6 exam-style questions with full mark schemes and model answers. Write your own answer and the AI examiner marks it against the mark scheme.
This extract is from a (fictional) travel article, A Week on the Slow Boats, by Marielle Ndiaye, published in an invented magazine in 2019. The writer describes joining a cargo ferry along a river.
1 The ferry was not built for comfort and made no pretence otherwise. Its deck was crowded with 2 crates of mangoes, three motorbikes lashed to the rail, and a goat that regarded me with open 3 suspicion. I had paid for a cabin; the cabin turned out to be a plastic chair beside the engine 4 room, where the heat pressed on you like a hand. Above us, the captain steered from a cabin 5 no bigger than a wardrobe, a transistor radio crackling at his elbow. We were due to leave at 6 dawn. We left, in the end, a little after noon, and nobody seemed surprised but me.
From lines 1 to 6, give two things we learn about the conditions on board the ferry. (2 marks)
This extract is from a (fictional) open letter, To the Council, Concerning Our Library, written by a resident, Harold Speke, and printed in an invented local newspaper in 1961.
1 Sir, I write to you about the small library on Mill Lane, which you propose to close. I have used 2 it for thirty years. As a boy I read my first proper book there, standing between the shelves 3 because there was no chair to spare. The room is plain. It has one stove, a tin roof that drums 4 in the rain, and a librarian, Miss Carey, who knows every reader by name and every book by 5 heart. You call it uneconomic. I call it the only warm and quiet room that many of us can enter 6 without first being asked to pay. Close it, and you close more than a door.
From lines 1 to 6, identify one reason the writer values the library. (1 mark)
This extract is from a (fictional) memoir, The Year of the Cold Kitchen, by Priya Halloran, published by an invented press in 2014. The writer recalls her grandmother's winter habits.
1 My grandmother kept the kitchen cold on purpose. She said heat made food spoil and people 2 lazy, and she disapproved of both. So we ate in coats. The bread was kept in a tin trunk, the 3 milk on the outside sill, and the one warm thing in the house was a stone hot-water bottle she 4 filled each night and carried upstairs like a small, precious animal. I thought her hard. It took 5 me years to understand that the coldness was not meanness but arithmetic: coal cost money, and 6 she had decided, long ago, exactly how little of it her dignity required.
From lines 1 to 6, identify one thing the grandmother did to save money. (1 mark)
This extract is from a (fictional) newspaper review, Half an Hour at the Pier Cafe, by Dominic Ashbury, published in an invented paper in 2008. The writer reviews a seaside cafe.
1 The Pier Cafe has the charm of a place that gave up trying in about 1974 and has been quietly 2 proud of it ever since. The tea arrives the colour of creosote, in a cup with a chip you could 3 shave with. My toast was a small architectural triumph: cold, rigid, and capable, I felt, of 4 supporting a modest shelf. The waitress, who appeared to be the owner, the chef and possibly 5 the building's load-bearing wall, called me "love" and refilled my pot unasked, and somehow, 6 against all reason and all the evidence on the plate, I left rather fond of the place.
The writer describes the toast as "a small architectural triumph: cold, rigid, and capable, I felt, of supporting a modest shelf."
In this example, from lines 3 to 4, how does the writer use language to make the poor food amusing rather than merely off-putting? Give one example of the language used and explain how it works. (2 marks)
This extract is from a (fictional) blog post, The First Cold Swim, by Lena Faroe, published on an invented website in 2021. The writer describes entering the sea in winter.
1 The water did not welcome me. It took my breath in one cold fist and would not give it back. 2 For three or four seconds I could not think, only gasp, while every nerve in my body sent up 3 the same small, urgent telegram: out, out, out. Then, slowly, the panic loosened. My skin 4 stopped shouting and began, almost, to sing. I stood up to my shoulders in the grey swell, 5 laughing at nothing, and understood why people who do this cannot stop talking about it. The 6 cold had not softened. I had simply stopped arguing with it.
The writer says the water "took my breath in one cold fist and would not give it back."
In this example, from line 1, how does the writer use language to convey the shock of the cold water? (1 mark)
This extract is from a (fictional) speech, Address to the Apprentices, given by an invented factory owner, Edmund Crale, in 1888 and later printed in a pamphlet.
1 You come to me with soft hands and softer excuses, and you imagine the world owes you a 2 comfortable seat at its table. It owes you nothing. The world is a great grinding wheel, and it 3 will polish you or it will crush you, and which of the two depends entirely on whether you bring 4 to it your idleness or your iron. I was your age once. I had no patron, no inheritance, no friend 5 with influence — only two hands and a refusal to be poor. Bring me that refusal, and I will make 6 something of you. Bring me anything less, and I shall not waste the coal it takes to keep you warm.
The speaker says the world "is a great grinding wheel, and it will polish you or it will crush you."
In this example, from lines 2 to 3, how does the writer use language to make the warning forceful? (1 mark)