English Language Paper 1
• 20
marks
• 20
minutes
• Key
question if you want an A*,A or top B grade.
• 12.5%
of your entire GCSE Grade
Hi I’m Question 4, let me tell you a bit about myself.
I’m a culmination of the skills you have
demonstrated in Qs1,2 and 3.
I am assessing you on your ability to:
Identify and interpret explicit and implicit information and
ideas. Select and synthesise evidence from different texts.
Explain, comment on and analyse how writers use language and
structure to achieve effects and influence readers, using relevant subject
terminology to support their views.
What does Q4 look like:
Focus this part of your answer on the second part of the
source,
A student, having read this section of the text said:
“The writer brings the very different characters to life for the reader. It
is as if you are inside the coach with them.”
To what extent do you agree? (YOU WILL ALL AGREE)
In your response, you could: ( AQA ARE BEING POLITE, YOU WILL WORK
THROUGH THE THREE BULLET POINTS)
• write about your own impressions of the characters
• evaluate how the writer has created these impressions
• support your
opinions with references to the text.
• write about your own impressions of the characters
=Point
• evaluate how the writer has created these
impressions
=Evaluation
• support your
opinions with references to the text.
=Evidence
You are given a statement and your job is to prove the
statement’s truth.
You prove it by identifying language and structural devices
and analysing them.
Can you: convince, select, and explain?
(Imagine you are a lawyer arguing to prove the statement
in a court).
A student, having read this section of the text, said: “This
part of the text, explaining what Clarissa sees, shows how much she loves her
city. It reminds me of the first introduction to her “Clarissa was positive”.”
To what extent do you agree?
In your response, you could:
· consider your own impressions of how Clarissa
feels about London
· evaluate how the writer creates this love for the city
· support your opinions with references to the text.
For having lived in Westminster — how many years now? over
twenty — one feels even in the midst of the traffic, or waking at night,
Clarissa was positive, a particular hush, or solemnity; an indescribable pause;
a suspense (but that might be her heart, affected, they said, by influenza)
before Big Ben strikes. There! Out it boomed. First a warning, musical; then
the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air. Such fools we
are, she thought, crossing Victoria Street. For Heaven only knows why one loves
it so, how one sees it so, making it up, building it round one, tumbling it,
creating it every moment afresh; but the veriest frumps, the most dejected of
miseries sitting on doorsteps (drink their downfall) do the same; can’t be
dealt with, she felt positive, by Acts of Parliament for that very reason: they
love life. In people’s eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and
the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling
and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the
strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life;
London; this moment of June.
Task A
Language devices:
Read the extract carefully and identify all words and
phrases in the extract that shows how much she “she loves her city”.
Then for each word and phrase you have quoted, identify a
device.
You might have identified the following language devices
that show how much she “she loves her city” :
Repetition of positive
Alliteration: “love life”
Hyperbole: “bellow”
Onomatopoeia: “uproar”
Repetition of “swing”
Musical theme: “brass bands…organs…singing”
Word choice: “triumph”
Word choice: “jingle”
Personification of the plane “singing”
Over to you. Now choose three of the language devices we
have identified and analyse each one to show answer the question:
A student, having read this section of the text, said: “This
part of the text, explaining what Clarissa sees, shows how much she loves her
city It reminds me of the first introduction to her “Clarissa was positive”.”
To what extent do you agree?
In your response, you could:
· consider your own impressions of how Clarissa
feels about London
· evaluate how the writer creates this love for the city
· support your opinions with references to the text.
You should also include structural devices and analysis of
these in your answer (you need to work for those 20 marks)
Now re-read the extract looking for structural devices that
convey how much she loves her city.
Remember – structure is how things are arranged within
sentences, paragraphs etc.
Structural features can be:
at a whole text level eg. beginnings / endings / perspective shifts;
at a paragraph level eg. topic change / aspects of cohesion; and at a sentence
level when judged to contribute to whole structure.
You might have identified:
Large sentences
Parenthetical statement of (Drink their downfall)
Listing
Climax in list of all of the methods of transport
Listing of musical actions
Climactic sentences
Alliterative ending “loved; life;London” also short one word
lists separated by semi-colon which is unusual as it is a short item but the
semi colon is used to separate large items (so what does this suggest???)
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Focus this part of your answer on the
second part of the source which has been italicised.
A student, having read this section of the
text said: “The writer brings the party to life for the reader. It is as if
you are inside one of Jay Gatsby’s parties.”
To what extent do you agree?
In your response, you could:
•
write
about your own impressions of the characters
•
evaluate
how the writer has created these impressions
•
support
your opinions with references to the text.
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Section A: Reading Literary Fiction: Source
A
This extract is from the novel ‘The Great
Gatsby’ by F Scott Fitzgerald. Here, a
character named Nick describes the elaborate parties Jay Gatsby throws most
nights throughout the summer. Although
the novel is set in Long Island during the summer of 1922, it was written in
1925.
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There was music from my neighbor’s
house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and
went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At
high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his
raft or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motor-boats
slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam. On week-ends
his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city,
between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon
scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight
servants including an extra gardener toiled all day with mops and
scrubbing-brushes and hammers and garden-shears, repairing the ravages of the
night before.
Every
Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New
York—every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a
pyramid of pulpless halves. There was a machine in the kitchen which could
extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour, if a little button
was pressed two hundred times by a butler’s thumb.
At least once a fortnight a corps of
caterers came down with several hundred feet of canvas and enough colored lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby’s enormous
garden. On buffet tables, garnished with glistening
horsd’oeuvre, spiced baked hams crowded
against salads of harlequin designs and
pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark
gold. In the main hall a bar with a real brass rail was set up, and stocked with gins and liquors and with
cordials so long forgotten that most of his female guests were too young to know one from another.
By seven
o’clock the orchestra has arrived—no thin fivepiece affair but a whole pitful
of oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and cornets and piccolos and
low and high drums. The last swimmers have come in from the beach now and are
dressing upstairs; the cars from New York are parked five deep in the drive,
and already the halls and salons and verandas are gaudy with primary colors
and hair shorn in strange new ways and shawls beyond the dreams of Castile.
The bar is in full swing and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden
outside until the air is alive with chatter and laughter and casual innuendo
and introductions forgotten on the spot and enthusiastic meetings between
women who never knew each other’s names.
The
lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun and now the
orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music and the opera of voices pitches a
key higher. Laughter is easier, minute by minute, spilled with prodigality,
tipped out at a cheerful word. The groups change more swiftly, swell with new
arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath—already there are wanderers,
confident girls who weave here and there among the stouter and more stable,
become for a sharp, joyous moment the center of a group and then excited with
triumph glide on through the seachange of faces and voices and color under
the constantly changing light.
Suddenly
one of these gypsies in trembling opal, seizes a cocktail out of the air,
dumps it down for courage and moving her hands like Frisco dances out alone
on the canvas platform. A momentary hush; the orchestra leader varies his
rhythm obligingly for her and there is a burst of chatter as the erroneous
news goes around that she is Gilda Gray’s understudy from the ‘Follies.’ The
party has begun.
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Self Assessment
Either with highlighters or by labelling through numbers, review your answer to
show where you have included:
- • Evaluates
the effects
- • Subject
Terminology
- • Textual
detail
- • linked/
referred to the question’s statement
Exemplar answer
Firstly the writer brings the party
to life by his use of contrast in his description of the orchestra as he states
it is not a “thin fivepiece” but a
“whole pitful of…” This contrast emphasises the large, grand musical
accompaniment the party has and this is is done more so by the contrast being
compared to not one instrument but five, thus showing that five is considered
“thin” to Gatsby, thus highlighting the extreme decadence of the music
arrangement. Furthermore the writer brings the party to life by then listing
the many instruments in the “pitful”. Listing the instruments individually
highlights the great array of instruments and thus the incredible sound that
these make – the brass, string and drums show it is a full band with an array
of instruments and sounds adding to the vivacious atmosphere of the party. Also
by detailing every instrument it allows the reader to, arrange the items in
their head and imagine the many, many sounds, thus bringing it further to life.
The writer also uses word choice to
describe the verandas as “gaudy”. “Gaudy” has suggestions of extravagance, of
being vibrant, overwhelming and decadent thus brining the part to life for the
reader as we realise the richness of the interior design.
Furthermore the writer uses
hyperbole to bring the party to life as we are told of how the earth “lurches
away from the sun”. The word choice of
“lurches” exaggerates how far from reality the guests become as the party
continues and the guests become ensconced in their own world. The hyperbolic
statement implies that the party is out of this world thus brining it to life
for the reader by showing how incredible and other worldly it is.
