GCSE English Language

Unit 1 revisionSection A – Reading unseen prose (1 hour)Section B – Writing a story (45 minutes)

The front of the new answer booklet:

GCSE English Language Unit 1 mock exam feedback

Section A: Unseen prose.

3 questions (10 marks each)

Remember: 1 hour with 15 minutes of recommended reading time…15 minutes per question

A1 What do you learn about the coffinwood people in these lines?

• Unhealthy, weak• They steal but see it as “borrowing”• Vulnerable and have very little – struggling for survival• Seem sad – “shiver and shy”

“although the flat was titchy, the freedom made me feel like a child playing hide-and-seek in an empty house.”

She doesn’t feel confined by lack of space but liberated by having a place to call her own and some privacy. She seems to know her feelings then were a little childish but thinks it was justified because this is her “first real home” so she must have felt that she didn’t really belong in all the other places she has lived in.

“I would have died for a pet”

Despite the excitement of having her own independence, she is intimidated by the sudden quiet and would like some company so that she doesn’t feel so alone.

A2 What does the storyteller think and feel in these lines?

A3 What happens at the end of the story and how do you respond?

She falls asleep outside whilst waiting for the coffinwood child and is awoken by a medic who thinks she might have taken an overdose. Her social worker is sent for and stays whilst she eats but when she sees herself in the mirror she says she now looks “honest and dirty as a burrowing creature”.

This makes me think that the narrator has stopped caring about herself and it’s worrying to think that she fell asleep outside and needs to be forced to eat. She’s obviously neglecting herself because she’s becoming obsessed by the coffinwood child. It seems as though she wants to become a coffinwood child because she says she now looks “honest” – as if they are somehow better than “real” people.

A3 What happens at the end of the story and how do you respond?

The narrator “shouted down into the patchy turf” to try and get the child to come back again – but I now wonder if the child was ever really there, so when she says “But she ignored me” it could be seen as sad that has lost her companion or, more disturbingly, a sign that she is having a mental breakdown and believes she has seen something that didn’t actually exist! This is certainly reinforced when the story ends with her “clawing” at the grass, a movement that suggests that she is desperate and is shutting everything else out in her mad, frenzied effort to get to her “friend”.

A3 What happens at the end of the story and how do you respond?

The narrator “shouted down into the patchy turf” to try and get the child to come back again – but I now wonder if the child was ever really there, so when she says “But she ignored me” it could be seen as sad that has lost her companion or, more disturbingly, a sign that she is having a mental breakdown and believes she has seen something that didn’t actually exist! This is certainly reinforced when the story ends with her “clawing” at the grass, a movement that suggests that she is desperate and is shutting everything else out in her mad, frenzied effort to get to her “friend”.

• Actual personal experience or…• …one or two key incidents which…• …happen in a short space of time and…• …are believable!

Chief Examiner’s report 2014

• Half the marks are for accuracy, so…• …make sure you’re not taking unnecessary risks

with spellings• don’t try to include punctuation you are not sure

about• only include characters having conversations if

you can actually set it out correctly• and…

Chief Examiner’s report 2014

• Half the marks are for accuracy, so…• …make sure you’re not taking unnecessary risks

with spellings• don’t try to include punctuation you are not sure

about• only include characters having conversations if

you can actually set it out correctly• and…

…if you make mistakes with

words like this…

• Half the marks are for accuracy, so…• …make sure you’re not taking unnecessary risks

with spellings• don’t try to include punctuation you are not sure

about• only include characters having conversations if

you can actually set it out correctly• and…

…write it as two words instead!

• Postcard of Paris on mantelpiece• Came from her “intended” all those years ago,

begging her to come and join him in France• She received letter telling her of his death and

has never left the country – too scared• Going to go to France now to pay her respects• She’s waiting for the taxi, holding postcard• She betrayed him and her own future all those

years ago• Taxi beeps outside – she stands to leave

The Traitor

The TraitorIt is faded now, the edges fraying slightly and its stamp browning with age. She takes the postcard from its place on the mantelpiece above the electric fire and looks again at the Eiffel Tower against a grey background. On the back the words (she knows them now by heart) “can’t wait to see you.” But he did have to wait didn’t he? He’d kept waiting for a lifetime. And now it was too late.