Both English language papers set by the AQA examination board have had the same format for a number of years and we have no reason to believe that they'll be changing it any time soon. The first four questions are based on a passage of text (a piece of fiction in the first paper, a fact-based passage in the second), and question 5 is creative writing based on either a picture or some written prompt.
The first four questions always follow the same format.
Question 1 always asks you to produce four facts from the passage, and is worth 4 marks (one per fact). This question is phrased one of two ways:
There's not much that we can say about this question, other than it's worth noting the strategy in the second of these two options if you want to change your mind. You will (I assume) be sitting a paper-based exam and you select the four true statements by colouring in ovals using a pencil. The paper gives a standard set of instructions if you want to change an answer that you have coloured in, and I suggest that you become familiar with this list before sitting the exam so you don't have to waste time reading them when the clock is ticking.
Choose four statements below which are true.
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Question 2 always takes the following format, and is always worth 8 marks:
"How does the writer use language to describe XXX?"
Here are things that you can consider when answering this question:
I have heard from an authoratitive source that the best answers to this question should contain somewhere between 100 and 120 words, although, of course, the quality of what you write is more important than the quantity of words.
It was Mrs Parsons, the wife of a neighbour on the same floor. ('Mrs' was a word somewhat discountenanced by the Party — you were supposed to call everyone 'comrade' — but with some women one used it instinctively.) She was a woman of about thirty, but looking much older. One had the impression that there was dust in the creases of her face. Winston followed her down the passage. These amateur repair jobs were an almost daily irritation. Victory Mansions were old flats, built in 1930 or thereabouts, and were falling to pieces. The plaster flaked constantly from ceilings and walls, the pipes burst in every hard frost, the roof leaked whenever there was snow, the heating system was usually running at half steam when it was not closed down altogether from motives of economy. Repairs, except what you could do for yourself, had to be sanctioned by remote committees which were liable to hold up even the mending of a window-pane for two years.
'Of course it's only because Tom isn't home,' said Mrs Parsons vaguely.
The Parsons' flat was bigger than Winston's, and dingy in a different way. Everything had a battered, trampled-on look, as though the place had just been visited by some large violent animal. Games impedimenta — hockey-sticks, boxing-gloves. a burst football, a pair of sweaty shorts turned inside out — lay all over the floor, and on the table there was a litter of dirty dishes and dog-eared exercise-books. On the walls were scarlet banners of the Youth League and the Spies, and a full-sized poster of Big Brother. There was the usual boiled-cabbage smell, common to the whole building, but it was shot through by a sharper reek of sweat, which-one knew this at the first sniff, though it was hard to say how was the sweat of some person not present at the moment. In another room someone with a comb and a piece of toilet paper was trying to keep tune with the military music which was still issuing from the telescreen.
'It's the children,' said Mrs Parsons, casting a half-apprehensive glance at the door. 'They haven't been out today. And of course-'
She had a habit of breaking off her sentences in the middle. The kitchen sink was full nearly to the brim with filthy greenish water which smelt worse than ever of cabbage. Winston knelt down and examined the angle-joint of the pipe. He hated using his hands, and he hated bending down, which was always liable to start him coughing. Mrs Parsons looked on helplessly.
'Of course if Tom was home he'd put it right in a moment,' she said. 'He loves anything like that. He's ever so good with his hands, Tom is.'
Parsons was Winston's fellow-employee at the Ministry of Truth. He was a fattish but active man of paralysing stupidity, a mass of imbecile enthusiasms — one of those completely unquestioning, devoted drudges on whom, more even than on the Thought Police, the stability of the Party depended. At thirty-five he had just been unwillingly evicted from the Youth League, and before graduating into the Youth League he had managed to stay on in the Spies for a year beyond the statutory age. At the Ministry he was employed in some subordinate post for which intelligence was not required, but on the other hand he was a leading figure on the Sports Committee and all the other committees engaged in organizing community hikes, spontaneous demonstrations, savings campaigns, and voluntary activities generally. He would inform you with quiet pride, between whiffs of his pipe, that he had put in an appearance at the Community Centre every evening for the past four years. An overpowering smell of sweat, a sort of unconscious testimony to the strenuousness of his life, followed him about wherever he went, and even remained behind him after he had gone.
Which four of the following statements are true? (4 marks):