Edexcel Language

Section A
The Year 10 Revision Guide
• How to…. Top tips
• How to tackle the paper question by question
• Glossary of useful terminology
• Teachers’ notes on the eight Year 10 passages
• Two practice papers with suggested answers
Contents
How to use this pack (Read this first!) ................................................................................. 3

How to… Section A (Reading)............................................................................................... 4

Guidance on answering Questions 1-5

Question 1 ............................................................................................................................... 5

Question 2 ............................................................................................................................... 8

Question 3 ............................................................................................................................. 11

Question 4 ............................................................................................................................. 14

Question 5 ............................................................................................................................. 18

Revision notes
From The Danger of a Single Story ..................................................................................... 24

From A Passage to Africa .................................................................................................... 26

From The Explorer’s Daughter ............................................................................................ 28

Explorers or boys messing about? Either way, taxpayer gets rescue bill ............................. 30

From Between a Rock and a Hard Place ........................................................................... 32

Young and dyslexic? You’ve got it going on ....................................................................... 34

From A Game of Polo with a Headless Goat ...................................................................... 36

From Chinese Cinderella ..................................................................................................... 38

Glossary of useful terminology ........................................................................................... 40

Practice Papers

Practice Paper 1: He for She & The Danger of a Single Story ........................................... 45

Practice Paper 2: Why Did Daddy Always Have to Be Late

& A Game of Polo with a Headless Goat ............................................................................. 51

Mark scheme and suggested answer content for Practice Paper 1: ................................ 55

Mark scheme and suggested answer content for Practice Paper 2: ................................ 61

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How to use this pack

This pack contains some material that should be familiar: the ‘How To…’ quick guide for
Section A of the English Language exam paper and longer guidance on each question
type.
It also contains revision notes written by teachers in the English department at Dulwich
and two practice papers. At the very end of the pack, you will find suggested content for
the answers to these practice papers.

What you should do:

1. Start by revising your notes from Year 10: annotations in your copy of the Edexcel
Non-Fiction Anthology plus any other notes you made.

2. Use the revision notes for each text to deepen your understanding of the texts.
Add points made in these to your own annotations if you don’t have them already.

3. Go through the glossary, finding definitions for each term in your notes, online or
in a dictionary. Learn these terms.

4. Go through your own notes on the format of each question in the exam to revise
these, then read through the guidance in this pack to consolidate your knowledge.
You must be very confident about the different requirements of each question, as
you have to complete them under considerable time pressure.

5. Commit the suggested timings for the paper to memory and strategise your
approach. How many times will you read the passages? How will you make sure
you pick up the information needed efficiently? How will you check your answers
to each question?

6. Once you have completed your revision – and only when you have done this –
attempt one of the practice papers under timed conditions (1½ hours). Self-
assess your answers using the suggested answer content provided. Judging the
quality of your answers, particularly in Questions 4 and 5, is more important than
how many marks you would receive.

7. Go back to your revision notes: what do you need to improve? What should you
revisit? Do you need to commit more points, concepts or terminology to memory?

8. Complete the second practice paper, self-assessing as before. Make a note of

success and topics for further revision, and bring this list back to school with you
to discuss with your teacher.

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4
 Questions 1-3 | Comprehension and
Inference: Unseen text
The Language paper is designed to get gradually more difficult as it progresses. The first three
questions are straightforward as long as you read the question carefully and do exactly what
you are asked to. Everyone is capable of full marks for these three questions if they read the
questions and extracts carefully and are clear on what the question is asking them to do. Aim to
complete them as quickly as possible – see the ‘How to…’ guide for timings.

QUESTION 1 (2 marks; 3 mins)

This question asks you to select evidence from a particular section of Text One. The wording of the
question will always say:

‘From lines X to Y, select two words or phrases [that describe

something specific, often a person or place].’

For example:

All you need to do is offer two quotations that are from the specified range of lines that are relevant
to the focus of the question. You do not need to explain the quotations; you simply need to quote
two relevant words or phrases.
For example, for this question:

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The lines referred to are here:

In the exam, some students write more than is required, like this:

As you can see, the examiner has given them full marks for the question, but they have wasted
time writing things that get them no marks. They could simply have written:

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Key points for Q1:

• Make sure you select quotations from the correct range of lines
• Make sure they are quotations; don’t paraphrase (don’t put information into your own
words)
• Don’t explain your quotes; just quote the words or phrases that relate to what the
question is about. Anything more is wasting time you will need on later, harder questions.

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QUESTION 2 (4 marks; 6 mins)

This four-mark question asks you to show you understand the text by describing what happened
or explaining a character’s (often the writer, but not always) apparent thoughts and feelings
about a particular thing in your own words. Fundamentally, it is a test of understanding, both at
a literal and an inference level.

The wording of the question will be:

‘Look again at lines [X to Y]. In your own words, describe [a

specified topic].’

For example:

As the question is worth four marks, you should offer the examiner four ideas. Write between
100-200 words focused on thoughts and feelings, demonstrating inference, focused on the
specified range of lines and, above all, showing an in-depth understanding of the text and topic.
As stated in the question, you should use your own words as far as possible. This does not
mean you have to change every single word, but you should avoid lifting phrases of two or more
words.

Be precise in explaining your ideas; avoid vagueness and explain each idea fully and in detail
before moving on to the next. For example:

is a poor start to the answer: “not good” is very vague. Rather than trying to describe something by
saying what it is not, define it by saying what it is.

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In contrast:

This is a much better start; it is more detailed and precise about the range of changing thoughts
and feelings the writer experiences (though even this could be more in-depth and precisely
expressed). Yes, it does include a quotation – but the candidate is not penalised for that,
because they have followed it with an explanation in their own words of what that description
means, indicating their comprehension and inference abilities.

For your reference, the passage that the examples above are based on is here:

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The examiner is looking for evidence that you have really understood the implicit content of the
text as well as the explicit – what is going on under the surface, beyond the literal ‘what
happens’. If your answer demonstrates in-depth understanding of thoughts and feelings and is
clearly, precisely explained in detail, it will get full marks.

Key points for Q2:

• Keep to the focus of the question, both in the range of specified lines and in topic
• Infer, explain, explore; look for what is under the surface as well as the basic ‘what
happens’
• Explain your ideas precisely and in detail

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QUESTION 3 (5 marks; 6 mins)
This five-mark question asks you to summarise and explain what we (the reader) learn about a
specified topic from a specified range of lines, and to support your ideas with quotations. It is
again looking for inference, but this time to explicitly comment on what we, the reader, learn from
specific textual details.

The wording of the question will be:

‘From lines [X to Y], what do you learn about [specified

topic]? You may support your points with brief quotations.’
For example:

(Bear in mind that though the question says ‘you may support your points with brief quotations’,
you should read this as ‘you should support your points with brief quotations’)

As the question is worth five marks, make five points. The whole response will be likely 150-250
words – around half a page (handwritten). Follow the process of ‘point – quote –
inference/explanation’, repeating this five times, using linking phrases like ‘furthermore’ or
‘additionally’ when beginning a new point.

The inferences you make do not all need to be subtle or groundbreakingly insightful; your job is to
show comprehensive, clear understanding of the topic specified, to select brief supporting
quotations and to explain what we learn from that quotation. The examiners value a strong range
of points (you can see this in the example answer on the next page and in the examiner’s
comment below it, which specifically praises a range of comments), hence the recommendation
to make five clear points (each supported by quotation and inference) in your answer.

In Q4 and 5, you are asked to analyse language – in other words, comment

on specific use of vocabulary, imagery, metaphor, sentence structures etc.
Do not do this in Q1-3; they are all based on your understanding of
information rather than appreciation of the writer’s craft.

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An example of a full-marks answer:

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Key points for Q3:

• Offer five points that are focused on the topic of the question
• Include a brief quotation for each point made, backed up with a brief explanatory
comment about what we learn from this textual detail
• Make sure you only take evidence from the specified range of lines
• Follow a ‘point – quotation – inference/explanation’ model, repeated five times with
linking phrases between each.

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 Question 4 | Analysis of Language,
Structure and Form: Anthology text
How many marks?
12 marks

How long do I spend answering the question?

15 minutes (including 2 minutes planning)

This is a shift from Q1 to 3; Q4 is the first of the high-tariff questions, and needs to be
planned and written with care and focus. It shifts from requiring you to discuss the
unseen text and asks you to write on the extract you already know – the one from the
anthology. You will get a blank copy of the text in the exam paper, so aren’t expected to
know quotations off by heart; however, knowing the text – and how the choices the
writer has made about genre, structure and language affect its impact – to the level
that you could reel off quotations off by heart is vital if you are going to be able to
answer this question with precision, speed, focus and fluency.

ANALYSING LANGUAGE AND STRUCTURE

This question asks you to analyse the ways the writer uses language and structure to present
particular aspects of the information in the text or their viewpoint.

‘Language’ can cover anything from word choice (diction) to grammatical features to imagery
and techniques.

‘Structure’ refers to sentence structure but also to the structure of the text overall – paragraph
length and form; the order of information; the significance of the beginning, middle and end;
development, culmination and climax; juxtaposition and contrast.

• Write three or four paragraphs of analysis with topic sentences referencing question focus –
here the presentation of the explorers and their rescue
• No intro or conclusion – move straight into analysis of text
• Each paragraph: Writer’s Aims and Techniques; Quotations; Discussion of individual words
• Discuss the whole of the extract (or the whole of a sub-section of the extract if the question
focus requires this) – points drawn from beginning, middle and end
• Link points clearly – Firstly, Secondly, etc…; ‘In a similar way...’, ‘in contrast...’ etc

What am I marked for? (Level 5, 11-12 marks)

✓ Perceptive understanding and analysis of language and structure and how these are used
by writers to achieve effects, including use of vocabulary, sentence structure and other
language features;
✓ The selection of references is discriminating and clarifies the points being made

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Here’s an exemplar paragraph from ‘Young and Dyslexic’ analytical work which demonstrates
excellent Q4 characteristics:

• Clear topic sentence

• Discriminating choice of quotations – and a wide range, too
• Consistent identification of techniques within those quotations
• Range of techniques identified: language, imagery, structure
• ANALYSIS of those techniques (i.e. explanation of their effect in context)

Some hints and tips:

1. Quote longer quotations in context and then re-quote key individual words from that
quotation, analysing them by explaining meaning, connotations and effect in the context
in which they’re used: what do they suggest?

2. Sentence structures should be ‘subservient’ to language and imagery (‘Robin’ to

language and imagery’s ‘Batman’, perhaps). Usually sentence structures in some way
mimic the content of the sentence, so explain what a sentence is saying before
discussing how its structure in some way emphasises that.

3. Don’t forget that tone of voice can be critical to the effect of a passage (especially when
analysing genres of non-fiction, which are often designed to be persuasive). Explain how
the language, imagery and sentence structure used by the writer contributes to their tone
of voice,

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Reminder: the difference between deduction and analysis

Look at the following passage, and consider the two brief commentaries below.
As James stood at the door in horror, a bomb site confronted him. The classroom was covered in
upturned chairs which lay with feet in the air like the corpses of cattle, and on the windows the
curtains hung in shreds and tatters. The walls were daubed and spattered in lurid graffiti telling
whoever cared to read it that they should “sod off”, and deep scars streaked across the desks. A
light bulb hung limply from the ceiling with its shade torn half-off, and even ceiling tiles had
somehow been pushed through, leaving a pattern of black spaces forming a gap-toothed leer to
greet the incoming teacher.

Deduction:
The class which was in the classroom is clearly a badly-behaved, unruly class, as seen from the
fact that they have damaged it in an extreme way: they have ransacked the room by ripping
down the curtains, by creating “deep scars” on the desks, and have “daubed and
spattered…lurid graffiti” on the walls. Through this the writer suggests that they are angry and
out of control, a group who perhaps have not been set boundaries through adequate discipline.
The writer’s intent is clear, but their methods aren’t being discussed: this explains information
and the inferred (or deduced) conclusions drawn from that information. A paraphrased wording
of the source passage would lead to the same conclusions.

Analysis:
The writer describes the classroom as a “bomb site”. Whilst this means literally that debris is
scattered and strewn across the floor, that the room is extremely damaged, the metaphor has
connotations of explosive destructiveness, hyperbolising the savagery and violence of the way
the room has been treated.
This is totally focused on what the writer is doing and WHY, and is dependent on the specific
words, images (and other literary techniques) used. If the writer had written that ‘the classroom
was a complete mess’, it would have delivered the same basic information, but the connotative
impact of the writing would have been different (and arguably less engaging). (This uses the
‘QLTCA’ approach)

Analysis in English is about explaining the effects of the writer’s craft: the impact of their
decisions to describe or discuss their topic using the language, sentence structures and
sequence that they have.

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 Exemplar Q4 | The Explorer’s Daughter paper

Remind yourself of the extract The Explorer’s Daughter (Text Two in the Extracts Booklet).

How does the writer use language and structure in Text Two to show her thoughts and feelings
about watching the hunt?

You should support your answer with close reference to the extract, including brief quotations.

Identification of (12 marks)

technique:
language/ imagery

Firstly, Herbert uses an extended metaphor of magic, fairytale and myth in the
Explanation of effect first paragraph to convey her excitement and awe as she glimpses the other-
and significance worldly beauty of the narwhal and their almost mythical qualities. The
‘spectral play of colour’ made by the narwhal’s ‘plumes of spray’ has a
mystical quality, with the adjective ‘spectral’ suggesting the water vapour’s
mysterious, ghostly appearance of the rainbow-like patterns made by the
water. Herbert’s use of a present participle verb when she is ‘scrambling’ to
see the sight of the narwhals and the ‘sharp intake of breath’ that follows,
with the adjective ‘sharp’ conveying the speed and intense sensation of the
breath, make her excitement and anticipation of the hunt vividly clear to the
reader.
Secondly, Herbert’s description of the behaviour of the hunters as they draw
Identification of
technique: sentence nearer to the narwhal uses long, multi-clausal sentences to create tension,
structure reflecting her interest and appreciation of how important the meat of the dead
narwhals is to the hunters. Verbs suggesting the intensity of those watching
(‘binoculars pointing…’, ‘each woman watching…’) reflect the writer’s own
interest in events. The language of her engagement here comes in contrast
to the scientific lexicon of the previous paragraph, where she describes the
narwhal and their ‘mattak or blubber’ in a more neutral, objective voice.
Summing up her account at the end of the paragraph, she uses an analogy to
compare the hunt to a game, which takes on a more sinister aspect with the
simile of the hunters ‘spread like a net’, which vividly depicts the way they
close in on the narwhal.

Identification of Finally, the writer’s feelings are shown most intensely in the penultimate
technique: overall paragraph, where she narrows the focus of her account to a single hunter.
structure The antithetical juxtaposition of ‘heart’ and ‘head’ in her descriptions of her
different sensations as she watches the hunter about to kill the narwhal
encapsulate her ambivalent and conflicted feelings about the hunt.
Furthermore, these feelings are described between a pair of parenthetical
dashes, this part of the sentence occurring almost literally in the ‘split
second’ just after the hunter ‘gently picked up and aimed’, depicting her
thoughts at the climactic and most important moment of action. What is
described here using very emotive diction is then explored more rationally in
the final paragraph, where the writer again adopts a more objective,
authoritative voice in phrases such as ‘one cannot afford to be sentimental
in the Arctic’. The final short sentence creates a blunt end to Herbert’s
dilemma and emphasises her final opinion.

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 Question 5 | Comparing writers’
perspectives
How many marks?
22 marks

How long do I spend answering the question?

40 minutes (including 5 minutes planning)

This is the highest-tariff question – the most like a ‘proper essay’ – and it is the
combines the most skills. It is the only question on the paper which requires you to
discuss both passages, and it combines comparison with close analysis of the
writer’s craft – asking you to compare the perspectives of the writers and discuss how
those perspectives are communicated through the presentation of content, the
language and imagery they use, and how they structure the passages.

All of the texts that you encounter will be non-fiction texts, and that means they are
articulating a point of view; even if they seem more ‘descriptive’ (e.g. Aron Ralston’s
autobiographical description of the moment his arm was pinned) than ‘persuasive’
(e.g. Benjamin Zephaniah’s re-framing of dyslexia in ‘Young and Dyslexic? You got it
going on’), they are still taking a stance in order to influence the way we (readers) think
and feel about their subject-matter, and your job in this question is to do these key
things:

1. Establish why the passages have been put together by the examiners: what
subject matter/ focus do they share?
2. Identify how that subject-matter has been contrastingly presented, using
frequent, precise quotation to support your comparison.
3. Identify and explain how the writers’ perspectives on (i.e. thoughts and feelings
towards) the subject-matter compare.
4. Explain – using frequent quotation, closely analysed – how those perspectives
are communicated.
5. Ensure you have a varied and comprehensive range of comparisons: keep
paragraphs concise to build up a number of comparisons that cover the whole
text; establish a key point in each paragraph but move back and forth between
texts within paragraphs

What am I marked for? (Level 5, 19-22 marks)

✓ The response considers a varied and comprehensive range of comparisons between
the texts.

✓ Analysis of writers’ ideas and perspectives, including how theme, language and/or
structure are used across the texts. References are balanced across both texts; they
are discriminating and fully support the points being made.

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So what do we mean by a Q5 comparison?
The most basic comparisons will be those of content – things like action/events. You do
get credit for these, but cannot really get beyond level 2 (top of band: 8/22) if you only
identify them – this would correspond with the mark scheme saying that “the response
considers obvious comparisons between the texts”. In practice (taking the ’Explorer’s
Daughter’ paper as an example), this would be the following sort of points:
• Both writers describe an animal being tracked down but in Text One the actual
capture is described, whereas Text Two stops before the final confrontation
• In Text One the onlookers get involved in the hunt but in Text Two there is a clear
division between the men who are the hunters and the women who watch and
waiting.
• In Text One the manatee is eventually captured by just one man with a rope but in
Text Two there are many hunters each with a ‘harpoon’.
Moving to a more sophisticated level, you should also be able to compare the genre of
each text, and how they fulfil the criteria of those genres; you should consider what the
purpose of a particular genre is, and what the writers are trying to do by using that/ those
genres.
However, what you’re really looking to do is not just make these ‘content comparisons’ or
genre comparisons, but to compare the attitudes of the writers towards their subject-
matter and how these are conveyed.
Of course, it’s perfectly possible to have very different perspectives or attitudes about
similar subject-matter. A Tottenham Hotspur fan and an Arsenal fan will have very, very
different perspectives on the same person – the Tottenham centre-forward…
(Tottenham and Arsenal are sworn rivals.)
To identify and compare perspectives well, it’s very useful – in fact, critical – to
characterise the writer. This is not the same as considering the characteristics of the
other people they describe (e.g. Narian in the ‘Manatee’ text, or the Inighuit women in
Kari Herbert’s piece); it means thinking about what Kari Herbert is like, and how the
writer in the comparison piece compares in thoughts, feelings, characteristics. Imagine
them standing in the room in front of you.
Think of the writers like these guys…..

The
writers?

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 So is the writer fascinated? Wryly amused? Bombastic? Confrontational?
Warm? How can we tell?
Usually this kind of characterisation comes hand-in-hand with tone of voice, and you
need to discuss this in your comparison. Here are some examples of what we mean by
tone of voice:
• Critical/ cynical: e.g. “Prisons don’t work: they’re just schools for crime.”
• Angry: e.g. “I’m sick and tired of politicians who seems incapable of giving a
straight answer and just repeat the party line like a stuck record!”
• Humorous or playful: e.g. “Until recently I thought Twitter was just a brand of bird
food”
• Friendly: e.g. “We all deserve a break from time to time, so why not….”
• Intimate/ conversational: e.g. “Between you and me, I feel guilt pangs every time
I eat chocolate”
• Ironic: e.g. “Why stop at badger-culling? Let’s just annihilate every non-human
thing that moves, just in case it ever inconveniences us!”

Read these descriptions below, which comment on the Queen. For each of
them, the tone of voice has been identified, and thus the perspective of the
writer towards this person (and the institution they represent):

Description Tone of voice Perspective towards the Queen and the

Royals

“She bestrides the nation like a Serious, respectful; The writer sees the Queen with enormous
colossus: in many ways, she is resonant with admiration - as a stable, reassuring
Britannia herself, an island of calm gravitas – but presence for a society which needs it,
and dependability in the midst of a perhaps rather because it’s impulsive, rash and doesn’t
frantic, chaotic world; a rock in pompous, too; the consider things as carefully and thoughtfully
shifting sands; an unchanging tone towards the as the Queen does.
model of sober good sense and rest of society is
reserve in a century obsessed with condescending,
the next moment of instant even
gratification.” contemptuous.

“Dear old Liz, eh? Wheeled out Light-hearted and The writer sees the Queen with irreverence.
every weekend to offer a creaking wry, almost Though there seems initially to be fondness
wave and then a quick turn around mockingly flippant; (“Dear old…”), this is clearly condescending
the park with the corgis before yet with a resentful mockery: over-familiarity (“Liz”) suggests a
scuttling off home in time for the or critical tone at lack of respect, and she is both belittled as
4:10 from Aintree. Everyone bangs the end. an empty icon past her usefulness, but also
on about her ‘noble sacrifice’, more cruelly as ‘vermin’ (“scuttling”). The
serving the country… well I’d rather writer is deeply sceptical of her worth to the
do that than have to get up for a country but also critical of what they see as
proper job every morning!” her superficial work ethic in comparison with
the country’s citizens with their “proper
job[s]”.

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More than one perspective?
Bear in mind, too, that though a piece will generally have a clear overall tone and perspective,
you may find that there are contrasts or nuances within a passage – e.g. where a writer seems
impressed by something but simultaneously sceptical about something else in the scenario they
are describing. They may seem distressed by one thing, but grateful or comforted by another….
Look out for this, identify it and explain why there might be this nuance in the specific passage
you’re analysing.

How do I structure/ approach my answer?

• Four or five paragraphs with topic sentences
• No intro or conclusion: move straight into analysis of text
• One main point per writer per paragraph – but each point illustrated with more
than one – analysed - quotation. (So Text 1 vs Text 2 in each paragraph).
• Use subject-matter to help you structure
o You should find that there are parallels in subject matter that you can structure
your answer around – e.g. as in the ‘Explorer’s Daughter’ comparison with the
‘Manatee’ piece, where we could compare the writers’ attitudes as evidenced
through their description of setting, (as they were both about events in unusual
or exotic places), hunters (as they both features groups of people hunting
animals) and hunted creatures (as they both featured big marine mammals
being targeted).
• Use connectives to structure discussion – ‘In a similar way...’, ‘In contrast...’
• Focus on similar content, contrasting technique; or contrasting content, similar
technique
• For each point: technique(s); quotations; discussion of individual words
• Aim for variety of points: be selective

REMEMBER:
you need a ‘varied and comprehensive range of comparisons’
for a top mark.
• Draw your examples from across the whole text
• Varied = many different types of comparison
• Aim to use a large number of short quotations
• Don’t spend too long establishing points or analysing
• Even with one main point per writer per paragraph, you can still make other quick
comparisons and reference a comprehensive range of evidence in support

The question will ALWAYS be asked in the same way:

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 Exemplar Q5 | The Explorer’s Daughter paper
Question 5 is based on both Text One and Text Two from the Extracts Booklet.

Compare how the writers present their ideas and perspectives about their experiences.

Support your answer with detailed examples from both texts, including brief quotations.

Shared subject-matter
(22 marks)

Similar perspective
Both writers are engaged by the scenes of hunting they describe but where the writer of
Contrasting
Text Two offers sustained and heart-felt emotive imagery, the writing in Text One is much
perspective more objective and even quite humorous in tone. The writer of Text Two refers repeatedly
to her feelings, culminating in the most explicit description at the moment when a narwhal
Identification of how
is killed, where she employs metaphor to portray how her ‘heart leapt’. Her emotional,
technique/method sincere tone is balanced by paragraphs of more scientific explanations about the narwhal,
(language/imagery) but all the time the extract is serious in its portrayal of hunting. In contrast, the writer of
communicates
perspective Text One does not appear so emotionally engaged by what he sees, seeming to view it
Identification of how instead as an interesting illustration of the rather comic interactions of incompetent
technique/method hunters. This becomes most clear when the tension that has been built up during the
(structure) communicates
perspective
passage dissipates as Narian ‘grumbling loudly’ complains about his broken net. The
writers’ attitudes reflect the objectives of the hunts: where Text One’s hunters are trying to
capture the animal to put it in a zoo, in Text Two the hunt is a battle for survival, with a
Explanation of why the
writers might have the successful outcome an ‘absolute necessity’. Signpost – movement from T1 to T2
contrasting perspectives
they do Indeed, the descriptions of the participants in the hunts are very different and reveal the
writers’ attitudes more or less implicitly. In Text Two the writer seems to share the
Inughuits’ intense interest in the outcome of the hunt. This is shown vividly in her
Change of paragraph: description of the way ‘each wife knew her husband instinctively and watched their
change of focus to new
shared subject-matter
progress intently’, where the repeated adverbs convey the anxiety of the wives.
Furthermore, the hunters are portrayed as skilful and remorseless in their pursuit: the
writer details how they ‘sit so very still in the water’ to evade the narwhals developed
hearing, and the bravery of one of the hunters is described, with the emotive description of
his ‘flimsy kayak’ impressing the reader with the writer’s appreciation of his dangerous
situation. In Text One, however, the hunters are portrayed as disorganised, noisy and
chaotic. Towards the start of the extract, the writer describes how a ‘large shouting crowd’
Note further
comparative contrast follows the hunters. Rather than aiding the hunters, as the wives do in Text Two, the crowd
drawn here is shown to distract them, with the writer using a single-sentence paragraph to highlight the
way they ignore Narian’s pleas to stop pulling the net in. Narian himself is portrayed as
comically inept when he is pulled ‘flat on his face’.
The writers of the texts also display contrasting views about the attractiveness of the
animals being hunted. The writer of Text Two uses alluring imagery to highlight the ‘plumes
Note identification of
writer’s tone of voice of spray’ from the narwhal that ‘catch the light’ The adverb ‘methodically’ is used to convey
the elegance of the narwhals’ coordinated movements. In contrast, the description of the
manatee suggests the writer feels very differently towards this animal in Text One: instead
of ‘plumes of spray’ the writer talks much more bluntly of a plosive, harsh-sounding ‘blast
Not further comparative
of air’ coming from the manatee’s ‘large circular nostrils’. Verbs such as ‘arched’ and
contrasts drawn here ‘thrashed’ are used to convey the manatee’s sudden, uncontrolled movements and instead
of the beautiful descriptions of the narwhals the reader of Text One learns of the ugliness
of the manatee. Its head is compared to a ‘blunt stump’, with assonance enhancing the
monosyllabic brutality of the description, and the writer uses a simile to convey the
unattractive lack of grace of the manatee
22 on land when ‘her great body slumped like a
sack of wet sand’.
 Similar perspective
Finally, both writers offer opinions about the hunts and to an extent both are ambivalent
about the suffering caused to the animals hunted. In Text Two the writer reflects on her
dilemma about the necessity of the hunt in the final paragraph, referring to herself
repeatedly in the first person to make her views clear to the reader – ‘I understand the
harshness of life in the Arctic and the needs of the hunters and their families’. Where her
writing in other parts of the article has been emotive and metaphorical, here her diction
becomes more straightforward (the word ‘kill’ is repeated) and her syntax is simpler, ending
in a simple statement at the end of the final paragraph. The reader is constantly aware of
her deeply conflicted feelings about hunting. However, in Text One the writer rarely refers to
their own viewpoint explicitly, mentioning only in the penultimate paragraph that ‘I became
worried that she had become injured... and asked if she was all right.’ Ironically, given it is
Not further comparative
contrasts drawn here
the writer of Text Two who declares that ‘one cannot afford to be sentimental’, it is the
writer of Text One who betrays the least opinion about what he describes, confirmed by his
bland choice of words when he does express sympathy: ‘I became worried’ and ‘all right’.

23
From The Danger of a Single Story
Revision notes
Background and genre
The text is an extract from a speech that Adichie delivered at a TED conference. While in many
ways a conventional speech, its continual first-person perspective and highly personalised,
reflective and thought-provoking content has a disarming and persuasive informality. Through
anecdotally reflecting on her own authorial and personal position, as well as that of others,
Adichie engages and subtly persuades her audience to move from a limiting and dangerous
perspective of a ‘single story’ to the ‘paradise’ of an awareness, appreciation, and acceptance of
multiplicity.

Writer’s ideas and perspectives

Adichie uses the image of a ‘single story’ to explore the dangers, limitations, prejudices and
simplification of a singular perspective and viewpoint – in particular when this singular
perspective becomes dominant over all others. Adichie explores self-identity; cultural hegemony
and ethnocentrism; unconscious bias; cultural and racial prejudice – in others and recognising
that we often hold these prejudices ourselves; the factors and experiences that shape and
develop our own perspectives and understanding (or lack) of others. The speech has the quality
of bildungsroman – a novel charting the emotional and intellectual development of its
protagonist.

Key features of language, form and structure

• Biographical anecdote: about her own childhood and her experiences of other people. These
contribute to the personal and reflective tone of the speech that adds sincerity and
persuasiveness to Adichie’s argument – the danger of a single story/perspective. Adichie
establishes this anecdotal, personal ‘storytelling’ approach with her pithy opening simple
sentence, thereafter relating four thematically linked stories with informal and humorous self-
deprecating irony. For example, Adichie’s recount of her American university roommate’s
prejudice characterises her patronising ignorance in a humorous yet empathetic way. The
non-judgemental statement highlighted by the single-sentence paragraph stating that the
roommate ‘assumed I did not know how to use a stove’ encapsulates a non-judgemental
attitude that makes her point more persuasive. The position of empathy Adichie adopts (‘I
would see Africans in the same way…’; ‘I began to understand my roommate’s response to
me.’) and often self-deprecating interjections (‘But I must quickly add that I too am just as
guilty) juxtaposed with her own admission of class prejudice in relation to Fide’s family
generates an effect of trustworthy authorial objectivity and self-knowledge.
• Motifs: of perspective, stories and the individual and society – the potential egotism of the
dominant first-person pronoun ‘I’ of Adichie’s own perspective is countered by her
acknowledgement of the plurality of perspectives. Stories are enshrined as repositories of
truth, giving her own stories the quality of confessional morality tales. The final four
paragraphs of the text (the peroration of the speech – its conclusion or climax) move
emotively from first-person to an inclusive, collective viewpoint signalled by a shift to the first-
person plural pronoun (‘we’). This is paralleled by the transition from singular ‘story’ to
‘stories’. The repetition of ‘stories’ in the final paragraphs – through anaphora, structurally
varied sentences of increasing length and contrasted oppositions – makes clear Adichie’s
intended multiple meanings for the word – from anecdote to repository of identity to literary
artefact.
• Persuasive devices: (see points about use of anecdote and personal pronouns above)
tricolon highlights the limitations of the single story and the impact on others (‘My roommate

24
 had a single story of Africa: a single story of catastrophe. In this single story, there was no
possibility of Africans being similar to her in any way, no possibility of feelings more complex
than pity, no possibility of a connection as human equals...’). Adichie also uses a range of
examples as evidence to her point: her own misunderstanding of a working-class Nigerian
family; American attitudes represented synecdochally through her roommate; Mexico through
her own experiences contrasting with the dominant media representation.
• Imagery: as well as the titular image of the ‘story’ to symbolise the created, bias, limited,
singular perspective of a person, a culture, or a place, Adichie ends the text with a direct
quotation from the African-American female writer Alice Walker (Adichie also references both
African and African-American authors in the text to highlight the point that the single story is
also created by the limited, singular-author perspective – for her, it was through being able to
read stories written by and about people that she could personally and directly relate to that,
in many ways, allowed her own existence and identity to be affirmed and realised (‘So what
the discovery of African writers did for me was this: it saved me from having a single story of
what books are’). Through this she concludes with the idyllic metaphor of ‘paradise’ - a notion
that the rejection of the limitation of a single perspective will lead the collective ‘we’ to a
utopian ‘kind of paradise’. The verb ‘regain’ implies that this was a state that we once had or
are able to find our way back to – Adichie empowers the reader/listener to take heed of the
emotive ‘danger’ of the title and reject the ‘single story’ for a paradise of understanding – of
both ourselves and others.

Key concepts and potential comparisons

• The genre of a speech; persuasive devices; personal reflection leading to greater empathy;
use of anecdotes; cultural references and comparisons
• Invites comparison with other texts from speeches or texts attempting to persuade their
reader to consider a different perspective – how do they compare with Adichie’s subtle,
reflective, self-aware approach in establishing her point? Are they as effective on the reader?
Thematic comparisons or contrasts might include texts that consider cultural and racial
prejudice or limited perspectives; challenges to established or dominant ‘norms’; how writers
cope with their own self-reflection; identity and the experiences and factors that shape this eg
the dangers of the media shaping representation.

25
From A Passage To Africa
Revision notes
Background and genre
George Alagiah, born in Ghana but educated in the UK, was a foreign correspondent for the BBC
for many years before becoming a household name whilst anchoring the main news at 10
o’clock. His account is part of a memoir of his experiences in Africa, and this passage recounts
his time in Somalia, a country that had been riven by a brutal civil war in 1991, leading to
widespread famine. Alagiah’s autobiography is thus part recollection, part reflection as the rueful
acceptance of a reporter’s role begins to merge with the more mature meditations of a man
whose life has been forever changed by his encounter with unimaginable human suffering.

Writer’s ideas and perspectives

Looking back, Alagiah is critical of his own profession, comparing journalists to junkies searching
for their next ‘hit’ of shocking footage. The mood is then then serious and saddened, as he
documents the state of the people he encounters with a complex mixture of pity and disgust.
Distanced from his younger self, he is now grateful that he was forced to question his supposedly
‘objective’, dispassionate viewpoint, and even the whole morality of reporting on human
calamities such as war and famine. This questioning culminates in an epiphany as he vows to
become a better, more human, journalist.

Key features of language, form and structure

• Structure: The piece is broadly structured into three parts: the journey to Gufgaduud
(pronounced ‘Guar-da-FUI’), and the rather unsavoury hunt to sniff out a story; this is followed
by three vignettes of actual, shocking encounters with human suffering and death, depicted
with a horrible mixture of honesty, pity but also disgust and revulsion. Structurally, the
phrases, ‘There was… there was…. And then there was…’ that begin paragraphs 4-6 help
build sense of the story unfolding and coming to a climax. Then, finally, the motif of the
enigmatic smile of one particular, but nameless man, foreshadowed in the first sentence,
becomes the focus of the final paragraphs, forcing Alagiah to re-evaluate his profession, and
even his status in the world.
• Descriptive immediacy: The presentation of Gufgaduud initially as a village in the colloquially
dismissive ‘the back of beyond’, and then in the resonant simile of it being described to him
as ‘like a ghost village’, unwittingly foreshadows the dominant imagery of death, disease and
decay in the passage.
• Allusion: Alagiah’s title alludes to EM Forster’s novel A Passage to India in which young
English men also experience the mysterious ‘reality’ of non-Western countries. The link
generates a subtext to Alagiah’s decision to ‘write the story of Gufgaduud’ and therefore
Africa, placing him in the position of colonial interpreter, imposing meaning and significance
on the experiences of another nation, its suffering subordinated to Alagiah’s discovery of his
own sense of self. Alagiah’s frank description of his profession as ‘ghoulish’, ie morbidly
interested in decay and death, and himself as a kind of a junky, using the simile of ‘like the
craving for a drug’ to describe his rather naïve thirst for a story (and therefore, we infer, fame)
is prevocational and recalls Carol Anne Duffy’s poem ‘War Photographer’. Like Duffy, Alagiah,
it also implicates us, the readers, ‘in the comfort’ of our ‘sitting rooms’. This third paragraph
positions the writer’s perspective as a former journalist trying to be as honest and objective
about his own role as possible – even if that means facing up to some unpalatable truths.
• Pathos: evoked through different language devices in paragraphs four and five, first with the
descriptions of the primitive conditions, the ‘search for wild, edible roots’, the ‘dirt floor of
their hut’, and the simple sentence ‘Habiba had died’, followed by the subtle use of tricolon in

26
 the observation that there was ‘no rage, no whimpering, just a passing away’ followed by the
use of negative adjectives in the image of a ‘simple, frictionless, motionless’ deliverance from
a state of ‘half-life’ (a compound adjective) to death. This also intensifies our creeping sense
of the inferred images of silence throughout these descriptions, further deepening our
understanding of what it might be like to be in a ‘ghost village’ of unimaginable human
suffering. These human beings are passing from life into death, and thus are in a state of
strange, silent liminality.
• Powerful images of disgust: sibilance combined with powerful sensory adjectives dominate
paragraph five, with the words ‘the smell’, and again ‘the smell of decaying flesh’, ‘festering
wound’ the ‘size of my hand’, then the related sub-clause ‘it was rotting; she was rotting’,
reaching a kind of intensity as he recalls her ‘sick, yellow eyes’, and smells ‘the putrid air’ she
‘struggles’ to breathe. The comparison of her twisted, rotten leg with the ‘gentle V-shape of a
boomerang’ only serves to underline the horror of her injury through understatement in that
word, ‘gentle’.
• In paragraph seven, he admits that it created a sense of ‘revulsion’ in him, a ‘taboo’ not yet
breached by television news reports. The inference here is that we are meant to feel pity, but
these more direct, hard-wired reactions are possibly more real, again complicating his and
our perspective. The final story, of the dying man who keeps his hoe next to him, as if he
‘means to go out and till this soil once this is all over’ only serves to underline the pathos and
disquietude of this virtual ghost in this ghost village.
• The motif of the nameless man’s smile, the point of the article, becomes a refrain in
paragraph six, but also as a simple sentence, thus announcing its importance structurally.
• From paragraph nine onwards, repetition is used subtly, as throughout the passage, as are
an increasing number of rhetorical questions, to intensify the feelings of being ‘unsettled’ as
Alagiah interrogates the meaning of that smile that went ‘beyond pity or revulsion, ie any of
the previous examples, even allowing for their powerful sensory effects on him and us.
• When Alagiah realises, in the final paragraphs, the smile is the ‘feeble smile that goes with an
apology’ it creates a disorientating sense of role reversal for him – if the man is apologising
to him for his own agony and death, where does that leave Alagiah, the one who is not
supposed to be involved? He then evokes a series of antithetical opposites that have been
overturned in his mind. He uses the colloquial metaphor that the smile had turned the tables
on the relative status of the two men, one the supposedly ‘objective’ Western journalist and
his ‘passive’ subject, making him realise the fatuity of that stance. Finally, the colloquial, ‘I
owe you one’ creates the sense that Alagiah is now a much more chastened and honest man
when it comes to being a reporter.

Key concepts and potential comparisons

• Reflective memoir vs journalism; ‘Objective’ reporting vs real experience; pathos evoked
through a series of vignettes, creating human interest; admission of revulsion when
confronting human misery leading to conflicting emotions; questioning of morality of
reporting on human disasters or tragedy; retrospective viewpoint leading to re-evaluation of
the role and function of reporting itself.
• As Alagiah’s experiences were in 1992, now a relatively long time ago, it could invite
comparison with a drier, contemporary factual report of that famine or a more modern report
on a similar human disaster in the developing world to prompt the reader to consider whether
much has changed.
• In a different way, it might compare to more angry, rhetorical or hyperbolic reports on war or
famine or other situations of suffering such as extreme poverty that have a more directly
political agenda. Here, Alagiah’s quiet authority and honesty about his own role in the
reporting on human tragedy obviates the need for such hyperbole.

27
From The Explorer’s Daughter
Revision notes
Background and genre
Kari Herbert is a travel writer and a TV presenter. The daughter of polar explorer Sir Wally
Herbert, she spent her early childhood in the remote Northwest Greenland, living with the
Inughuit (the focus of this passage). The genre of the passage is primarily travel writing, using
dramatic narrative and lyrical description to paint a vivid picture of the scene – an exciting
narwhal hunt. However, there is also a significant element of explanation, opinion and
discussion interspersed, which uses a plainer, more factual style to contextualise the narwhal
hunt for the reader, establish the writer as a knowledgeable source, and to explain more clearly
the writer’s personal stance on the ethics of the hunt.

Writer’s ideas and perspectives

Herbert paints the landscape and the Inughuit people in a positive light. While careful to
acknowledge the ethical misgivings that some of her Western, modern readership might have
about killing such beautiful and complex animals, the writer makes it clear (increasingly directly
as the piece progresses) that she believes hunting narwhal is justified for the Inughuit – ‘hunting
is still an absolute necessity in Thule’. The Romantic descriptions show Herbert’s affection and
wonder for the place, the people and the narwhal themselves, which she is keen to portray in an
almost humanised way. The ‘dilemma’ that Herbert discusses in the final paragraph is the conflict
between her compassion and affection for the hunted and her respect and affection for the hunters,
forced by harsh reality to kill animals she makes clear they respect – ‘they [do not] kill for sport.’

Key features of language, form and structure

• Structurally, the writer layers paragraphs alternating between a lyrical third-person
narrative/descriptive style and a more factual first-person discursive style. The writer
switches back and forth between these two main modes of writing: the narrative/descriptive
paragraphs add drama and give an imaginable, emotive example of lived experience, and
these in turn implicitly inform the opinions given more directly in the factual/discursive
sections. The drier factual paragraphs layered between the narrative/descriptive paragraphs
also serve to delay the reader’s understanding of how the dangerous hunt ends, adding
tension. The opening narrative paragraph acts as an exciting hook, and narration/description
is more prominent in the first half of the passage, but the second half and the ending
paragraph focus on the opinions of the writer.

• The factual/discursive sections use jargon and an Inughuit lexicon (‘mattak’; ‘tupilaks’), a
more distant, third-person technical and informative register (‘essential contributor’; ‘climate
prohibits’) and factual details (‘six feet in length’; ‘source of vitamin C’) to establish an
authoritative and knowledgeable authorial voice, which makes the reader more likely to be
persuaded by the opinions argued in the later parts of the passage. Where argument is
conveyed, simpler syntax using more statements is prominent (‘hunting is still an absolute
necessity in Thule’).

• The narrative/descriptive sections use a variety of techniques to add drama and create a
vivid image of the scene, particularly emphasising beauty, exoticism and danger.
▪ The theme of adventure, naval conflict and the power of the natural world is highlighted in
the phrase ‘plumes of spray’. Sequences of present participle verbs are used for tension
and immediacy – ‘pointing […] focusing […] spinning round’, and lexis suggesting thrill and
danger is commonplace – ‘sharp intake of breath’; ‘gasp’; ‘jump’; ‘almost on top of’; ‘split
second’; ‘my heart leapt’.

28
 ▪ The exotic nature of the scene described is evoked through an extended metaphor of
magic, fairytale and myth. ‘A spectral play of colour’ both highlights the other-worldly nature
of the scene and through ‘spectral’ reminds us of the danger of death; ‘glittering kingdom’
and ‘a lone hunter’s pipe’ are warm, fairytale, almost pastoral images, but darker
magical/mythological imagery is also used to highlight the danger of the hunt –
‘mischievous tricks of the shifting light’; ‘dead of winter’. The sense of ‘unrealness’ is
repeatedly emphasised: ‘looked as though […] yet they never moved’; ‘I fell to wondering
whether the narwhal existed at all.’
▪ Beauty is heavily stressed, using phonetic intensives with warm, pleasant effects – ‘soft
billows of smoke’. Light is prominently mentioned and Romantic descriptions such as ‘the
evening light was turning butter-gold’ create an idealised and overwhelmingly positive
effect, with the compound adjective ‘butter-gold’ connoting richness, warmth and beauty.

Key concepts and potential comparisons

• The relationship between humankind, other animals and the physical landscape; ethical
uncertainty and moral relativism; ‘Western’ perspectives on unfamiliar ways of life; bias; tone;
opinion vs description.
• Invites comparison to other travel writing (focusing on techniques used to convey an
interesting and vivid scene) and to other opinion writing (focusing on how the writer
manipulates the reader to agree with their position). The theme of the exotic, adventure and
perhaps other texts that implicitly question the right for modern Western readers to apply
their own societal and ethical standards to other cultures could also be interesting to explore.

29
Explorers or boys messing about?
Either way, taxpayer gets rescue bill
Revision notes
Background and genre
Steven Morris is a reporter for The Guardian newspaper. This story, about the failed attempt by
two British explorers to fly by helicopter to Antarctica, was widely reported when the incident
happened in 2003. This is an extract from a newspaper report that appears to follow many
conventions of the genre: a headline and subhead (‘Helicopter duo plucked from liferaft after
Antarctic crash’); short, factual paragraphs, often of one sentence; a (mostly) inverted
chronological structure, moving from most recent to wider background; a seemingly neutral,
dispassionate account informed by opinion contained in eye-witness accounts and expert
testimony.

Writer’s ideas and perspectives

In fact, the article is highly biased: the conventions of news reporting are exploited to create a
prejudiced account of events and the language throughout is coloured by antipathy towards the
explorers. Bias is signalled right from the second sentence of the headline. Morris’s view of the
incident – or at least that which he adopts to entertain as well as inform his readers – is implicit
but can be inferred by the reader through his language and his selection and ordering of
information.

Key features of language, form and structure

• Loaded and emotive language and descriptions: Biased, hyperbolic nouns – the expedition
ended in ‘farce’; the adventure almost led to ‘tragedy’; the events were a ‘drama’ (these
three draw on theatrical metaphor) – are used along with emotive dynamic verbs – the
helicopter ‘plunged’ into the sea; the men ‘scrambled’ into their liferaft and were ‘plucked’
from the ‘icy waters’. Such language generates a tone of subtly humorous irony that invites
inference.
• Structural bias. The inverted chronology of the news report here foregrounds the ignominious
end of the expedition. Contextual detail that provides evidence of the explorers’ experience is
delayed to paragraphs 15-17 and is listed in understated language in repetitive sentences, in
contrast to the dynamic imagery of the rescue descriptions. However, even here there is
potentially ironised judgement: the mundanity of Brooks being a ‘property developer from
London’ is comically at odds with his adventures; ‘walking barefoot for three days in the
Himalayas’ and ‘surviving a charge by a silver back gorilla’ presents a somewhat absurd
image of his exploits. Mr Smith ‘claims’ to have been flying from the age of five, the choice of
verb encouraging doubt.
• Gender stereotyping and infantilisation. The explorers are described with vocabulary that is
pejorative and infantilising: the headline casts them as ‘boys messing about’ and at the end
of the article Brooks’ wife suggests they will have their ‘bottoms kicked’; Smith is observed to
have the nickname ‘Q’, as if he possesses the technical genius of the James Bond character,
and Brooks’ ‘Breitling emergency watch’ turns out to have been a wedding present from his
wife – the image of, again, a Bond-style agent is reduced through emasculation, with the
crucial detail placed bathetically at the end of the sentence. Brooks is effectively rescued by
his wife, whose report of her husband’s naively vague, colloquial phrase ‘call the emergency
people’ reinforces the stereotype of the inept husband and competent but long-suffering wife
at home. The explorers’ incompetence in contrast to the Chilean naval ship, Royal Navy and
Russian military, all of which are characterised through competent and decisive verbs: the
Royal Navy’s ice patrol ship purposefully ‘steams’ towards the scene and ‘dispatches’ its

30
 helicopters; the Russians ‘threaten’ to send planes and ‘scramble’ helicopters. The strength
of these forces is conveyed through a lexicon of military hardware (‘Lynx helicopters’, ‘rescue
coordination centre’).
• Conflation of fact and opinion. The aim of the earlier failed expedition to Russia is said to
‘ironically’ have been to ‘demonstrate... good relations’. The adverb at the start of the
sentence is the writer’s opinion, the rest objectively true. The spokesperson from the Ministry
of Defence is quoted as stating the money spent on the rescue was unlikely to be repaid; the
highly emotive phrase claiming that ‘the taxpayer would pick up the bill’ is the writer’s own.

Key concepts and potential comparisons

• Objectivity v subjectivity; fact v opinion; inference; irony; tone
• Invites comparison with either more conventionally neutral report or with more explicitly
opinionated first-person article; alternatively a similarly hazardous event treated seriously –
contrasting tone and/or content. Thematic comparisons or contrasts might include
exploration as noble or essential to progress; masculine identity; accidents or disasters and
how participants cope with them.

31
From 127 Hours: Between a Rock and
a Hard Place
Revision notes
Background and genre
Aron Ralston is an American outdoorsman, mechanical engineer and motivational speaker
known for surviving a canyoneering accident by cutting off his own arm. In April 2003, during a
solo descent of Bluejohn Canyon in southeastern Utah, he dislodged a boulder which pinned his
right wrist to the side of the canyon wall. The extract comes from his autobiography published in
2004, a book which alternates between his past experiences and the period of grim entrapment
in the slot canyon. This self-contained, chronological episode moves from an initial tone of
dispassionate circumspection (as the experienced climber surveys his progressive descent) to
one of heightened emotional intensity (as the shocking corporal trauma of the accident erodes
his habitual composure). Ralston’s voice is consistently that of the mountaineering raconteur: a
compelling, first-person narrative in the present tense full of the tangible physicality of the
topography and dense with specific climbing terminology.

Writer’s ideas and perspectives

From the percussive use of the first-person pronoun, ‘I’, it is fair to judge that Ralston himself is
his own main focus – not themes of fate, or the power of prayer, or even the great American spirit
of adventure – which leads to a key idea: given a set of circumstances, how does a man react?
And, for much of the extract, there is a noticeable system of automatic, unreflective activity
which seems totemically male: the nature of masculinity, then, is also important. However, the
self-portrait which emerges is complex and ambiguous: on the surface, he is a modern
Prometheus (the Titan chained to a rock by Zeus) who defines the heroic paradigm in this fable
of survival psychology (didactic reading); but the tragic subtext reveals him to be an Icarian anti-
hero, undone by hubristic complacency (mythic reading). Finally, the notion of (sexual) conquest
is also here in a familiar trope: the rape of the land, the taming of the symbolically female
wilderness (all canyons and crevices) by the westering pioneer-conquistador who ‘slides his belly’
over ledges and is seen, ultimately, with ‘braced thighs thrusting upward’ impotently.

Key features of language, form and structure

• Scylla (a multi-headed monster) and Charybdis (a whirlpool) were a pair of Homeric sea perils
in close proximity: in avoiding one, ships often fell prey to the other. The modern idiom, ‘...
caught between a rock and a hard place’, harks back to ancient Greece – though Ralston is
not Odysseus, who survived unscathed. The title, aside from its mythic allusion, is clearly also
ironic: the adage of having to choose between two evils is normally understood
metaphorically, but here it is also a literal description of Ralston’s dilemma. Irony is used
selectively elsewhere to create a tone of uneasy humour which distracts us from the
unfolding tragedy: the ‘chockstone’ is a metaphorical ‘refrigerator’ (the domestic cooling
appliance is ironically absurdist in the hot, wilderness context); Ralston yanks his arm three
times ‘in a naive attempt to pull it out’ (but it is ironic that his more fundamental naivety is
not identified: the foolishness in not informing anyone of his plans).
• Though the genre is travel memoir, the opening (‘I come to another drop-off’) has the flavour
of a picaresque adventure novel. The opening paragraph, by asserting the ‘different
geometry’ and ‘claustrophobic’ narrowness of the slot, acts as a subtle prolepsis of the
tragedy for the alert reader. The structure of what follows is a chronological, linear description
deriving momentum from time phrases (‘ten minutes ago’, ‘the next three seconds’, ‘in slow
motion’, ‘within moments’) and a relentless series of present tense actions (‘I traverse’, ‘I
press’, ‘I squat’, ‘I dangle’, ‘I yank’). The exception is the second paragraph: a digressive

32
 anecdote which does not contribute to the forward trajectory but reinforces a sense of
Ralston’s expert testimony. The extract builds tensely and incrementally via dynamic short
sentences (‘Then silence’, ‘Good God, my hand’, ‘But I’m stuck’) to a bathetic, hanging ending
and a sentence fragment (‘Nothing’) shrouded in dramatic suspense.
• Raconteur Ralston comes across as a stereotype of the seasoned outdoorsman: convivial but
a little dull in his rapt attention to climbing minutiae. His regular use of pronoun contractions
(‘I’m’, ‘I’ll’, ‘I’d’), direct reader address (‘you can imagine using it’) and understatement (‘I’ll
dangle off the chockstone, then take a short fall’) helps to break down barriers and make him
seem less ‘mythic’; but the hyperbolical hypermasculine swagger of his animalistic lexicon
(towards the end) is less appealing: ‘I grimace and growl’, ‘My mind commands my body’, ‘my
body’s chemicals are raging at full flood’, ‘brute force’, ‘thrust upward repeatedly, grunting’.
There is something comically (though unintentionally) atavistic in the high specific density of
these phrases.
• Linguistically, though there are effective instances of figurative language (‘the backlit
chockstone falling toward my head consumes the sky’, ‘my desperate brain conjures up’),
imagery is not Ralston’s modus operandi. Instead, the language forms which dominate are
technical jargon (‘drop off’, ‘overhang’, ‘counterpressure’, ‘crevice’, ‘friction’, ‘chimneying’,
‘torque’, ‘leverage’, ‘brace’) and active, emotive verbs which are sometimes onomatopoeic or
possess the immediacy of the present participle (‘stemming’, ‘teeters’, ‘scraping’, ‘ricochets’,
‘tearing’). Both features define the fact-centric narrative voice (nowhere more visible than in
the title, ‘127 Hours...’); both also clothe the account in verisimilitude typical of travel writing.

Key concepts and potential comparisons

• Interpretative ambiguity; irony; tonal shift; suspense; symbolism; stereotyping; the myth kitty.
• Invites comparison with a more explicitly opinionated or self-aware first-person account, or
with a similarly tragic event underpinned by irony. Thematic contrast: exploration, masculine
identity, fate, human fallibility, accidents or disasters and how participants cope with them.

33
Young and dyslexic? You’ve got it going on
Revision notes
Background and genre
Benjamin Zephaniah is a poet and novelist whose challenging early life included difficulties at
school, (partly as a result of teachers’ response to his dyslexia) and a time in borstal (an
institution for young offenders), before he discovered his talents as a writer. In this piece of
autobiographical polemic, published in a book about high-achieving dyslexics, and then in The
Guardian online, Zephaniah looks back at his early life, recalling the prejudice he faced in
response both to his dyslexia, and to his race. Written in the first person, the article directly
addresses the reader several times. Zephaniah recalls a number of specific memories, often
using direct and reported speech to give the reader a clear idea of the challenges he faced.
Triumph over adversity is often a central theme of autobiographical writing; here Zephaniah
demonstrates how he defied the naysayers and became a successful writer in spite of his
dyslexia which was, at the time of his upbringing, widely seen as an insurmountable barrier
facing someone who wanted to work in that field.

Writer’s ideas and perspectives

Zephaniah’s purpose in the article is to challenge negative and patronising attitudes towards
people with dyslexia, as well as encouraging dyslexic people to have confidence in themselves
and their capabilities. Challenging prevailing attitudes, he argues that people with dyslexia do
not have an abnormal condition of which they need to be ashamed; on the contrary, he argues,
the way in which dyslexic people’s brains function is quite normal, in addition to which, dyslexics
are often particularly creative thinkers. He concludes that dyslexia need not prevent people from
leading happy, successful and fulfilled lives. Subjectivity becomes a strength: that Zephaniah is
himself dyslexic means the article is informed by personal experience, and this makes the
writing highly persuasive, particularly as the examples he selects from his own life are striking
and recounted with dry humour.

Key features of language, form and structure

• Frequent use of the first-person singular pronouns ‘I’ and ‘me’, as is common when writing in
autobiographical mode, of the first person plural pronouns ‘we’ and ‘us’ when writing about
people with dyslexia including himself, and of the second person pronoun ‘you’, when
addressing those with dyslexia, or their parents, and encouraging them not to see it as a
hindrance. This direct address of the reader creates the sense that Zephaniah does not see
himself as different from any other dyslexic. He does not idealise himself, instead presenting
his own experiences as evidence that anyone with dyslexia can be successful.
• Predominantly simple and compound sentences, used to build up a clear, uncomplicated
impactful personal narrative point by point, eschewing linguistic extravagance. The
implication of this stylistic choice might be: ‘I am a successful writer, but I have no need to
prove myself through the use of highly sophisticated vocabulary or complex sentence-
structures; I can make my points through language we all use and understand.’ Given the
word ‘young’ in the title, Zephaniah aims to communicate directly with a youthful readership,
with style of writing is accessible and attractive to this demographic and disrupting
conventional hierarchies that privilege formality and traditional views of writing and writers.
• A quietly humane, empathic register, achieved through the avoidance of hyperbolic or over-
emotive language. There are references to the emotional pain felt by Zephaniah as a child,
but these are framed in a positive way, and with a sense of having moved on: ‘as a child I
suffered, but learned to turn dyslexia to my advantage’. ‘I don’t look back and feel angry with

34
 the teachers’. This sense of emotional detachment from the bruising experiences of the past
is achieved in part through a focus on systemic shortcomings.
• The use of abstract nouns to convey the writer’s belief that the philosophy underpinning the
educational institutions of his childhood was deeply flawed: ‘the big problem with the
education system then was that there was no compassion, no understanding and no
humanity’. The tricolon and repetition of the word ‘no’ emphasises Zephaniah’s sense of the
shocking lack of humane values in educational practice at that time.
• Frequent use of language related to morals and religion: ‘If I was God I would have designed
sleep so we could stay awake. Then good people could do one-third more good in the world’.
The noun phrases ‘right choices’, ‘bad boy’ and ‘good idea’ create a semantic field of moral
judgement, reflecting Zephania’s insistence on the vital importance of refusing to accept the
moral precepts of those in positions of power, of listening to one’s own conscience, and of
maintaining faith in one’s own creative and moral intelligence.
• Quotations selected to exemplify the bigoted and peremptory nature of the language
Zephania experienced from some of his teachers: ‘Shut up, stupid boy; ‘How dare you
challenge me?’ ‘we can’t all be intelligent’.
• Use of informal and non-standard English eg ‘a mate’ and ‘a rude boy’. These phrases are
used alongside standard English to reflect elements of the spoken register Zephaniah was
familiar with as he grew up. The title, ‘‘Young and dyslexic: You’ve got it going on’ is revisited
in slightly different form at the end – ‘us dyslexic people, we’ve got it going on’. The verb
phrase ‘we’ve got it going on’, means ‘we are successful, impressive, exceptional’; the choice
of the non-standard register is deliberate, showing Zephaniah’s belief that no form of
authority, even the linguistic, should go unchallenged.
• Structurally, the piece moves from the author’s experience of prejudiced and negative
attitudes from teachers at school, and his questioning of these attitudes, to his early
attempts at composing poetry, his experiences in borstal, his acquisition of literacy as an
adult, and his experiences as a professor of poetry and creative writing. The final part of the
article focuses on his opinions about dyslexia, and the advice he offers to dyslexics.

Key concepts and potential comparisons

• Autobiographical writing from personal experience; writing to persuade and influence;
blending of standard and non-standard registers.
• Invites comparison with another autobiographical first-person article or a more journalistic
treatment of one of the issues, including identity, life’s challenges, education and upbringing,
self-belief and doubt.

35
From A Game of Polo with a Headless Goat
Revision notes
Background and genre
Emma Levine is a British writer, documentary maker and presenter and photographer. She spent
13 months travelling through Asia, observing such strange and unusual sports as oil wrestling
and horseback javelin. As a follow-on from her television series about these sports, Levine wrote
a travelogue – from which this extract is taken – that recounts these sports, the people involved
in them and her experiences of filming them. This extract follows many conventions of travel
writing and reportage: a first-person account that uses a conversational tone and incorporates
dialogue to make the reader feel more involved; a series of short, linked paragraphs that enable
Levine to inform the reader about different aspects of the race; an essentially chronological
account of before, during and after the race; careful observation presented through detailed and
mostly visual description.

Writer’s ideas and perspectives

Levine describes herself as ‘an adventurer specialising in sporting culture, from South Asian
cricket to an obsession with traditional Asian sports’ and it is her aim in this book is to inform
and entertain the readers through her descriptions of these unusual sports. This aim is readily
seen in the passage through its mixture of comic writing and serious reportage, with a lot of
information given as well. It is in the comic elements of the passage that we see Levine’s aim to
entertain her readers, from the absurdity of the title as well as through Levine’s humorous
imagery and use of hyperbole.

Key features of language, form and structure

• Multi-stranded structure: Beneath the apparent simplicity of the chronological account of this
donkey race lies a more complex structure; namely, the intertwining of three separate yet
related races – the donkey race itself, the spectators’ race (note the fifty or so vehicles
following the donkeys) and the writer’s race to get the best photographs of this sport (from
with the boot of the car that she hopes will edge out just in front of the other spectators).
Levine skilfully highlights and unites these three narrative threads towards the end of the
passage when she states: ‘The road straightened and levelled, and everyone picked up
speed as we neared the end of the race.’ The author’s use of the adverb ‘everyone’ and the
inclusive pronoun ‘we’ shows how immersive and exciting this event was for participants and
spectators (local and foreign) alike.
• Sport and gender stereotyping: The diction Levine uses to describe all those who are there to
watch this event, shows how significant this event is for the male, sport-loving citizens of
Karachi. The use of the hyperbolic noun ‘entourage’ to describe those who follow the two
racing donkeys comically points to the perceived cultural importance of this event. Similarly,
the many dynamic verbs used to depict the behaviour of the male onlookers make it clear to
the readers that this event does not only draw considerable attendance, it is also is
tremendously exciting. Note the descriptive clauses in this triple: ‘Men standing on top of
their cars and vans, hanging out of taxis and perched on lorries. There is an animalistic
energy conveyed by these clauses, that is amplified in the dramatic clauses that follow, such
as: ‘all cheered and shouted’. The language makes it more than clear: the oddity of this
spectacle and its frenetic pace calls forth a rather primal, testosterone-ridden response from
the almost-exclusively male onlookers.
• The contrast between East and West is very evident in Levine’s written account of these
sporting traditions for her Western readers. For instance, the title of her book - A Game of
Polo with a Headless Goat – juxtaposes two images and ideas. Polo, symbolic of the West,

36
 carries a sense of upper-class sophistication and wealth whereas the headless goat is
symbolic of lower-class poverty and amusing – if rather perverse – adaptability.
• Cultural stereotyping of the kind indicated by the title is further indicated by Levine’s imagery
and the conflation of fact and opinion. Trying to get the best view of the race is described as
‘Formula One without rules, or a city-centre rush hour gone anarchic; a complete flouting of
every type of traffic rule and common sense.’ The assumption here is clear: the West is
associated with civilised order and sound judgement (‘rule and common sense’) while the
East is ‘anarchic’.
• Levine chooses to construct this passage using various types of writing, including descriptive
prose, informational writing, dialogue and commentary and, by doing so, she makes the
passage far more interesting. For example, the dialogue is lively and humorous, and it gives
an immediacy to these unusual – and almost unbelievably exciting – events. Moments of
commentary are equally impactful. This can be seen in the way that the immediate aftermath
of the race is conveyed to the reader: ‘The race was over. And then the trouble began. I
assumed the winner was the one who completed the race but it was not seen that way by
everyone.’ Two of the sentences are simple whilst the third use a parallel structure: all are
direct, clear and thought-provoking, demanding emotional engagement from the reader.
Detailed information, such as ‘the Kibla donkey is said to achieve speeds of up to 40kph’
convinces the readers that Levine has a secure understanding of the subject matter and this
makes her account more credible.
• Overall, Levine’s decision to refer metaphorically to this sporting event as the ‘Wacky Races’
communicates a child-like delight at the sense of excitement this spectacle promised and
perhaps, also, something of the chaos suggested by this strange and unusual sport.

Key concepts and potential comparisons

• Objectivity v subjectivity; fact v opinion; (inherently) adulthood v childhood and masculine v
feminine
• Highlights the exotic and unusual nature of Asian sporting traditions
• Asks us to consider the way different cultures participate in and experience sporting events
• Invites consideration of the place sport and sporting traditions occupy in different cultures
• Contrasts East and West

37
From Chinese Cinderella
Revision notes
Background and genre
Adeline Yen Mah is a Chinese-American author and physician. She grew up in Tianjin, Shanghai
and Hong Kong. In 1999 Chinese Cinderella: The Secret Story of an Unwanted Daughter, a
revised edition of parts of her 1997 autobiography Falling Leaves, was published and became a
world-wide bestseller. The excerpt considered here focuses on a key moment between Yen Mah
and her father, one in which their different visions for her future become clear. The passage is
characteristic of the autobiography genre in that it offers a depiction of the author’s different
childhood environments (school and home) as well as a portrayal of a seminal moment during
her formative years. It is also conventional in its use of first-person narration, the past tense, and
direct speech. Conversely, it is different in that Yen Mah omits any explicit reflections on the
events being recalled. Where autobiographies and memoirs are often used by writers to offer
their current thoughts on the past in a detailed and overt fashion – to reflect on what they now
think of bygone events, here the writer concentrates on relaying what it felt like to be her during
this precise moment of her adolescence.

Writer’s ideas and perspectives

As mentioned above, the writer refrains from offering any explicit opinions from their perspective
as an adult retrospectively narrating with the benefit of hindsight. Instead they concentrate on
conveying the thoughts and feelings of their younger self through more implicit means and – as
a result – give the events a real sense of immediacy. In addition, whilst the reader is likely to
sense how intimidating and domineering her father is, Yen Mah doesn’t ever resort to
demonising him emotively via the provision of outright criticism.

Key features of language, form and structure

• Use of conventions of narrative fiction: although non-fiction, Yen Mah adopts techniques
befitting of a fictional narrative, ie storytelling, rather than non-fiction; these serve to offer a
structure that appears deliberately crafted for effect. The early stages of the text do much to
foreshadow the tension and conflict depicted at its end, with the very first paragraph offering
a number of temporal references to suggest an era is ending and that some kind of escape
may well be possible for the narrator. In paragraph two, Yen Mah’s reluctant involvement in a
game of Monopoly can be interpreted as symbolic prolepsis for how she is different to her
father, a proud businessman, and does not share his priorities –which becomes abundantly
clear later on. Furthermore, pathetic fallacy is repeatedly used, with the heat outside
indicative of oppressive tension and the ‘warm wind blowing’ and radio warning of ‘a possible
typhoon the next day’ representative of imminent conflict.
• Strategies to elicit sympathy: even before the teenage Yen Mah meets with her father, a
number of clues imply we should feel sympathy for her. In line 14 she speculates that
someone must have died for her to be needed at home and it is therefore implied that she
seldom goes there and is only called for when wanted for the most important and formal
occasions. Then, on line 18, the chauffeur states that ‘They [her parents] give the orders and
I carry them out’ and we are encouraged to deduce that an authoritative hierarchy is in place
in the Yen Mah household. Some readers may feel a sense of pathos when, on line 19, it is
revealed that it’s a ‘short drive home’ from boarding school because Adeline’s family choose
to send her away even when they live close to the campus. Furthermore, the reader is likely
to infer that the narrator is of little importance at home because her parents have moved
without telling her (lines 23 and 24) and even the driver feels comfortable replying to her
‘rudely’. The lack of narrative comment or exploitation of the emotive potential of such
pathos encourages the reader to see the narrator’s younger persona as admirably stoic.

38
• Figurative language: the writer uses both simile and metaphor to help convey what she felt at
the time. In the early stages she offers two similes to convey her anxiety and fear when
recalling that ‘the thought of leaving school throbbed at the back of my mind like a persistent
toothache’ and that she ‘ran downstairs as in a nightmare’. Later on, she captures her hopes
for a better future with the metaphor of ‘I only had to stretch out my hand to reach the stars’
before offering another simile in ‘Going to England is like entering heaven.’
• Implicit gender hierarchy: a number of adverbs are used to help characterise Yen Mah, her
chauffeur, and her father. These include: ‘foolishly,’ ‘Timidly,’ and ‘boldly’ for the writer
herself; ‘defensively’ and ‘rudely’ for the driver; and ‘approvingly’ for her father. These depict
the hierarchy present in the text, with Yen Mah portrayed as self-critical and nervous while
the older men are presented as occupying superior positions.
• Religious language: the language used prior to the meeting between Yen Mah and her father
is characterised by hyperbole, portraying him as akin to a god in her young eyes. On lines 31
and 32 she states that she ‘had been summoned by Father to enter the Holy of Holies.’ While
the capitalisation of ‘Father’ is in keeping with the way she addresses him later on, when
considered alongside ‘the Holy of Holies’ (a description used in the Christian Old Testament
and Jewish Torah) it acts to deify him and to convey his room as God’s dwelling. The reader is
therefore likely to gain a sense of how he was seemingly omnipotent to the young Yen Mah.
• Juxtaposition: In the second half of the text, Yen Mah repeatedly uses juxtaposition to
generate stark contrasts. For example, the newspaper’s high praise regarding her success in
becoming the first ‘local Chinese student from Hong Kong’ to win ‘such a prestigious event,’
which is most clearly exemplified in ‘congratulations… for bringing honour to Hong Kong. We
are proud of you,’ is much more lavish than her father’s understated admission that he ‘was
quite pleased’ to tell a colleague that his daughter had indeed won. This lack of
commensurate praise from him is then quickly compounded by his insulting question of ‘How
come you won?’, with the italicised second person pronoun indicating a stress in
pronunciation that conveys how he is ridiculing her. The concluding parts of the passage
juxtapose her hopes of a career in writing, as conveyed through both the direct speech and
internal monologue attributed to Yen Mah, with his authoritarian declaration that she will
study obstetrics in order to demonstrate how very different they are in their respective wishes
for her future. The final paragraph juxtaposes Yen Mah’s abject surrender to her father’s
wishes, conveyed in plain, factual language, with the poetic vision of Wordsworth’s ‘bliss’. Her
capitulation is bathetic as well as poignant and bitter; furthermore, the allusion to
Wordsworth’s Prelude, where the Romantic poet is describing his feelings on witnessing the
French Revolution, conveys how Yen Mah’s own revolution has been crushed and her
chances of artistic emancipation dashed forever (though this is itself contradicted by the fact
we are reading her writing).
• Dialogue: the discussions between Yen Mah and her father are telling. He dominates the
conversation in that he says much more than her and employs a great number of imperative
verbs to command her (‘Sit down,’ ‘Don’t look so scared,’ ‘Take a look, and’ ‘Tell me’).
Furthermore, his use of rhetorical questions, such as those on lines 74, 76 and 81, serve to
convey his certainty that he is right. In contrast, his daughter’s speech portrays her as
deferential (‘Please, Father... ‘May I go…’) and modest (‘Perhaps I was the only one
determined enough to enter’).

Key concepts and potential comparisons

• Growing up, family, parental expectations, cultural differences, identity
• The passage could be compared with a more conventional autobiography chapter or possibly
one that opts for a similar style (ie that of a more dramatized, fiction-style narrative – perhaps
Nigel Slater’s Toast, for example). More thematic comparisons might focus on adolescence
and conflict with family based on identity or maybe cultural norms or stereotypes.

39
EDEXCEL IGCSE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Non-Fiction Glossary
Term Related terms Definition

LANGUAGE TERMINOLOGY

Noun Common, proper,

abstract, collective
Verb Dynamic, stative;
present participle
Adjective

Definite article

Indefinite article

Compound adjective

Adverb

Pronoun First-person, second-

person, third-person;
single, plural
Phrase

Clause Single-clause, multi-

clause, dependent,
parenthetical
Sentence Simple, compound,
complex, minor
(fragment, incomplete)
Single-sentence
paragraph
Phonetic intensive

Imperative

40
Interjection

Parallel

Contrast / Opposition
/Antithesis
Juxtaposition

Colloquial

Repetition

Lexis, Lexicon

Jargon

Register Standard, non-

standard
Syntax

Dialogue

Irony

Paradox

Connotation

Digression

Rhetorical question

Verisimilitude

41
GENERAL LITERARY TERMS

Literal / figurative

Tone

Diction

Imagery Sensory (visual,

auditory, gustatory,
olfactory, tactile),
Synesthetic
Metaphor

Extended metaphor

Simile

Personification

Metonymy

Synecdoche

Symbol

Hyperbole
(exaggeration)
Litotes
(understatement)
Euphemism

Foreshadowing

Tricolon

Pathos

Bathos

42
Pun

Onomatopoeia

Alliteration

Sibilance

Motif

Style Lyrical, factual

Author

Narrator First-person, third-

person, omniscient
Fairy tale

Pastoral

Bildungsroman

Allusion

Adage

Pathetic fallacy

Analepsis / prolepsis

43
NON-FICTION SPECIFIC FEATURES

Analogy

Anecdote

Peroration

Vignette

Hook

Stereotype Gender, cultural

Memoir

Autobiography

Polemic

Chronology

Temporal reference

OTHER USEFUL VOCABULARY AND CONCEPTS

Fact

Opinion

Bias

Humour

Empathy

Self-deprecating

Non-judgemental

44
Objectivity

Subjectivity

Plurality

Egotism

Collective

Imply

Infer

Immediacy

Subtext

Implication

Authoritative point of
view
Exoticism

Tension

Absurdity

Conflation

Suspense

Direct address

Assumption

Emphasis

Dichotomy

45
 EDEXCEL IGCSE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

PAPER 1 (SECTION A): NON-FICTION TEXTS

PRACTICE PAPERS

Practice Paper 1
Text One (Unseen): He for She
Text Two: The Danger of a Single Story

DO NOT COMPLETED THE PRACTICE PAPER UNTIL

YOU HAVE REVISITED YOUR CLASS NOTES
AND READ THROUGH YOUR REVISION MATERIALS

46
PRACTICE PAPER 1

Text One (Unseen): He for She

Text Two: The Danger of a Single Story

Text One: He For She

Speech by UN Women Goodwill Ambassador Emma Watson at a special event for the He For She
campaign, United Nations Headquarters, New York, September 2014

Today we are launching a campaign called “He For She.” I am reaching out to you because
I need your help. We want to end gender inequality—and to do that we need everyone to be
involved.

This is the first campaign of its kind at the UN: we want to try and galvanize as many men and 5
boys as possible to be advocates for gender equality. And we don’t just want to talk about it,
but make sure it is tangible.

I was appointed six months ago and the more I have spoken about feminism the more I have
realized that fighting for women’s rights has too often become synonymous with man-hating.
If there is one thing I know for certain, it is that this has to stop. 10

For the record, feminism by definition is: “The belief that men and women should have equal
rights and opportunities. It is the theory of the political, economic and social equality of the
sexes.”

I started questioning gender-based assumptions when at eight I was confused at being called
“bossy,” because I wanted to direct the plays we would put on for our parents—but the boys 15
were not.

When at 14 started being sexualized by certain elements of the press. When at 15 my

girlfriends started dropping out of their sports teams because they didn’t want to appear
“muscly”. When at 18 my male friends were unable to express their feelings.

I decided I was a feminist and this seemed uncomplicated to me. But my recent research has 20
shown me that feminism has become an unpopular word. Apparently I am among the ranks
of women whose expressions are seen as too strong, too aggressive, isolating, anti-men and,
unattractive.

Why is the word such an uncomfortable one?

I am from Britain and think it is right that as a woman I am paid the same as my male 25
counterparts. I think it is right that I should be able to make decisions about my own body.
I think it is right that women be involved on my behalf in the policies and decision-making of
my country. I think it is right that socially I am afforded the same respect as men. But sadly

47
I can say that there is no one country in the world where all women can expect to receive
these rights. No country in the world can yet say they have achieved gender equality. 30

In 1995, Hilary Clinton made a famous speech in Beijing about women’s rights. Sadly many of
the things she wanted to change are still a reality today.

But what stood out for me the most was that only 30 per cent of her audience were male.
How can we affect change in the world when only half of it is invited or feel welcome to
participate in the conversation? 35

Men—I would like to take this opportunity to extend your formal invitation. Gender equality
is your issue too.

Because, to date, I’ve seen my father’s role as a parent being valued less by society despite
my needing his presence as a child as much as my mother’s.

I’ve seen young men suffering from mental illness unable to ask for help for fear it would 40
make them look less “macho”—in fact in the UK suicide is the biggest killer of men between
20-49 years of age; eclipsing road accidents, cancer and coronary heart disease. I’ve seen
men made fragile and insecure by a distorted sense of what constitutes male success. Men
don’t have the benefits of equality either.

We don’t often talk about men being imprisoned by gender stereotypes but I can see that 45
that they are and that when they are free, things will change for women as a natural
consequence. If men don’t have to be aggressive in order to be accepted women won’t feel
compelled to be submissive. If men don’t have to control, women won’t have to be
controlled. Both men and women should feel free to be sensitive. Both men and women
should feel free to be strong… It is time that we all perceive gender on a spectrum not as two 50
opposing sets of ideals.

If we stop defining each other by what we are not and start defining ourselves by what we
are—we can all be freer and this is what He For She is about. It’s about freedom.

I want men to take up this mantle. So their daughters, sisters and mothers can be free from
prejudice but also so that their sons have permission to be vulnerable and human too— 55
reclaim those parts of themselves they abandoned and in doing so be a more true and
complete version of themselves.

You might be thinking who is this Harry Potter girl? And what is she doing up on stage at the
UN. It’s a good question and trust me, I have been asking myself the same thing. I don’t know
if I am qualified to be here. All I know is that I care about this problem. And I want to make it 60
better.

And having seen what I’ve seen—and given the chance—I feel it is my duty to say something.
English Statesman Edmund Burke said: “All that is needed for the forces of evil to triumph is
for enough good men and women to do nothing”.

48
In my nervousness for this speech and in my moments of doubt I’ve told myself firmly—if not 65
me, who, if not now, when. If you have similar doubts when opportunities are presented to
you I hope those words might be helpful.

Because the reality is that if we do nothing it will take 75 years, or for me to be nearly a
hundred before women can expect to be paid the same as men for the same work.
15.5 million girls will be married in the next 16 years as children. And at current rates it won’t 70
be until 2086 before all rural African girls will be able to receive a secondary education.

If you believe in equality, you might be one of those inadvertent feminists I spoke of earlier.

And for this I applaud you.

We are struggling for a uniting word but the good news is we have a uniting movement. It is
called He For She. I am inviting you to step forward, to be seen to speak up, to be the “he” for 75
“she”. And to ask yourself if not me, who? If not now, when?

QUESTIONS

You should spend 1 hour 30 minutes answering these. See ‘How to... Paper 1 Reading’ for
guidance.

The following questions are based on the text above: He For She

1. From lines 8-13, select two words or phrases associated with the word ‘feminism’. (2 marks)

2. Look again at lines 25-30. In your own words, explain the rights that Watson thinks every
woman should be entitled to. (4 marks)

3. From lines 38-57, what do you learn about the issues of gender equality for men?
You may support your points with brief quotations. (5 marks)

Remind yourself of the text (in your anthology) The Danger of a Single Story.

4. How does the writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, use language and structure to persuade her
audience?
You should support your answer with close reference to the extract, including brief quotations.
(12 marks)

Question 5 is based on both texts.

5. Compare how the writers present their ideas and perspectives about their experiences.
Support your answer with detailed examples from both texts, including brief quotations.
(22 marks)

49
50
 EDEXCEL IGCSE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

PAPER 1 (SECTION A): NON-FICTION TEXTS

PRACTICE PAPERS

Practice Paper 2
Text One (Unseen): Why did Daddy
always have to be late?
Text Two: A Game of Polo with
a Headless Goat

DO NOT COMPLETED THE PRACTICE PAPER UNTIL

YOU HAVE REVISITED YOUR CLASS NOTES
AND READ THROUGH YOUR REVISION MATERIALS

51
PRACTICE PAPER 2

Text One (Unseen): Why did Daddy always have to be late?

Text Two: A Game of Polo with a Headless Goat

Text One: Why did Daddy always have to be late?

The writer, Ashley, is a young girl living in Iran. Her father is driving Ashley and her brother, Cameron,
to pick up their mother at Tehran airport. Their journey begins on a dangerous mountain road.

“Get a move on, you donkeys!” my father yelled, leaning on the car’s horn.

All over the road lay watermelons that had fallen out of the back of a van. The driver
struggled to gather them up as the sound of horns grew louder. Behind us, I could see cars
and trucks strung like colourful beads around the mountain. 5

Realising it was futile, the driver stuck his head in the window of each car, urging us to take
some of the melons. Cameron and I scampered out and each lugged one back. People
stopped to stretch and gossip as they picked up their melons, laughing and joking, glad to
take a break from driving.

But my father screamed from the window and waved his fist. “Let’s go!” 10

With a scowl, the driver hurled the remaining melons down the slope where they burst in a
ragged explosion of scarlet. Cameron and I were happy because we both had a melon rolling
around under our feet, and after weeks of not knowing when or if we would see our mother
again, we were on our way to pick her up at the airport.

My father wrestled our old grey Rover car around one hairpin bend after another, trying to 15
make up for lost time. Even without the delay of the melons we were hard pressed. We were
on the dangerous Chaloos road, making our way to the airport at Tehran. Cameron and I
counted the lorry skeletons and car carcasses that littered the slopes. After a while we rolled
up the windows. It had grown chilly once the fiery sun plummeted behind the peaks.
Cameron fell asleep and I chattered away, terrified my father would go too fast and get us 20
killed. He hardly braked at each blind corner. As usual, my father had left too late. I lay on the
seat next to Cameron and wondered what it would be like to see Mummy again. I wondered
whether she would be happier, whether she and Daddy would still fight all the time, whether
we would finally be able to go back to school and live in our flat with our dog.

I awoke to the honks and cries of Tehran. Dawn fought its way through the dust and diesel 25
exhaust, pausing briefly before the attack of the desert sun. Men on bicycles veered in front
of our car. A flock of fat-tailed sheep and long-eared goats, bells around their necks clinking
and clanking, were shooed through the traffic by a barefoot boy. The jangled lullaby of the
city soothed me: we really were on our way to the airport to pick up our mother.

52
But then suddenly the car slammed to a stop, tipping at a crazy angle. Craning out of the 30
window, I could see the back of the car sunk in a hole in the road. After having successfully
negotiated the Chaloos road, my father hadn’t seen, in the half-light of dawn, the deep pit in
the middle of the road. He rested his head against the steering wheel, his eyes closed,
breathing heavily. After some time, he opened the door and peered under the car. Weaving
his way through the early-morning traffic to the centre of the roundabout, he waved to the 35
passing cars, his arms flailing*. His face looked baggy, his shirt stencilled with dust. Finally he
flagged down an army jeep and a group of laughing young soldiers leaped out.

“Ashley,” he said, “take Cameron over to the side until we get the car out.” We dodged
between the rushing cars and watched as they tied the rope to the back of the jeep and front
of our car. Then, with one soldier driving the jeep, the others pushed the back of the Rover. 40
My father lay on the road, practically under the car, trying to lever the wheel out of the hole.

I felt my back grow warmer and then finally hot as the sun rose behind us. Over and over the
soldiers grunted and pushed, and my father threw himself at the job until, after what seemed
like hours, I saw the tyre roll towards his face. I squeezed my eyes shut and wiggled my
fingers in my ears, humming softly, “Don’t run him over, don’t run him over.” 45

“It’s out!” Cameron shouted. My father dusted off his trousers and we were off again. …

Over the next few days, when we were all settled back into our flat, happy to see Mummy and
the dog, I tried to explain to my mother how hard we had tried, how fast we had driven, how
much time the watermelons had taken, how we had not eaten on that long overnight drive,
how brave Daddy had been, lying under the wheel of the car. How it was all down to bad luck. 50

She just pressed her lips together. “It’s always something with your father, isn’t it?” she said
finally.

That made me think: why hadn’t we left a day earlier? Why hadn’t we stocked the fridge and
bought flowers and then met her at the airport and taken her home? Why did Daddy always
have to be late when it came to Mummy? 55

*flailing: waving wildly

53
QUESTIONS

You should spend 1 hour 30 minutes answering these. See ‘How to... Paper 1 Reading’ for
guidance.

The following questions are based on the text above: Why did Daddy always have to be late?

1. From lines 6-9, select two words or phrases that describe the mood of everyone as they select
their melons. (2 marks)

2. Look again at lines 30-37. In your own words, explain what happens when the car stops.
(4 marks)

3. From lines 15-29, describe the writer’s feelings about going to pick up her mother. You may
support your points with brief quotations. (5 marks)

Remind yourself of the text (in your anthology) A Game of Polo with a Headless Goat.

4. How does the writer, Emma Levine, use language and structure to show the excitement of the
race? You should support your answer with close reference to the extract, including brief
quotations. (12 marks)

Question 5 is based on both texts.

5. Compare how the writers present their ideas and perspectives about their experiences.
Support your answer with detailed examples from both texts, including brief quotations.
(22 marks)

54
 EDEXCEL IGCSE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

PAPER 1 (SECTION A): NON-FICTION TEXTS

PRACTICE PAPER MARK SCHEMES

Practice Paper 1
Text One (Unseen): He for She
Text Two: The Danger of a Single Story

DO NOT LOOK AT THE MARK SCHEME UNTIL

YOU HAVE READ YOUR REVISION MATERIALS
AND COMPLETED THE PRACTICE PAPER
IN FULL

55
Practice Paper 1
Text One (Unseen): He for She
Text Two: The Danger of a Single Story

MARK SCHEME

1. From lines 8-13, select two words or phrases Watson associates with the word Marks
‘feminism’. (2 marks)

Any of these words or phrases gain a mark, up to a maximum of two marks:

• (fighting for) women’s rights
• man-hating
• (belief that) men and women should have equal rights and opportunities
• equal rights
• opportunities
• the theory of the political, economic and social equality (of the sexes)
• equality

2. Look again at lines 25-30. In your own words, explain the rights that Watson Marks
thinks every woman should be entitled to. (4 marks)

Any of these points gain a mark, up to a maximum of four marks:

• women should receive equal pay
• women should be able to have reproductive rights / power over their
reproductive choices
• women should be able to govern and represented democratically
• women should be regarded as having equal status to men
• women have a right to equal status in all countries

3. From lines 38-57, what do you learn about issues of gender equality for men? Marks
You may support your points with brief quotations. (5 marks)

In order to gain full marks, five clear, separate points need to be made. These can
include quotations, but don’t have to: it is the point that gets the marks. Any of
these points gain a mark if a similar point is made to that underlined, up to a
maximum of five marks:
• men with mental illness are reluctant to seek help because they think they
will seem less ‘macho’
• young men in the UK suffer disproportionately from suicide, which is ‘the
biggest killer’
• unrealistic ideas of ‘male success’ can make men ‘fragile and insecure’
• men are ‘imprisoned by gender stereotypes’
• men feel they have to ‘be aggressive’ ‘in order to be accepted’
• men feel they have to ‘control’ women
• men don’t feel free to be ‘sensitive’
• men aren’t able to be ‘vulnerable and human’
• men have ‘abandoned’ a part of themselves and are not the ‘complete
version’ that they could be

56
4. How does the writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, use language and structure to Marks
persuade her audience? You should support your answer with close reference to
the extract, including brief quotations. (12 marks)

This question is not rewarded for each point made, but for the quality of analysis
and discussion. Determine your mark according to these levels of suggested content.
You can gain marks for other points, if they are made with the same level of insight
and detail.

Examples of points showing some or clear understanding of language and structure.

These would gain between 1-7 marks. Note how they do not focus explicitly on the
question; identify features using a limited amount of straightforward terminology;
and do not develop detailed discussion.
• Adichie uses the pronoun ‘I’. This makes her arguments more convincing.
• She tells stories about herself that make the audience feel sorry for her. One
example is where she talks about how books ‘stirred her imagination’. Here
she is using a metaphor to show the effect the books had on her.
• Other anecdotes are made powerful by vivid details such as the adjectival
phrase ‘kinky hair’, which describes how Adichie was not like characters she
found in Western literature.
• The speech ends powerfully, with repetition of the word ‘stories’ and the
emotive imagery of ‘paradise’.

Examples of points showing thorough or perceptive understanding of language and

structure. These would gain between 8-12 marks. Note how they are explicitly
focused on the question; identify features using precise terminology; and discuss
specific words in detail.
• Adichie establishes her theme through the symbolic motif of the ‘story’; she
exploits the meanings of this noun to develop her argument about the
power of fiction and experience
• Her speech is structured through a chronological series of anecdotes that
creates something akin to a bildungsroman and culminate in a rhetorically
powerful peroration, persuading her audience of the authenticity of her
experience and the legitimacy of her argument
• The anecdotes are characterised by self-deprecating humour that is subtly
persuasive: ‘people like me, girls with skin the colour of chocolate, whose
kinky hair could not form ponytails’ makes its point through the vivid
childish analogy of ‘the colour of chocolate’ and the idiomatic adjectival
description of ‘kinky hair’. The humour here is juxtaposed with the more
serious anecdote of her stereotyped view of her house boy Fide.
• The humour becomes more sardonic in tone when the ignorance of her
‘American roommate’ is foregrounded through the bathos of her ‘tape of
Mariah Carey’ being presented to subvert the stereotype of ‘tribal music’
and the single-sentence paragraph, ‘She assumed that I did not know how to
use a stove’, which implies condemnation rather than making a reaction
explicit.
• Adichie’s speech ends with a powerfully persuasive analogy drawn from
borrowed from Alice Walker. Structurally, it returns to the motif of the
single story to emphatically ‘reject’ it; it follows the paragraph beginning
with the minor sentence ‘stories matter’ that persuades the audience of

57
 Adichie’s case through repeated sentences that build her point
incrementally (‘Stories matter. Many stories matter...’), using emotive
antithetical parallelism to emphasise the power of both destructive and
healing stories – ‘stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can
also repair that broken dignity’.

5. Compare how the writers present their ideas and perspectives about their Marks
experiences. Support your answer with detailed examples from both texts,
including brief quotations. (22 marks)

This question is also not rewarded for each point made, but for the quality of
analysis and discussion. Determine your mark according to these levels of suggested
content. You can gain marks for other points, if they are made with the same level of
insight and detail.

Examples of points showing some or clear understanding of language and structure.

These would gain between 5-13 marks. Note how comparisons are simple or
obvious; features are identified using a limited set of straightforward terminology;
discussion is not developed to show perceptive understanding.
• Both writers use pronouns: Watson addresses her audience directly as ‘you’
and Adichie involves her audience in her speech by saying ‘we’ towards the
end.
• Both writers use anecdotes about themselves to make their arguments
more convincing. Watson talks about her experiences such as ‘when at 15
my girlfriends started dropping out of their sports teams because they didn’t
want to appear “muscly”’. Adichie talks about her own childhood: ‘I come
from a conventional, middle-class Nigerian family’.
• Both writers use a range of rhetorical techniques to make their arguments
more forceful. Watson asks rhetorical questions (‘Why is the word such an
uncomfortable one?’; ‘If not now, when?’), while Adichie uses repetition
(‘no possibility of Africans being similar to her in any way, no possibility of
feelings more complex than pity, no possibility of a connection as human
equals’).
• Watson’s anecdotes and arguments are very serious in tone (‘in the UK
suicide is the biggest killer of men between 20-49 years of age’) whereas
Adiche’s are humorous (‘my American roommate... was consequently very
disappointed when I produced my tape of Mariah Carey’).

Examples of points showing thorough or perceptive understanding of language and

structure. These would gain between 14-22 marks. Note how comparisons are
specific but concisely stated; features are identified using precise terminology; and
discussion is developed but succinct enough to allow several to be made. To get
marks in the top band (19-22) the comparisons must be ‘varied and comprehensive’.
• Both writers present views of stereotyping that strongly reject single or
conventional ways of viewing gender or ethnic identity, deploying the
conventions of speeches to convey their opinions. In Text Two, Adichie’s
emotive tone is undercut by humour, making her arguments both
convincing and appealing. In Text One, Watson is more straightforwardly

58
 rhetorical, employing a combination of persuasive technique and statistical
evidence.
• Both writers believe that language impacts strongly on how we view the
world, employing a central motif that is developed as their speeches
progress to demonstrate this. In Text One Watson dwells on language and
naming, building the case for the new term ‘He for She’; Adichie exploits
different meanings of the noun ‘story’ in Text Two.
• Both writers view their own experiences as important to the view of the
world they have developed. However, where in Text Two Adichie’s speech
has a largely chronological structure aligned with the idea of a ‘story’,
Watson’s biographical anecdotes in Text One form only a small part of her
arguments, with the rest drawing on other, equally powerful strategies, such
as statistical evidence (‘15.5 million girls will be married in the next 16 years
as children’; only 30 per cent of her [Hilary Clinton’s] audience were male)
and inspiring, emotive imagery (‘I want men to... reclaim those parts of
themselves they abandoned and in doing so be a more true and complete
version of themselves’).
• In Text One Watson is compassionate towards men, characterising their
situation with the emotive metaphor of being ‘imprisoned by gender
stereotypes’. Adichie shows a similar level of sympathy to her former self,
admitting that she is ‘just as guilty in the question of the single story’ and
with similarly emotive imagery blames this on being ‘immersed’ in
stereotyped media coverage.
• In Text Two Adichie’s attitude to her topic is self-deprecating and humorous
(‘I must quickly add that I too am just as guilty in the question of the single
story’);in Text One Watson’s is more serious in her views, though her story
of being called ‘muscly’ and ‘bossy’ has a disarmingly colloquial informality
and she does refer in a confessional tone to ‘nervousness for this speech’
and her ‘moments of doubt’.
• Despite being ostensibly colloquial in tone (‘If there is one thing I know for
certain, it is that this has to stop’ – Watson; ‘But I must quickly add that I too
am just as guilty’ – Adichie) both employ rhetorical crafting, particularly in
patterns of repetition. In Text One Watson employs conventionally tripartite
anaphora (‘I think it is right...’; ‘If men don’t have to be...) to link her
examples with forceful logic. In Text Two Adichie uses a more stark but
equally effective incremental repetition of minor sentences (‘Stories matter.
Many stories matter. Stories have been used...) to signal the arrival of her
key point.
• Both writers view their causes as of utmost importance, and urge their
audiences to take action. In Text One Watson goes about this more
explicitly: through use of pronouns to involve and direct the audience (‘I am
reaching out to you... we need everyone to be involved); through rhetorical
questions, sometimes set apart in single-sentence paragraphs (‘Why is the
word such an uncomfortable one?’); and by powerfully mixing these in her
final paragraph (‘And to ask yourself if not me, who? If not now, when?). In
Text Two Adichie is more implicit in her relationship with the audience: her
humour invites a response without explicit address, and she employs first-
person pronouns to ally the audience with herself: ‘when we reject the
single story...’.
• Both writers believe that the adoption of their views will bring about
positive change to the world and make reference to other writers and

59
thinkers as analogous examples to convey this: in Text One Watson uses a
quotation from Edmund Burke to encapsulate her point about the danger of
inaction; in Text Two Adichie ends with Alice Walker’s quotation about
‘paradise... regained’ to capture what can be achieved if the action she
advocates is taken.

60
 EDEXCEL IGCSE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

PAPER 1 (SECTION A): NON-FICTION TEXTS

PRACTICE PAPER MARK SCHEMES

Practice Paper 2
Text One (Unseen): Why did Daddy
always have to be late?
Text Two: A Game of Polo with
a Headless Goat

DO NOT LOOK AT THE MARK SCHEME UNTIL

YOU HAVE READ YOUR REVISION MATERIALS
AND COMPLETED THE PRACTICE PAPER
IN FULL

61
Practice Paper 2

Text One (Unseen): Why did Daddy always have to be late?

Text Two: A Game of Polo with a Headless Goat

MARK SCHEME

1. From lines 6-9, select two words or phrases that describe the actions of Marks
everyone following the melon spillage. (2 marks)

Any of these words or phrases gain a mark, up to a maximum of two marks:

• (the driver) stuck his head (in the window of each car)
• (Cameron and I) scampered (out)
• lugged (one back)
• (people stopped to) stretch (as they picked up their melons)
• (people stopped to) gossip (as they picked up their melons)
• (people were) laughing
• (people were) joking

2. Look again at lines 15-24. In your own words, explain what we learn about the Marks
writer’s father (4 marks)

Any of these points gain a mark, up to a maximum of four marks:

• He steers the car round bends in the dangerous road in an effort to make up
for lost time
• He makes his children scared by his fast driving
• He drives dangerously / does not brake when he should
• He does not leave enough time to make journeys
• He argues with the writer’s mother
• He makes the writer’s mother unhappy
• He lives in a flat with his children, their mother and a dog

3. From lines 30-46, describe the way the father and others get his car out of the Marks
pit. You may support your points with brief quotations. (5 marks)

In order to gain full marks, five clear, separate points need to be made. These can
include quotations, but don’t have to: it is the point that gets the marks. Any of
these points gain a mark if a similar point is made to that underlined, up to a
maximum of five marks:
• the father goes to get help, making his way ‘through the early-morning
traffic’ to a roundabout
• the father ‘waved to the passing cars’ in order to get their attention
• the father ‘flagged down an army jeep’ to help him
• the father asks the writer to ‘take Cameron over to the side’ to get them out
of the way while the car is rescued
• the father and/or the soldiers ‘tied the rope’ to the car and the jeep to
enable the car to be pulled out

62
 • ‘with one soldier driving the jeep’ the rest of the soldiers ‘pushed’ the car to
enable the car to be pulled out
• the father lay on the road ‘trying to lever the wheel’ to enable the car to be
pulled out
• ‘the soldiers grunted and pushed’ the car, suggesting it was difficult
• they persevered and process took a long time and ‘seemed like hours’
• they shift the car slowly out of the hole – ‘I saw the tyre role gradually’

4. How does the writer, Emma Levine, use language and structure to show the Marks
excitement of the race? You should support your answer with close reference to
the extract, including brief quotations. (12 marks)

This question is not rewarded for each point made, but for the quality of analysis
and discussion. Determine your mark according to these levels of suggested content.
You can gain marks for other points, if they are made with the same level of insight
and detail.

Examples of points showing some or clear understanding of language and structure.

These would gain between 1-7 marks. Note how they do not focus explicitly on the
question; identify features using a limited amount of straightforward terminology;
and do not develop detailed discussion.
• Levine makes the race sound exciting by highlighting how quickly the
donkeys and their ‘entourage move. ‘There was no denying their speed’
makes this clear to the reader. The vehicles are ‘roaring’ behind the
donkeys. This personification makes the cars sound like they are trying to
catch the donkeys.
• The race is loud and exciting. Onomatopoeic words (‘tooting’, ringing’) make
the loud, varied sounds vivid to the reader.
• The race is made to seem full of exciting movement: the men are ‘standing’
on top of their cars and the ‘vehicles jostle’, meaning they are driving close
together. Levine compares the scene to ‘rush hour’.
• As the race progresses, the movement of the cars and donkeys is
emphasised by verb choices: the donkeys are said to be ‘running’ and cars
‘cut’ in front of others.
• The race ends in comical confusion, perhaps a disappointing end to such an
exciting spectacle. Levine creates imagery of a ‘near pile-up’ and describes
how the cart ‘tumbled over’.

Examples of points showing thorough or perceptive understanding of language and

structure. These would gain between 14-22 marks. Note how comparisons are
specific but concisely stated; features are identified using precise terminology; and
discussion is developed but succinct enough to allow several to be made. To get
marks in the top band (19-22) the comparisons must be ‘varied and comprehensive’.
• Levine establishes a mood of excitement and anticipation in the first few
paragraphs: the allusion to the cartoonish anarchy of the ‘Wacky Races’
foreshadows anarchic enjoyment; the adverbial phrase ‘they were suddenly
fired up with enthusiasm’ makes explicit an excitement in Yaqoob and Iqbal
that the reader is implicitly encouraged to share.
• The noise and spectacle of the racing donkeys and their ‘entourage’ is
described with a barrage of sonic imagery characterised by onomatopoeia

63
 and present participles to convey the immersive intensity of the sound,
structured within a complex sentence or tripartite descriptive clauses:
‘horns tooting, bells ringing, and the special rattles used just for this
purpose’. Levine’s analogy comparing the rattles to maracas makes this
even more vivid for Western readers. The impression of action and bustle
continues with more present participle verbs describing ‘men standing...
hanging out’. The vehicles are personified as ‘jostling’.
• Levine’s description of the race foregrounds its nail-biting anarchy,
comparing it to ‘Formula One without rules’. She juxtaposes hyperbolic,
potentially ironic condemnation, where her awed excitement is palpable (‘a
complete flouting of every type of traffic rule...’) with understatement that
downplays danger, such as when the revelation that ‘it was a main road’
used for the race is relegated to an aside in a parenthetical sub-clause.
• The thrilling speed of the race is vividly conveyed through verbs used to
describe the skilled quick reactions of Yaqoob (‘cut in front of a vehicle’,
‘sharp flick of the steering wheel, the movement of the donkeys (‘still
running close’) and other traffic, which had to ‘dive into the ditch’.
• The race reaches a tense and exciting conclusion with Levine employing
imagery more appropriate to a critical incident on a motorway (‘a near pile-
up’) to capture the confused ending. The final sentence of the paragraph
describing the race (‘the race was over’) highlights the noise and action of
the preceding narrative by contrast with its emphatic, calm finality.

5. Compare how the writers present their ideas and perspectives about their Marks
experiences. Support your answer with detailed examples from both texts,
including brief quotations. (22 marks)

This question is also not rewarded for each point made, but for the quality of
analysis and discussion. Determine your mark according to these levels of suggested
content. You can gain marks for other points, if they are made with the same level of
insight and detail.

Examples of points showing some or clear understanding of language and structure.

These would gain between 5-13 marks. Note how comparisons are simple or
obvious; features are identified using a limited set of straightforward terminology;
discussion is not developed to show perceptive understanding.
• Both writers describe cars driving in dangerous ways: in Text One the father
meets accidents as he tries to drive to the airport; in Text Two Levine
follows an anarchic donkey race in a car
• The writers describe the different car journeys in vivid detail. In Text One
the writer ‘awoke to the honks and cries of Tehran’ where ‘dawn fought its
way through the dust and diesel exhaust’. The sound of Tehran is captured
and the pollution appears thick as a personified ‘dawn’ has to ‘fight’ its way
through it. In Text Two, ‘the two donkeys were almost dwarfed by their
entourage’, the verb ‘dwarfed’ emphasising the difference in size, and the
jockeys are ‘perched’ on their carts, which makes them look unsafe.
• The journey in Text One ends happily, with the narrator reunited with her
mother and ‘settled back into our flat’; but in Text Two the abrupt end to
the race resulted in accusations of cheating as ‘over a hundred punters...
had strong opinions’, which suggests the large number who disagreed.

64
Examples of points showing thorough or perceptive understanding of language and
structure. These would gain between 14-22 marks. Note how comparisons are
detailed and specific; features are identified using precise terminology; and
discussion is developed to include a wide range of examples. To get marks in the top
band (19-22) the comparisons must be ‘varied and comprehensive’
• Both writers describe fast, dangerous car driving for comic effect; but the
journeys are undertaken for different reasons: the driver in Text One suffers
a series of mishaps in a rushed but reasonably conventional trip to the
airport; in Text Two Levine describes an unconventional race that, despite
its anarchic appearance, is actually carefully orchestrated.
• In Text One the writer’s attitude is informed by her experience taking place
in her home environment: she is an Iranian in Tehran. Events are amusing
but essentially familiar (‘I could see cars and trucks strung like colourful
beads around the mountain’). In Text Two, Levine is a foreign visitor to
Karachi, and as a consequence her observations are tinged with a
patronising Western superiority and she often makes use of analogies to her
own experience that depend on a Western lexicon (the donkey riders are
‘jockeys’, their audience ‘punters’).
• In Text Two, Levine’s attitude towards the race is one of amused
detachment but with patronising undertones. Her choice of analogies often
appear to assert an unflattering contrast between Western rules and
Eastern chaos (‘this was Formula One without rules, or a city-centre rush
hour gone anarchic’). In Text One, the writer appears unjudgmental in the
face of her father’s behaviour until rhetorical questions in the final
paragraph signal a reappraisal of opinion (‘Why did Daddy always have to be
late when it came to Mummy?’) This is in some ways similar in the way it
signals doubt in the attitude of the writer to Levine’s hypocritical admission
that Yaqoob’s illegal unlicensed driving ‘could have caused problems’.
• In both texts the writers’ excitement about the events they describe is partly
conveyed through their portrayal of the reactions of other people in the car.
In Text One, the narrator and her brother ‘scamper’ to fetch melons and are
‘happy’ to have them rolling at their feet; in Text Two, Levine describes
Yaqoob and Iqbal as ‘fired up’ and finding Yaqoob’s lack of driving licence as
‘hilarious’.
• The writers seem to find absurdity in the mechanics of driving and racing.
Dynamic verbs convey the physicality of these: the father in Text One ‘yelled
at obstructions’, ‘leaning’ on the horn and ‘wrestled’ his car ‘around one
hairpin bend after another’. In Text Two vehicles ‘jostled’ and Yaqoob ‘chose
exactly the right moment to edge out of the road and swerve in front of the
nearest car’.
• In Text One the writer’s attitude to the environment in which the car
journey takes place appears to be that it is difficult to negotiate, but
essentially benign: ‘Men on bicycles veered in front’ of the narrator’s car
and flocks of sheep ‘were shooed through the traffic by a barefoot boy’, the
verbs and descriptions here suggesting unthreatening minor
inconveniences; ‘laughing young soldiers leaped out’ of a jeep to help the
father. In Text Two, Levine appears to find the behaviour of the race
participants rather more dangerous to life: men were ‘hanging out of taxis
and perched on lorries’; at the end of the race ‘the leading donkey swerved,

65
 lost his footing and he and the cart tumbled over’, verbs that suggest more
violent action.
• Both texts adopt a narrative structure in which the delayed revelation of the
outcome of the journey creates anticipation in the reader for largely comic
effect. In Text One the delay caused by the car becoming stuck in the hole in
the road generates tension and compounds the portrait of the father’s
comic desperation: events are located in time precisely through a number of
adverbs of time and fronted adverbials (‘suddenly’, ‘after having successfully
negotiated…’, ‘after some time’). In Text Two Levine interweaves the
narrative strands of the donkey race with Levine’s own race to gain her
footage, with both playing out in detail until resolved by the race’s abrupt
conclusion (‘just as I was assuming…’, ‘Yaqoob chose exactly the right
moment…’, but just as they were reaching the finishing line…’).
• The writer’s views of the consequences of the journeys described are
broadly different, even though both are caused to question their
assumptions at the end. In Text One the father’s dash to the airport ends
with images of domestic harmony (‘when we were all settled back into our
flat, happy to see Mummy and the dog’) and ironic implications of the
mother’s forgiveness of the narrator’s father (the understated silence of
‘she just pressed her lips together’). Text Two, in contrast, ends with a
‘volatile situation’ where ‘voices were raised, fists were out and tempers
rising’, passive constructions that reduce the participants to aggressive
dehumanised body parts focused on impending violence.

66