Edexcel GCSE English Language: Paper 2 Q7(a): Synthesis

Text 1 — from A Crossing by Steamer, by the (fictional) writer Edith Marlow, 1889.

We came on deck at first light to find the sea in a temper. The ship climbed each wave as a tired horse climbs a hill, paused, shuddered, and slid down the far side into a trough that hid the horizon altogether. Few passengers had any appetite for breakfast. My companion, Mrs Howe, declared with great dignity that she was perfectly well, and then was perfectly unwell over the rail for some considerable time. I gripped a rope and watched the grey water heave, and reminded myself, as one does, that thousands cross this strait in safety every year, and that I had no especial reason to suppose myself the exception.

Text 2 — from a (fictional) blog, Twenty-Six Hours to Reykjavik, by Sol Aderinto, 2021.

Hour nineteen and the ferry is still pitching like a fairground ride that forgot to stop. I have given up on sleep, on reading, and very nearly on dignity. Around me the lounge is a field of green faces and clutched paper bags; a small child, gloriously unbothered, is the only person enjoying herself. I keep telling myself the boring, comforting truth: this crossing is run every single day, the crew have seen far worse than my queasiness, and in seven hours I will be on solid ground laughing about all of this. Probably.

The two texts both describe enduring a rough sea crossing. What similarities do the writers share in these extracts? Use evidence from both texts to support your answer. (6 marks)

Text 1 — from My First Place at the Counter, a (fictional) memoir by Walter Penhallow, recalling 1952.

I was fourteen when I started at the ironmonger's, and terrified of every one of the ten thousand small drawers behind the counter. The owner — a Mr Steed, or near enough; I never did learn to spell it — gave me no welcome and no instructions, only a broom, and watched me sweep with the air of a man waiting to be disappointed. I dropped a box of nails the first hour and spent twenty minutes on my knees retrieving them, my ears burning. Nobody helped. But by Friday I could find the brass hinges blindfold, and when an old farmer thanked me by name, I walked home a foot taller than I had walked in.

Text 2 — from a (fictional) blog, Day One at the Call Centre, by Imogen Acheampong, 2020.

They sat me at a desk with a headset, a script, and a screen of green and red lights I did not understand, and within four minutes the phone rang and a stranger was shouting at me about a parcel. I had been trained for exactly none of this. My hands shook. I read the script in a voice I did not recognise as mine and prayed for the call to end. Nobody on the row even looked up; everyone was drowning in their own calls. But somehow I got through it, and then through the next, and by the end of that first shift I had stopped flinching when the phone rang. Small victory. I took it.

The two texts both describe a daunting first day in a new job. What similarities do the writers share in these extracts? Use evidence from both texts to support your answer. (6 marks)

Text 1 — from A Letter Home from the Diggings, by the (fictional) writer Thomas Aldous, 1854, writing to his brother from a gold field.

Dear Henry, do not believe a word the newspapers print about this place. They speak of fortunes lifted from the ground like potatoes. The truth is mud to the knee, a tent that leaks, and a meal of damper and tea that I have eaten now for forty days together. The men about me came expecting to be rich by Christmas and are, most of them, poorer than they began, having spent good wages on a licence and a shovel and a great deal of hope. And yet — I cannot fully explain it — scarcely one of them will go home. The next claim, they all believe, the very next, is the one that will pay.

Text 2 — from a (fictional) magazine feature, Chasing the Startup Dream, by Della Okonkwo, 2019.

Everyone you meet here has a story about the friend of a friend who sold their company for millions. Nobody has a story about the nine in ten who quietly folded. I left a steady salary for a desk in a shared office and a product six people have heard of, three of whom are my parents and me. The savings are nearly gone. I eat instant noodles with a kind of grim ceremony. And the strangest part is that I would not, even now, go back to the safe job, because I am certain — irrationally, gloriously certain — that the next version, the next pitch, is the one that finally works.

The two texts both describe chasing a dream of fortune despite hardship. What similarities do the writers share in these extracts? Use evidence from both texts to support your answer. (6 marks)

Text 1 — from Notes on a Great Frost, a (fictional) diary by Hester Combe, January 1814, describing a frozen river.

The river has been ice these eleven days, and the whole town has gone down to walk upon it. It is the strangest carnival. Where in summer the wherries ply, there are now booths selling chestnuts and hot wine, a man roasting a whole ox, and children sliding on bone skates with shrieks that carry half a mile in the still air. Old grievances are forgotten; the magistrate and the coalheaver stand side by side admiring the same fire. I confess I have never seen the town so merry, nor so oddly equal, as upon this hard grey floor that ought by every right to drown us.

Text 2 — from a (fictional) news feature, The Night the City Went Dark, by Marcus Delaroche, 2018, on a power cut.

For six hours the whole district lost its electricity, and something unexpected happened: the street came outside. Doors that stay shut all year opened. The man at number eleven, whom I have nodded to for a decade without a word, brought out candles and a guitar. Someone fired up a camping stove and suddenly there was tea for forty. Children who normally live behind screens ran shrieking between the parked cars, hunting each other by torchlight. For one strange evening the usual barriers — of age, of shyness, of who has and who has not — simply dissolved, and the dark street felt warmer than the lit one ever had.

The two texts both describe how an unusual event brought a community together. What similarities do the writers share in these extracts? Use evidence from both texts to support your answer. (6 marks)

Text 1 — from An Account of the New Railway, by the (fictional) writer Cornelius Bligh, 1846, on first riding a train.

I had resolved to be unimpressed, and failed within a mile. We were drawn at a speed I can only call unnatural; the hedgerows did not pass so much as flicker, a green blur on either hand, and a herd of cattle in a field appeared and was gone before I had properly seen them. An elderly clergyman opposite gripped his hat with both hands and declared, twice, that man was never meant to travel so. Yet I noticed he did not get off at the first stop, nor the second. There is a thrill in it that the body learns faster than the mind consents to, and by journey's end I, who had sworn to scorn the thing, was secretly disappointed to arrive.

Text 2 — from a (fictional) blog, My First Time in a Self-Driving Car, by Yara Benhaddou, 2022.

I will be honest: I got in fully prepared to hate it. No driver, no wheel I could grab, just a calm electronic voice telling me to relax, which had precisely the opposite effect. For the first few minutes I sat rigid, certain we were all going to die at the next junction. My friend laughed at me. But the car slowed, signalled, waited for a cyclist with more patience than I have ever managed, and slowly — annoyingly — I started to trust it. By the time we pulled up I was almost sorry the ride was over, and already wondering, against all my earlier certainty, when I could do it again.

The two texts both describe a first experience of a new and frightening kind of travel. What similarities do the writers share in these extracts? Use evidence from both texts to support your answer. (6 marks)