Hi Tara. Paper 1 is the half of English Language where you are not being asked to be interesting. You are being asked to be accurate, obedient and fast — to read three texts you have never seen, work out exactly what four questions want, and hand back precisely that. It is the most trainable paper you will sit in any subject, because almost nothing in it depends on inspiration.
The reason students underperform on it is rarely that they misunderstood the texts. It is that they answered a slightly different question from the one printed, or wrote a hundred and eighty words where the paper said one hundred and twenty, or spent twenty-five minutes on a question worth the same as the one they then rushed in nine. Almost every mark lost on Paper 1 is lost to process, and process is fixable in an afternoon.
One warning before you start. The 0500 syllabus was rewritten for first examination in 2027 — your year. Most of what is online describes the old paper, which had different question numbers, a different summary format and a choice you no longer get. If a video tells you Question 1 is worth 15 marks, or that the key words are underlined, close it. This guide is on the new spec.
The paper at a glance
2 hours. 80 marks. Three texts (A, B and C) on a separate insert, roughly 1400 words in total. Four compulsory questions, 20 marks each. No choice anywhere.
| Question | Text | What you do | Length | Marks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Text A | Comprehension — a series of short sub-questions on explicit and implicit meaning | Short answers | 20 reading |
| 2(a) | Text B | Selective summary in your own words, as continuous writing | No more than 120 words | 10 reading + 5 writing |
| 2(b) | Text B | Short answer on the writer’s or a speaker’s attitudes and opinions | Short answer | 5 reading |
| 3(i) | Text C | Short-answer questions, including 2-mark questions on the meaning of words shown in bold | Short answers | 10 reading |
| 3(ii) | Text C | Language task — how the writer uses language to convey meaning and create effect | 200–250 words | 10 reading |
| 4 | Text C | Extended response to reading — letter, report, journal, speech, interview or article | 250–300 words | 10 reading + 10 writing |
Weighting on this paper: AO1 Reading just over 80%, AO2 Writing just under 20%. Sixty-five of the eighty marks are for reading and fifteen are for writing. That single fact should govern every decision you make in the room: when in doubt, prove you have understood the text rather than polishing a sentence.
What is actually in front of you
You will be handed two things: a question paper, which is thin, and an insert, which contains the reading. The insert holds three separate texts, labelled Text A, Text B and Text C. Together they run to about 1400 words, so each one is roughly the length of a page and a half of a novel or one column of a newspaper feature. They are not connected to each other by topic. Do not waste a second looking for a link between them; there usually isn’t one, and no question ever asks you to compare across texts.
The three texts are chosen to do different jobs:
- Text A is usually narrative or literary — an extract from fiction, a memoir, a piece of travel writing. It is there to be understood, in detail, at both the literal and the suggested level. Question 1 is entirely about Text A.
- Text B is usually informative or opinion-based — a report, an article, an interview, a first-person account of a job or a campaign. It has to contain enough separate, listable points to support a summary. Question 2 (both parts) is entirely about Text B.
- Text C is the richest and most deliberately written of the three — descriptive non-fiction or fiction, with vivid vocabulary and imagery. It has to survive being pulled apart for language analysis and it has to give you enough material to write from a persona. Question 3 and Question 4 both come from Text C.
So: one text feeds one question, one text feeds one question, and one text — Text C — feeds two questions worth forty marks between them. That last fact is worth remembering when you decide which text to read most carefully in reading time.
The four questions, and why the shape matters
Four questions. Twenty marks each. Every one compulsory. That is the whole architecture, and it is a much kinder architecture than the one the previous cohorts sat.
On the old paper the questions were worth uneven amounts — 15 here, 25 there, 10 somewhere else — and students had to do arithmetic under pressure to work out where their time should go. Worse, the sizes tempted people into abandoning small questions. On the new paper there is no small question. Question 1 is worth exactly as much as Question 4. Half-answering the comprehension because you want more time for the extended response is a straight swap of ten easy marks for two hard ones.
Four twenties. If you can only hold one fact about Paper 1 in your head on the morning of the exam, hold that one. Four questions, twenty marks each, none of them optional, none of them cheaper than the others. Twenty-five minutes each, plus slack. Nothing gets abandoned.
A timing plan you can actually follow
Two hours is 120 minutes. The paper is designed with about 15 minutes of reading built in, which leaves 105 minutes of writing for 80 marks — a bit over a minute a mark. Here is a plan that leaves you thirteen minutes of genuine slack at the end, which you will need, because something always takes longer than it should.
| Clock | Minutes | What you are doing |
|---|---|---|
| 0:00–0:04 | 4 | Read the questions first. All four, including every sub-question and every word limit. Circle the focus of the 2(a) summary. Note which of the six text types Question 4 wants. You now know what you are looking for before you look. |
| 0:04–0:15 | 11 | Read the insert, annotating for question focus. Text A once, carefully. Text B with the summary focus in mind, ticking points as you go. Text C twice — once for sense, once for the language that stands out. |
| 0:15–0:37 | 22 | Question 1 (20 marks). Comprehension sub-questions on Text A. Short answers, no introductions, no spare sentences. |
| 0:37–0:42 | 5 | Question 2(b) (5 marks). Do the attitudes question before the summary — it is quick, it is only 5 marks, and doing it first stops you burning the whole Q2 slot on the summary and arriving at 2(b) with ninety seconds left. |
| 0:42–1:05 | 23 | Question 2(a) (15 marks). Summary. Roughly 8 minutes harvesting and numbering points, 10 minutes drafting, 5 minutes counting words and cutting. |
| 1:05–1:14 | 9 | Question 3(i) (10 marks). Short answers on Text C, including the 2-mark bold-word meanings. |
| 1:14–1:32 | 18 | Question 3(ii) (10 marks). The language task, 200–250 words. About 3 minutes choosing your words and phrases, 15 minutes writing. |
| 1:32–1:47 | 15 | Question 4 (20 marks). Extended response, 250–300 words. 3 minutes planning the persona and the three ideas you will develop, 12 minutes writing. |
| 1:47–2:00 | 13 | Slack and checking. Count the words on 2(a). Reread Question 1 for any sub-question you skipped. Fix the spelling errors you know you make. Do not rewrite anything. |
Write the four finish times on your question paper in the first minute. Not durations — actual clock times, worked out from the clock on the wall. “Q1 done by 10:22” is a thought you can act on at 10:20. “Q1 should take 22 minutes” is a sum you will not do again once you start writing.
And when a finish time passes, stop, even mid-sentence, and move on. You can come back in the slack at the end. The marks you lose by leaving a question 90% finished are always smaller than the marks you lose by never starting the next one.
The five reading objectives, in plain English
Every mark on this paper is an AO1 Reading mark or an AO2 Writing mark, and the reading marks are split into five numbered objectives, R1 to R5. You will never be asked to name them. But knowing which one a question is testing tells you what kind of sentence to write, which is why they are worth ten minutes of your attention now.
Here they are as Cambridge words them, followed by what that actually means when you have a pen in your hand.
R1 — explicit meanings Q1, Q3(i)
Syllabus wording: demonstrate understanding of explicit meanings.
Plain English: can you find the thing the text actually says, and say it back accurately? Nothing is hidden. The answer is on the page; the skill is locating it and not garbling it.
A question that tests it: “Give two reasons why the narrator decided not to return to the village that night.”
What earns the mark: the right detail, in your own words where you can manage it, with no extra material bolted on. What loses it: copying a whole sentence and hoping the right bit is inside it.
R2 — implicit meanings and attitudes Q1, Q2(b)
Syllabus wording: demonstrate understanding of implicit meanings and attitudes.
Plain English: can you hear what the text is suggesting without saying? This is the objective that separates a good comprehension answer from a full-mark one. Implicit meaning lives in word choice, in what a character does rather than says, in what a writer keeps returning to, and in what is conspicuously left out.
A question that tests it: “Using your own words, explain what the writer suggests about the relationship between the two brothers.”
What earns the mark: a sentence of the shape “the writer suggests X, because the text says Y”. The evidence has to be there, but the answer is the inference, not the evidence.
R3 — analyse, evaluate and develop Q4
Syllabus wording: analyse, evaluate and develop facts, ideas and opinions, using appropriate support from the text.
Plain English: can you take something the text gives you and do something with it — extend it, judge it, work out its consequences — while still showing it came from the text? This is the objective behind the ten reading marks on Question 4, and it is the reason a Question 4 that simply retells Text C from a different pronoun scores badly.
A question that tests it: “You are the guide described in Text C. Write a report for the expedition company about the changes you would recommend for next season.”
What earns the mark: ideas that are visibly rooted in the text but taken further than the text takes them. “Develop” is the key verb: the text is your starting line, not your finishing line.
R4 — how writers achieve effects Q3(ii)
Syllabus wording: demonstrate understanding of how writers achieve effects and influence readers.
Plain English: can you explain why this word rather than a duller one, and what it does to the picture in a reader’s head? R4 is the whole of the language task in 3(ii). Notice what it does not say: it does not say “identify devices”. Naming a metaphor is not understanding an effect.
A question that tests it: “Explain how the writer uses language to convey meaning and create effect in these two paragraphs. Choose three words or phrases from each and explain your choices.”
What earns the mark: the literal meaning of the word here, then the picture or feeling it produces, then why the writer wanted that. Section 4 gives you a shape for this.
R5 — select and use information for a purpose Q2(a)
Syllabus wording: select and use information for specific purposes.
Plain English: can you go through a text with one narrow question in mind and take out only the material that answers it, leaving everything else behind? R5 is the summary objective, and the word doing all the work is select. A summary that includes an interesting point which does not answer the question has failed R5 twice over — once for including it, and once for the space it stole.
A question that tests it: “According to Text B, what difficulties do the volunteers face? Write a summary using your own words. Use no more than 120 words.”
What earns the mark: the number of distinct relevant points you land, expressed in your own words. Elegance is a separate five marks; coverage is the ten.
Where the writing marks are. Only 15 of the 80 marks on this paper are AO2 Writing marks: five on the summary (2(a)) and ten on the extended response (Question 4), with the extended response also carrying ten reading marks. Everywhere else — Question 1, Question 2(b), Question 3 in both parts — nobody is marking your style at all. Your answer needs to be clear and grammatical enough to be understood, and after that, extra polish earns literally nothing. Save the effort for 2(a) and Q4.
Why the new structure is friendlier than the old one
Three things changed for 2027, and all three are in your favour once you know about them.
- Equal blocks. Four questions at twenty marks each removes the biggest strategic error on the old paper, which was misjudging how much a question was worth and over-investing. You no longer need a strategy. You need a stopwatch.
- A shorter summary with a clearer brief. The summary is capped at 120 words and is explicitly marked 10 for reading and 5 for writing. That split tells you exactly where to spend your effort: get the points in first, then make them read well. Students who write a beautiful 200-word summary containing four points score worse than students who write a plain 115-word summary containing eight.
- Bold, not underlining, for the vocabulary questions. A small change with a real consequence: bold survives photocopying and is easier to spot when you are skimming. When you meet a bold word in Text C, that is the paper telling you a 2-mark question is coming about exactly that word.
What has not changed is the thing that catches most candidates: this is a reading paper, and the examiner is looking for evidence that you understood a text, not evidence that you can write. Sixty-five of eighty marks. Keep saying it.
Answer in the order printed, with one exception. Do 1, then 2(b), then 2(a), then 3(i), 3(ii), 4. Swapping 2(b) and 2(a) is the one deviation worth making, for the reason in the timing table: 2(b) is five quick marks and it protects them from being crushed by the summary. Otherwise, work forwards. The paper is sequenced by text, and hopping between texts costs you re-reading time you cannot spare.
What Question 1 is
Question 1 is a run of short sub-questions on Text A, labelled (a), (b), (c) and so on, worth between one and about five marks each and adding up to twenty. There is no essay here and no continuous writing. Nobody is marking your style. What is being tested is whether you can read carefully and answer precisely, and the two things being tested are named in the syllabus as R1, explicit meanings and R2, implicit meanings and attitudes.
Students routinely treat this question as the warm-up. It is not the warm-up. It is a fifth of the paper, it is the most gettable twenty marks in the whole of Paper 1, and it is where careless candidates leak four or five marks without ever noticing, because nothing feels wrong while it is happening.
“What does it say” versus “what does it suggest”
Every sub-question in Question 1 is one of two kinds, and the wording tells you which. Getting this distinction into your bones is worth more than anything else in this section.
| Explicit (R1) | Implicit (R2) | |
|---|---|---|
| Question words | Give… / Identify… / What does the writer say… / According to the text… / State two reasons… | Suggest… / Imply… / What impression… / Explain what the writer suggests about… / Why do you think… |
| Where the answer is | On the page. You are locating it. | Between the lines. You are inferring it. |
| Shape of your answer | The fact, in your own words. One clause is often enough. | The inference, then the evidence: “X, because the text says Y.” |
| Most common failure | Copying a whole sentence instead of extracting the point. | Repeating the detail and calling it an explanation. |
Here is the difference in one pair of sentences. Suppose the text says: She had made the beds already.
How mark allocation tells you how many points to make
Every sub-question carries its instructions in the brackets. Read the number of marks as a shopping list, not as a guide to length.
- [1] — one point. A phrase. Not a sentence, if a phrase will do.
- [2] — either two separate points, or one point plus a supporting detail. If the question says “give two”, give exactly two, clearly separated. Numbering them or starting a new line is a kindness to the examiner and costs nothing.
- [3] — three points, or two points with development. This is where students under-answer most often: they make one good observation, write three sentences about it, and score one.
- [4] or [5] — a small cluster. Usually an implicit question wanting two or three inferences, each briefly supported. Now you are writing a short paragraph, but still not an introduction.
Marks measure ideas, not words. A three-mark answer that contains one idea explained beautifully three times scores one. A three-mark answer that contains three ideas stated flatly scores three. When you finish a sub-question, do not ask “is that enough writing?” Ask “how many separate things have I said?” and count them on your fingers against the mark in the bracket.
And always give one more than you need on “explain” questions where no number is specified. If a question is worth 3 and you have three points, a fourth costs you fifteen seconds and insures you against one of the first three being rejected. This does not apply where the question says “give two” — there, the examiner marks the first two only, so a third is wasted ink and a wrong third can do no good.
Own words versus lifting
“Lifting” means copying words straight from the text into your answer. It is not banned. It is not, in itself, a crime. But it is a habit that ranges from harmless to fatal depending on how much you lift, and the rule is simpler than most students think:
Why lifting a whole sentence usually scores zero. Imagine a two-mark question asking why the narrator was surprised. The text contains a sentence which happens to include the answer, wrapped in three other details. A candidate copies the whole sentence. Now look at it from the examiner’s side of the desk: the candidate has demonstrated that they can find the general area of the answer and operate a pen. They have not demonstrated that they know which part of the sentence answers the question — and that is precisely the thing being marked. Cambridge examiners describe this as the answer not being “disentangled” from the text. Wholesale lifting is treated as a failure to select, and it scores nothing even though the correct words are physically present on the page.
There is a second reason to avoid it, which matters even more. A lifted sentence often contains material that contradicts or over-reaches the answer. If the examiner has to decide which half of your copied sentence you meant, the convention is not to guess in your favour.
Find it, then flip it. Find the words in the text. Cover them with your finger. Say the idea out loud in a different way. Write that down. Three seconds, and it converts a lifted answer into a scoring one.
Text A
Here is an invented Text A written in the register Cambridge uses for the first insert text — first-person narrative, quiet, full of implication. Read it once, then work through the sub-questions underneath before opening the answers.
Five worked sub-questions
These are written in the style and mark distribution of a real Question 1: a couple of quick explicit questions, a couple of implicit ones, and one longer cluster at the end. Attempt each before you open it. Answering in your head does not count — write it.
1. The ferry arrived two hours behind schedule.
2. The wind had shifted to the north.
Two points, numbered, separated, each in slightly different words from the text. Nothing else is added. It took about twenty seconds. This is what a two-mark explicit question is supposed to look like — it is not an opportunity to write well, it is an opportunity to be quick and right.
She has been standing outside in the cold for a long time and has fastened herself up against it — she has clearly been waiting far longer than she needed to. It also makes her look closed off and self-contained, as though she is holding herself in as much as keeping the weather out.
Two distinct ideas for two marks: duration of the wait (which is really an act of affection, since nobody asked her to come) and emotional guardedness. Both are inferences, and both are anchored to the detail without repeating it. Notice that the answer never uses the words “buttoned” or “sleeves”.
Her grandmother had told them beforehand, over the telephone, that she was past the age of preparing rooms for guests, so the narrator had arrived expecting to have to do it herself. Doing it anyway contradicts what she had announced. It suggests that the complaint was a kind of performance, and that she wanted them there rather more than she had let on.
Three marks, three moves. (1) The stated expectation — she said she would not. (2) The contradiction — she did. (3) The inference — the complaint was not sincere and the welcome is warmer than the words. Most candidates supply (1) and stop, because (1) feels like a complete answer to “why was she surprised”. It is one mark of three.
The flowers were picked and put out specially, which shows she had gone to trouble for a granddaughter she barely greeted at the harbour. Trimming the stems short so the jar could not tip over shows she had thought several steps ahead about a room she would not be sleeping in. Positioning the chair in the best light means she had been in the room, stood in it, and worked out where somebody would want to sit. Taken together, these are the actions of someone whose affection is expressed by preparation rather than by anything she is willing to say out loud.
Four marks are being paid for four separable observations: the flowers as an act of welcome; the short stems as forethought; the chair as evidence she imagined the room being used; and the summarising inference about a woman who shows feeling through practical care rather than words. The final sentence is what lifts the answer from good to complete — it is the only one that answers “what does the writer suggest about the grandmother” rather than “what did the grandmother do”.
The relationship is affectionate but unspoken, and the affection runs mainly in one direction on the surface while the narrator watches for it underneath. When they finally meet, the grandmother inspects the luggage before she looks at her granddaughter, and even then only for a moment — on the face of it a cold greeting. Her one remark is a criticism of how much they have brought rather than any word of welcome. Yet she has come uninvited to a harbour in a north wind for a ferry that is two hours late, and she has arranged a room down to the height of the flowers and the placing of a chair. The narrator notices all of this, which suggests she is used to reading her grandmother indirectly and has learned to take the preparations as the welcome that was never said.
Five marks. The answer opens with a clear claim about the relationship — affectionate but unspoken — and then supports it with the three required details, each converted into own words and each turned into a point rather than left as a fact. It closes by bringing the narrator back in, because the question asked about a relationship, which needs two people in the answer.
A checklist for Question 1
- Did I answer every sub-question, including the tiny [1] at the bottom of the page?
- For each one, do the number of separate ideas in my answer match the number in the bracket?
- Where the question said “give two”, did I give exactly two?
- Where it said “in your own words”, is there any lifted phrase longer than three or four words?
- On the “suggests” questions, does each answer contain something the text does not literally say?
- Have I written any introductions, any “the writer uses…”, or any device names? Cross them out; they earn nothing here.
- Am I within my 22 minutes?
Question 1 is where you buy time for Question 4. An efficient candidate finishes it in eighteen minutes with full marks; an inefficient one takes thirty and scores fifteen, because the extra twelve minutes went on sentences nobody was marking. The way to be efficient is not to write faster. It is to stop writing the moment the ideas in the bracket are on the page.
Two parts, twenty marks, one text
Question 2 is set on Text B and comes in two pieces:
| Part | Task | Length | Marks |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2(a) | Selective summary, in your own words, as continuous writing | No more than 120 words | 10 reading (R5) + 5 writing (AO2) |
| 2(b) | Short answer on attitudes and opinions | Short answer — a few sentences | 5 reading (R2) |
The summary is the most mechanical task on the whole paper, and mechanical is good news: it means there is a procedure, the procedure works every time, and once you own it the marks stop being uncertain. What makes it feel hard is that it asks you to do the opposite of everything else school has trained you to do. No examples. No quotations. No opinions. No introduction. No flourish. Just points, densely packed, in your own words, in flowing prose, and then stop.
Read the mark split again: 10 reading, 5 writing. Two thirds of the marks are simply for how many relevant points you found and expressed. That is the priority order. A summary with nine points written plainly beats a summary with five points written elegantly, every single time. Get the content in, then make it flow — never the other way round.
The method — four steps, in this order, always
- Read the question’s exact focus, and write it at the top of your rough work. The question will not say “summarise Text B”. It will say something narrow: the difficulties the volunteers face, or the benefits of the scheme, or what the writer did and why. Copy that focus phrase onto your answer booklet in three or four words. Every decision you make for the next twenty minutes is settled by that phrase. If you find yourself unsure whether a point belongs, you are not unsure — you have stopped looking at the phrase.
- Harvest, numbering as you go. Go through Text B once, slowly, from the top. Every time you meet something that answers the focus, put a number in the margin. Do not write anything out yet. Do not stop to think about wording. You are looking for separate points: two sentences about the same difficulty are one point, not two. Expect to find between eight and twelve. If you have found three, you have misread the focus; if you have found twenty, you are counting details rather than points.
- Convert each number into your own words — as a short phrase, not a sentence. Beside each number write four or five words of your own. “Banks privately owned — slow permission.” “Grant only lasts a year.” This is the step everyone skips, and skipping it is why lifted summaries happen: if you go straight from the text to your final sentence, the text’s words are still in your ear and they come out of your pen. Converting in note form breaks the connection.
- Join the notes into continuous prose, counting as you go. Now write, using your notes and not the text — ideally with the insert closed or turned face down. Link points with commas, semicolons, and joining words like and, while, because, although. Group related points into the same sentence so the connectives do double duty. Count your words at the end. If you are over 120, cut whole clauses rather than trimming adjectives.
Focus → Harvest → Convert → Join. Four steps, and the middle two are the ones people skip. Harvesting without converting produces a lifted summary. Converting without harvesting produces a summary that misses half the points because you wrote up the first three before finding the rest.
What a summary must never contain
- No quotations. Not one. Quotation marks in a summary are a signal to the examiner that you have stopped summarising.
- No examples. If the text says the group has removed “bicycles, traffic cones and a filing cabinet”, the point is that they remove large dumped items. The list is illustration, and illustration is exactly what a summary strips out.
- No comment, opinion or evaluation. “This shows how dedicated they are” is your voice, and your voice has no marks attached in 2(a).
- No introduction or conclusion. “In this text the writer describes many difficulties which I will now summarise” is fourteen of your 120 words spent saying nothing. Start with the first point.
- No repetition of the question. Same reason.
- No bullet points or numbered lists. The instruction says continuous writing, and the five writing marks are largely for whether it reads as connected prose.
Text B
An invented Text B, in the register Cambridge uses for the second insert text — a short feature article with a named interviewee, plenty of separate factual points, and a strong personality behind the quotations.
According to Text B, what difficulties do the volunteers face? Write a summary using your own words. Use no more than 120 words. [15]
Step 2 and 3: the harvest table
This is what your rough work should look like — the point located, then converted into a note in your own words before you write a single sentence of the answer. Notice how short the right-hand column is. Notes, not sentences.
| # | Where it is in Text B | Your note (own words) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Almost every stretch of bank is privately owned | Land is private — must ask owners |
| 2 | A landowner can take four months to answer a letter | Permission is very slow to arrive |
| 3 | The grant is renewed annually; she reapplies each autumn | Funding lasts one year only; constant reapplying |
| 4 | The council charges for every skip they fill | They must pay to dispose of what they collect |
| 5 | Submerged metal and broken glass | Riverbed is physically dangerous |
| 6 | Volunteers must be trained and insured; “heroic” paperwork | Compulsory training, insurance, heavy admin |
| 7 | Nesting birds close the upper reaches March–August | Working season is short |
| 8 | Rain closes it further | Weather cuts available days |
| 9 | The first month is exciting, the ninth is cold | Hard to keep volunteers interested |
| 10 | Most still turning up are over sixty | Few younger helpers |
| 11 | Fresh rubbish appears within a fortnight | Work is quickly undone |
Eleven points, and only 120 words. That is roughly eleven words per point including all the joining language, which sounds impossible until you look at the model below. It is possible because summary prose is compressed: several points share a single sentence, and the connective between them does the work of a whole clause.
Points 1 and 2 above could reasonably be treated as one point, and so could 7 and 8. That is fine. Mark schemes list far more creditable points than you can fit, precisely because they expect you to combine. Never agonise over whether two adjacent details are one point or two — write them in the same sentence and let the examiner decide. Combining costs you almost no words and can only gain.
The model summary
The volunteers work on a river whose banks are almost all in private hands, and owners can take months to grant access. Their funding is only ever guaranteed for a year, so a fresh application is needed annually, and the local authority charges for removing what they collect. Entering the water is dangerous because of hidden metal and glass, so everyone must first be trained and insured, which generates a great deal of administration. The working year is short: nesting birds close the upper river from spring until late summer, and wet weather shortens it further. Recruits lose enthusiasm after the first few weeks, most of those who stay are elderly, and fresh rubbish returns within a fortnight.
The classic failures
Question 2(b) — attitudes and opinions, 5 marks
The second half of Question 2 is short, and it is testing R2: implicit meanings and attitudes. It will ask something like “What are Okonjo’s attitudes towards the work?” or “Explain the writer’s opinions about the scheme, using your own words.”
The trick is to understand what an attitude is. An attitude is not a fact and it is not an action. It is a stance — a settled way of feeling about something. So your answer should be built from words that name stances: impatient, sceptical, proud, resigned, defensive, wry, unsentimental, determined, contemptuous, protective, ambivalent. If your answer contains none of that kind of vocabulary, you have described behaviour rather than attitude.
She is thoroughly unromantic about what the project involves, listing the obstacles briskly and putting the mud and the forms ahead of anything picturesque. There is a note of dry humour in the way she exaggerates the scale of the paperwork, which suggests she has made peace with irritations she cannot change. She is impatient with outsiders who picture the work as scenic, and slightly protective of the reality. She is clear-eyed about failure — she volunteers, rather than conceals, the fact that the rubbish comes straight back. And underneath all of it she is stubbornly committed: knowing every one of these problems, she still has no intention of giving up.
Five marks, five named attitudes, each with a short piece of evidence attached and none of them repeated. Around 115 words — roughly twenty-five seconds of writing per mark. Note that only two of the five come from what she actually says; the rest come from how the writer presents her, which is where most of the available marks in an attitudes question are hiding.
- Have I written the question’s focus phrase at the top of my rough work?
- Did I number points in the margin of the insert before writing anything?
- Did I convert every point into a note in my own words before drafting?
- Is my summary continuous prose — no bullets, no numbers, no dashes standing in for sentences?
- Are there any quotation marks in it? Any examples? Any opinions of mine?
- Have I actually counted the words, and is the number at or under 120?
- In 2(b), does every sentence name an attitude rather than restate an action?
Two halves, ten marks each
Question 3 is set on Text C, the most carefully written text on the insert, and it splits cleanly in two:
| Part | Task | Objective | Marks |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3(i) | Short-answer questions of varied length, including 2-mark questions on the meaning of words printed in bold | R1 and R2 | 10 |
| 3(ii) | Language task: how the writer uses language to convey meaning and create effect. 200–250 words | R4 | 10 |
Do them in order. 3(i) makes you read Text C closely at the level of individual words, which is exactly the state of mind you need for 3(ii). Doing the language task first and then coming back to the short answers wastes a warm-up you have already paid for.
Text C
An invented Text C, in the register Cambridge uses for the third insert text — descriptive first-person non-fiction, deliberately written, with vocabulary worth stopping on. Three words are printed in bold, exactly as they would be on your insert.
3(i): the short answers
These behave exactly like the sub-questions in Question 1 — brief, precise, worth one to four marks each, half of them explicit and half of them implicit. Everything in Section 2 of this guide applies. What is new here is the type of question that Cambridge builds around the bold words, and it needs its own instructions.
The 2-mark bold-word questions
When you meet a word in bold in Text C, the paper is telling you in advance that a question is coming about that exact word. It will be phrased something like:
Using your own words, explain what the writer means by “colonised” in the third paragraph. [2]
Under the old specification these words were underlined. Under the 2027 specification they are bold. The task is identical, and so is the single most important instruction about it:
Why two marks and not one. A two-mark word question is almost always looking for two things: the core sense of the word, and the extra flavour it carries here — the connotation, the implication, the thing a plainer synonym would lose. One mark for each. That is the whole architecture of the question, and once you know it you should never write a one-clause answer to a two-mark word question again.
Their breathing sounded thin, hard and sharp-edged rather than soft, as though the cold had drained the moisture out of the sound. The word also suggests fragility — something that could snap — which makes their breathing, and by extension the people themselves, seem easily broken in that place.
Mark 1: the core sense, transferred correctly — hard, dry, sharp, not soft. Mark 2: the connotation — brittle things break, so the word imports fragility and vulnerability. Notice the answer never says “easily shattered, like glass” and stops. That is the dictionary, and on its own it does not explain what breathing has to do with glass.
The radio was producing a low, continuous, indistinct noise that nobody was listening to or could make out. Because muttering is something people do, the word also makes the radio sound faintly human and slightly resentful, talking on to itself in an empty room, which quietly reinforces how few people there are in the building.
Mark 1: the sound itself — quiet, unbroken, unclear, unattended. Mark 2: the personification and what it implies. The second half is where nearly all the lost marks on these questions live, because candidates answer “what does the word mean” and forget that the question is really “what does the word do here”.
The frost had gradually spread across the whole inner surface of the glass and taken it over completely. The word belongs to invasion and settlement, so it presents the ice as an active occupying force rather than as weather: the cold is not merely outside the hut, it has got in and is claiming territory, which makes the shelter feel far less secure than the warmth first suggested.
Mark 1: spread over and taken possession of. Mark 2: the imported idea of invasion and occupation, and the consequence — the inside is not as safe as it looked. This is a strong example of why the dictionary is not enough: “colonised means settled in a place” is technically right and misses everything.
Do not write about the effect on the reader in 3(i). Save that for 3(ii). These are meaning questions, and a paragraph about how the word “makes the reader feel cold and isolated” is answering the next question rather than this one. Two crisp sentences per bold word. Then move.
And never leave one blank because you do not know the word. You are not being tested on whether you have met “colonised” before. The sentence around it tells you nearly everything — frost, window, a spread of white ferns, thickening. Even a rough answer built from context will usually pick up one of the two marks. A blank picks up none.
3(ii): the language task
This is the ten-mark question that most students find hardest and that is, in fact, the most formulaic on the paper. The wording will be close to this:
Re-read paragraphs 2 and 3 of Text C. Explain how the writer uses language to convey meaning and to create effect. Choose three examples of words or phrases from each paragraph. Write about 200 to 250 words. [10]
Read that carefully, because it contains four instructions people ignore: re-read these paragraphs (not the whole text), three examples from each (so six in total, evenly split), meaning and effect (two things, not one), and 200 to 250 words (a real limit at both ends).
The paragraph shape that works every time
Four moves, in this order, for every example you choose. Once it is automatic you can write one in about ninety seconds.
- Quote the word or phrase — short. Three or four words at most. If you find yourself quoting a whole sentence, you have not decided which bit is doing the work. The quotation is a pointer, not evidence.
- Say what it literally means here. Not in general — in this sentence, about this thing. “Hunched” here means the huts are low, close together and slightly stooped. This step feels too obvious to write down. Write it down anyway: it is where the “convey meaning” half of the question is answered, and skipping it is why so many answers score five.
- Say what it makes the reader picture or feel. The image, the sensation, the mood. Be specific and physical. Not “it creates a vivid image” — which image? Not “it engages the reader” — the reader is engaged by everything; that sentence says nothing.
- Say why the writer wanted that. One clause connecting the effect to what the passage as a whole is doing. This is the move that separates a six from a nine. It sounds like: “…which prepares us for a place where even the buildings look like they are enduring something.”
Quote → Means → Makes me see/feel → So that. Four beats. If a paragraph of yours is missing beat two you have written a mood board; if it is missing beat four you have written a description. Both cap around half marks.
Choosing your six examples
Pick words that are doing something a plainer word would not do. The quickest test in the exam room: could you swap the word for the boring equivalent without losing anything? “The station stood a kilometre off” — “stood” is fine but unremarkable, and you cannot write ninety words about it. “Refused to grow any larger” — you cannot replace that without losing the stubbornness, so it is worth choosing.
- Choose verbs before adjectives. Verbs are where writers hide the good work, and most candidates go straight for adjectives, so verbs are less crowded ground: colonised, refused, arrived, hunched, put us down.
- Choose anything that treats a thing as if it were alive — the huts hunching, the frost colonising, the radio muttering, the warmth assaulting. These give you a guaranteed second sentence.
- Choose one phrase per paragraph that is structurally odd — a very short sentence among long ones, a delay, a repetition. Structure counts as language here and hardly anyone uses it.
- Do not choose a word you cannot say four things about. A beautiful example you have nothing to say about is worth less than an ordinary one you can unpack.
Two model paragraphs, one weak and one strong
Both are written on the same material — paragraph 2 of Text C. Read the weak one first and try to name what is missing before you read the verdict.
Ban five phrases from 3(ii) permanently. “This creates a vivid image.” “This engages the reader.” “This makes the reader want to read on.” “This is very effective.” “This helps the reader to picture the scene.” Each one is a placeholder where an effect should be. If you delete all five from a typical answer, what is left is your real mark — and the honest, slightly panicky feeling of having nothing to write is the beginning of writing something.
Replacement move: after every quotation, force yourself to finish the sentence “so the reader now…” — sees what, hears what, distrusts what, expects what. Specific verbs only.
- Did I use exactly the paragraphs the question named, and no others?
- Three examples from each paragraph, evenly split?
- Is every quotation four words or fewer?
- Does each example get all four beats — quote, literal meaning here, picture or feeling, writer’s purpose?
- Have I written “vivid”, “effective” or “engages the reader” anywhere? Replace them.
- Am I between 200 and 250 words?
- In 3(i), did the two-mark answers give the meaning in this sentence, plus its flavour?
What the question is
Question 4 is set on Text C, the same text as Question 3, and asks you to write 250 to 300 words in one of six forms: a letter, a report, a journal, a speech, an interview or an article. It is marked out of twenty: 10 for reading (R3) and 10 for writing (AO2).
You will normally be given a persona — you are a character from the text, or a witness, or an official who has read about the events. And you will be given a purpose: advise, explain, persuade, report, reflect.
You are Dr Farrow, the scientist described in Text C. Six new researchers have arrived who will spend their first winter at the station. Write the words of the speech you give to them on their first evening.
In your speech you should:
• explain what you found hardest about wintering there;
• describe what daily life in the station is actually like;
• give them advice about how to cope.
Base your speech on what you have read in Text C, but be careful to use your own words. Write 250 to 300 words. [20]
The single most important thing about Question 4
Ten of these twenty marks are reading marks, awarded under R3: analyse, evaluate and develop facts, ideas and opinions, using appropriate support from the text. The operative word is develop.
This is the question students misunderstand most badly, and the misunderstanding goes in both directions:
The target is the narrow strip between those two failures: every idea in your answer should be visibly rooted in Text C and taken somewhere the text did not take it. The text is your starting line, not your finishing line.
Do that with five or six details from Text C and the ten reading marks look after themselves. It is much easier than it sounds, because the question’s bullet points usually tell you which areas of the text to mine.
The six text types
You do not get a choice of form — the question names it. What you do get is credit for sounding like the real thing, and that credit sits in the ten writing marks. Learn this table.
| Form | Opening | Register | Structure | Ending / sign-off |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Letter | “Dear Dr Aziz,” then a first line stating why you are writing. | Set by who receives it. Formal to a stranger or an official; warm and elliptical to a friend. | Reason for writing → the substance in two or three paragraphs → what you want to happen next. | “Yours sincerely” (named recipient) or “Yours faithfully” (Dear Sir/Madam). Informal: “With love”. No addresses needed. |
| Report | A title, and often a one-line statement of purpose: “Report on winter staffing at Halstrom Station”. | Impersonal, measured, unemotional. Third person mostly. No jokes, no exclamation marks. | Sub-headings are welcome. Findings first, then analysis, then recommendations as a short numbered set. | A recommendations section, or a single sentence proposing action. No sign-off needed. |
| Journal | Straight in, mid-thought. A date is fine but never necessary. | Private, unguarded, reflective. Fragments allowed. Feelings you would not say aloud belong here. | Chronological drift is fine, but it should still travel — from what happened to what you now think about it. | Unresolved. A journal ends on a thought, a worry or a question, not on a conclusion. |
| Speech | Address the audience in the first line: “Thank you for coming”, “Good evening, all of you”. | Spoken, direct, second person. Contractions welcome. Rhetorical questions, lists of three, deliberate short sentences. | Signposted: “the first thing”, “the second thing”. An audience cannot turn back a page, so tell them where you are. | A memorable last line — short, and pointing forward. Never “thank you for listening” alone. |
| Interview | A one-line introduction of who is being interviewed, then straight into the first question. | Two distinct voices. The interviewer is brief and probing; the subject is expansive and reveals character. | Alternating Q and A, clearly labelled. Questions should get harder or more personal as it goes on. | A closing question that lets the subject say the thing they came to say. |
| Article | A headline, then an opening that hooks — an image, a detail, a startling fact. | Lively but controlled. A journalistic voice: informed, slightly opinionated, addressed to a general reader. | Hook → context → two or three developed points → a wider implication. | A closing line that widens out, or circles back to the opening image. |
Spend thirty seconds on the form, then forget it. Write the opening convention (the “Dear…”, the headline, the address to the audience), decide on your sign-off, and then concentrate on content for the rest. Candidates who obsess over layout produce beautifully formatted answers with nothing in them — and layout is a small part of ten writing marks, while content is the whole of ten reading marks.
Never put a full postal address on a letter. It wastes twenty of your 300 words and earns nothing at all.
Inhabiting a persona while proving you read the text
The persona is not decoration — it is half the writing marks, because AO2 includes using language appropriate to purpose and to engage the audience. But the persona is also the trap, because it is fun, and fun is where candidates stop referring to the text.
Three rules that keep both sets of marks alive at once:
- Let the persona have one or two consistent habits of mind, drawn from the text. Dr Farrow, in Text C, shakes hands without removing her glove, thinks for a long time before answering, and corrects the obvious assumption about the dark. So the speech should be blunt, slow to reassure, and fond of overturning what the audience expects. Two habits are plenty; more and it becomes a performance.
- Convert every textual detail into something the persona would say, not something the narrator observed. The text says the huts “refused to grow any larger for twenty minutes”. Dr Farrow would not describe that; she would warn about it, because she has watched every new arrival experience it. Same detail, different owner.
- Aim for five or six recognisable anchors from the text across the answer. The examiner needs to be able to point at your page and say “there is Text C, and there, and there”. Fewer than five and it reads as invention; but each anchor must be developed, or it reads as retelling.
Anchor, then push. Every paragraph should contain at least one thing that is unmistakeably from Text C (the anchor) and at least one thing the text never said (the push). Anchor without push = retelling. Push without anchor = fiction. Both together = R3.
The model response
Here is a full answer to the speech task above. Read it straight through first, then open the commentary underneath, which shows where each mark is being earned.
Thank you for coming. I am not going to tell you it will be fine, because you would stop listening, and because in about four months you will remember that I said it.
Here is the first thing, and nobody believes it until it happens. You have all prepared for the dark: lamps, a hundred hours of something to watch, a lecture about vitamin D. Good. Now prepare for the light, because the light is what breaks people. In November the sun stops setting; it circles you. No hour feels like an ending, and after six weeks you will find yourself in a corridor at three in the morning wondering why you are not tired. Tape your windows now, before you are homesick, not after.
The second thing is that this building is not on your side. The warmth is a shock when you come in off the ice, but the cold does not stay outside politely. It gets into the frames and the corners. Every morning somebody scrapes ferns of frost off the inner glass, and that somebody will be whoever admits first that it bothers them. Make it a rota on your first day, before it becomes a grievance.
The third thing is smaller and matters more. Somebody will leave a radio talking to itself in an empty room. Let them. In a place with no traffic and no neighbours, a voice that expects nothing from you is a kindness.
What I actually want to say is this. The plane leaves nine minutes after it lands, and for twenty minutes afterwards the huts will not appear to get any closer. Everyone stands there certain they have made a mistake. You have not. Walk. It arrives all at once.
“Thank you for coming” establishes the speech form in four words: an audience is addressed directly, in the present, out loud. The refusal to reassure — “I am not going to tell you it will be fine” — comes straight out of the persona in Text C, where Farrow corrects the obvious assumption about the dark rather than softening it. No reading mark yet, and that is fine: an opening paragraph is allowed to be pure voice, provided it is short.
The anchor is Farrow’s one piece of direct speech in Text C: “The light. Not the dark. Everybody prepares for the dark.” That is eleven words in the original and it is the only clue given about the hardest part of wintering.
The push is everything else in the paragraph, and it is where the reading marks are actually earned: the sun circling instead of setting, the loss of any hour that feels like an ending, the specific image of standing in a corridor at three in the morning, and finally a piece of practical advice — tape the windows before you are homesick. None of that is in Text C. All of it is a legitimate consequence of what Text C says. This is exactly what “analyse, evaluate and develop” means.
Look at the sentence lengths: a colon-list, then a one-word sentence (“Good.”), then a long cumulative sentence, then a short imperative. That contrast is deliberate and it is what makes it sound spoken rather than written. Speeches earn their writing marks through rhythm more than through vocabulary.
The anchor is the frost that had “colonised the inner face of the window”, plus the warmth that was “almost an assault”. Both are recognisably from Text C and neither is quoted.
The push asks the question the text never asks: if frost forms on the inside of the glass every night, somebody has to remove it every morning — and in a shared hut that job silently attaches itself to whoever complains first. Ending on “before it becomes a grievance” converts a physical detail into a social prediction. One sentence in the insert has produced a whole paragraph of new thinking, which is the most efficient thing you can do in this question.
The anchor is the radio left “muttering to itself in a corner” — a detail most candidates would ignore entirely, which is precisely why using it is worth so much. The push reframes it: not clutter, but a coping mechanism, and one the speaker gives everyone permission to have. “A voice that expects nothing from you” is the answer’s best sentence and it is also an AO2 mark, because it articulates something felt rather than merely stated.
The anchors are the plane that left within nine minutes and the huts that refused to grow larger for twenty minutes, both from the opening of Text C. The push is the interpretation Farrow puts on them: that the walk is when new arrivals privately decide they have made a mistake, and that they are wrong. The final three sentences shorten sharply — “You have not. Walk. It arrives all at once.” — which is the memorable last line a speech needs, and it also closes the loop by ending on the same image the text opened with.
Check them off: what you found hardest (paragraph 2), what daily life is actually like (paragraphs 3 and 4), advice about how to cope (the tape, the rota, the permission, the instruction to walk). All three covered, none of them announced. You should never write “Now I will tell you what daily life is like” — but you must never leave a bullet unanswered either, because the mark scheme is built on them.
What a weak Question 4 looks like
- Have I written in the exact form named — letter, report, journal, speech, interview or article — with its opening convention?
- Have I answered every bullet point in the question, without announcing that I am doing so?
- Can I point to at least five separate details that came from Text C?
- Has every one of those details been pushed somewhere the text did not go?
- Is my persona consistent, and does it match the character as the text presents them?
- Am I between 250 and 300 words?
- Have I copied any phrase of more than four words from Text C?
Plan Question 4 in three minutes, on the question paper, like this: write the three bullet points down the margin; beside each one write the detail from Text C you will anchor it to; beside that, write the “and therefore what?” in four or five words. That is nine short notes, it takes three minutes, and it guarantees you will not reach word 250 with a bullet point unanswered — which is the most common way this question goes wrong.
The two hours, minute by minute
This is the same plan as in Section 1, expanded into instructions you can follow when you are nervous and the room is silent and your brain has gone slightly stupid, which is what happens to everybody in the first five minutes of an exam.
| Clock | What you do, exactly |
|---|---|
| 0:00–0:01 | Write your four finishing times in the margin of the question paper, worked out from the clock on the wall. Q1 by +37. Q2 by +65. Q3 by +92. Q4 by +107. Do this before you read anything. |
| 0:01–0:04 | Read all four questions on the question paper. Not the insert — the questions. Circle four things: the focus phrase in 2(a), the word limits (120, 200–250, 250–300), the form named in Q4, and the paragraph numbers named in 3(ii). |
| 0:04–0:07 | Read Text A once, at normal speed. Do not annotate yet. Just understand it. Then go back and put a light mark beside anything that felt implied rather than stated — a contradiction, an odd detail, something a character does not say. |
| 0:07–0:11 | Read Text B with the focus phrase in your head and a pencil in your hand. Number every point that answers it, in the margin, as you go. Do not stop to think about wording. You should end this stage with numbers 1 to 10 or 11 down the side of the text. |
| 0:11–0:15 | Read Text C twice. First for sense — what is happening, who is speaking, what the place feels like. Second with a pencil: box the bold words, and put a tick beside any word or phrase doing something a plain word would not. Aim for eight or nine ticks; you need six. |
| 0:15–0:37 | Question 1. Straight in, no introduction. Check the mark in each bracket, make that many separate points, move on. Do not go back to admire an answer. |
| 0:37–0:42 | Question 2(b). Five attitudes, five short pieces of evidence. Five minutes, no more. |
| 0:42–0:50 | 2(a) preparation. Convert your numbered points into notes in your own words. Four or five words each. Insert still open, but you are writing notes, not sentences. |
| 0:50–1:00 | 2(a) drafting. Turn the insert face down. Write the summary from your notes, joining points with connectives, packing two or three points into each sentence. |
| 1:00–1:05 | 2(a) counting. Count the words. Actually count them, in fives, with your pen. Cut whole clauses until you are at or under 120. |
| 1:05–1:14 | Question 3(i). Short answers. Two sentences per bold word: sense here, plus flavour. No effects, no readers. |
| 1:14–1:32 | Question 3(ii). Three examples from each named paragraph, four beats each. Roughly forty words per example, which lands you inside 200–250 without counting. |
| 1:32–1:35 | Question 4 planning. Bullet points down the margin; a Text C detail beside each; an “and therefore” beside that. |
| 1:35–1:47 | Question 4 writing. Opening convention, then the three bullets in order, then a strong close. |
| 1:47–2:00 | Slack. In this order: (1) any sub-question of Q1 you skipped; (2) recount 2(a); (3) check Q4 covered all three bullets; (4) proofread for the two or three errors you personally always make. Do not rewrite anything you have already finished. |
What to do in reading time — and what not to
Fifteen minutes is a lot of time and almost everybody wastes it, in one of two ways. Some people read all three texts passively, front to back, and arrive at Question 1 with a general impression and no annotations. Others highlight energetically and produce a page that is more yellow than white, which is the same as no annotations at all.
Annotate for question focus, not generally. That single instruction is the whole of good reading-time technique, and it is why you read the questions first. Concretely:
- On Text A you are looking for implication. Mark places where somebody says one thing and does another, where a detail is oddly specific, where an expectation is set up and broken. Those are where the R2 sub-questions will be set, every time.
- On Text B you are looking for points that answer one phrase. Number them. Nothing else on Text B matters — not the interesting statistic, not the good quotation, not the bit about the history of the river. If it does not answer the focus phrase, leave it alone.
- On Text C you are looking for two different things: bold words (box them) and words worth writing ninety words about (tick them). Do not highlight whole sentences here. The language task rewards short quotations, so if you have highlighted a sentence you will have to choose inside it later anyway — choose now.
Use different marks for different jobs. Numbers for summary points, boxes for bold words, ticks for language, a wavy line for implication. Four symbols, and your insert becomes a set of instructions rather than a decorated page. Practise this on three past inserts and it becomes automatic; do it for the first time in the exam and it will slow you down.
Do not write sentences in reading time. Everything above is marks in a margin. The moment you start composing, you have stopped reading, and reading is what the next fifteen minutes were for.
The word limits, and why exceeding them costs marks
There are three limits on this paper and they behave differently. Learn which is which.
| Question | Limit | What it really means |
|---|---|---|
| 2(a) Summary | No more than 120 words | A hard ceiling. Material beyond it is effectively not rewarded. Count it, every time, with your pen. This is the one limit you must physically verify. |
| 3(ii) Language task | 200–250 words | A range with a real floor. Under 200 almost always means you did not develop your examples; over 250 usually means you are describing rather than analysing. Estimate by counting your six examples — forty words each is the target. |
| 4 Extended response | 250–300 words | A range. Under 250 usually means a bullet point is missing. Over 300 usually means you have started retelling the text, which is costing you reading marks at the same time as it costs you time. |
Why the ceiling on the summary is enforced so strictly. The task being tested is selection. If you could write 200 words you would not have to select, and the question would test nothing. The limit is the question. This is also why examiners do not reward material past the limit and why “but my best point was at the end” is not an argument — putting the best point at the end and running over is itself a selection failure.
Count in fives. Put a small dot above every fifth word as you count, and write the running total in the margin every twenty-five. It takes forty seconds for a summary and it is the cheapest insurance on the entire paper. Do not estimate by counting lines — handwriting size varies far too much for that.
What to do when you are running out of time
It will happen at least once in a mock, and possibly on the day. There is a right way to lose time and a wrong way. The wrong way is to keep writing carefully and simply not reach Question 4. Here is the right way, in priority order:
- Stop the question you are on, mid-sentence if necessary. An unfinished answer to a started question loses you one or two marks. An unstarted question loses you twenty. This is not close.
- Go to the question with the most unearned marks, not the one you like most. If Question 4 is untouched with fifteen minutes left, Question 4 is where you go, even if 3(ii) is half done.
- On a compressed Question 4, write short and cover all three bullets. A 180-word answer that anchors and develops three ideas scores far more than a 280-word answer that develops one beautifully and never reaches the third bullet.
- On a compressed 3(ii), do fewer examples properly rather than six badly. Four examples taken through all four beats will out-score six examples that stop at “this creates a vivid image”.
- On a compressed summary, write the points as compressed prose and stop. Do not abandon it and do not turn it into a list. Even a rough 90-word summary with eight points in continuous prose picks up most of the reading marks.
- Never leave a sub-question of Question 1 blank to save time. They are the cheapest marks on the paper. A one-line answer takes fifteen seconds and is worth as much as any other mark in the exam.
Ten ways students throw away Paper 1 marks
The summary focus is “the difficulties the volunteers face” and the candidate summarises what the volunteers do. Everything they write is accurate and almost none of it is creditable. This is the single largest source of lost marks on the paper, and it happens because the candidate read the text before reading the question properly.
The correct answer is physically present on the page and scores nothing, because the candidate has not shown which part of the copied sentence answers the question. Examiners describe this as failing to disentangle the answer from the text.
A [3] question receives one idea explained three ways, or a [2] question receives four answers of which the first is wrong. Marks measure separate ideas, and where a number is specified only that many responses are read.
The candidate writes 165 excellent words. The final four points, which are often the best ones, were never rewarded. Worse, the extra 45 words took two minutes that Question 3 needed.
All the points are present, so the reading marks mostly survive, but the five writing marks disappear almost entirely because the task explicitly requires continuous writing. That is a third of the question thrown away for the sake of ninety seconds.
“The writer uses a simile, which creates a vivid image and engages the reader.” The device is named, the effect is not, and the same sentence would fit any passage ever written. Answers built from these sentences hover around half marks no matter how many examples they contain.
“Colonised means to settle in a new country.” Technically true, completely wrong here, and it answers a question nobody asked. These are two-mark questions and a dictionary answer usually scores zero or one.
The persona is convincing, the writing is fluent, and every idea in the answer already existed in the insert. Ten reading marks are being assessed on development, and there is none, so a well-written answer caps around twelve out of twenty.
Two of the three bullets get 150 words each, the third gets nothing, and the candidate runs out of words at 300 having never given any advice. The mark scheme is built around those bullets, so this is a straight loss of several reading marks that good writing cannot recover.
The candidate writes full, elegant sentences with introductions for every sub-question, spends thirty-two minutes, and scores seventeen out of twenty. The eleven surplus minutes come out of Question 4, which is worth exactly the same as Question 1 and is far harder to do well in a hurry.
The candidate finishes at 1:52, sits back, and hands in a paper with an unanswered 1(d), an uncounted summary and three spellings they know they get wrong. Eight minutes of checking would have found all of it.
The last ten minutes
- Turn every page. Is there a sub-question with nothing under it?
- Count 2(a). Is the number written in the margin, and is it 120 or fewer?
- Does Question 4 open with the right convention for the form named?
- Does Question 4 touch all three bullet points?
- Are there quotation marks anywhere in the summary? Delete them.
- Have I written “vivid”, “effective” or “engages the reader” in 3(ii)?
- The three spellings I always get wrong — have I checked those specific words?
- Is my handwriting legible on the pages I wrote fastest?
One last thing, Tara. Paper 1 is not asking you to be brilliant. It is asking you to read carefully, follow instructions exactly, and stop when you have said the thing. Every single one of the eleven failures above is a process error, not a comprehension error — which means the difference between a good mark and a very good one on this paper is almost entirely within your control, and mostly consists of doing slightly less, slightly more precisely.