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???)

 

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.
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.
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.

Self Assessment
Either with highlighters or by labelling through numbers, review your answer to show where you have included:

1. • Evaluates the effects
2. • Subject Terminology
3. • Textual detail
4. • 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.