stopped, as though whoever had made them had simply lifted off into the air. The cold was so complete that the gulls had given up crying and sat hunched and silent on the chimney pots. No engine ran; no door opened. From the lighthouse at the end of the wall came a thin steady plume of breath-white steam, the only thing in all that frozen town that still seemed to be alive.

Read again the opening paragraph (lines 1 to 12). List four things about the frozen harbour from this part of the source. (4 marks)