So you know what the English Language papers look like. But how do you write the perfect answers?

This clean and simple guide from Accolade Press offers GCSE students a unique chance to pull back the curtain and see exactly what they need to do to maximise marks and dazzle the examiners in AQA’s English Language Paper One. This edition showcases four AQA-style exam papers and offers model answers and in-depth commentary for each and every question – while also dissecting the techniques required to unlock the highest grades.

Anthony Walker-Cook has a BA (First Class) and MA (Distinction) from Durham University. He is currently finishing a PhD at UCL and was recently made an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

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SAMPLE FROM THE GUIDE

Sample Paper One (Explorations in creative reading and writing)

A) F. SCOTT FITZGERALD’S THE GREAT GATSBY; B) A SPECIAL EVENT

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F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby

SECTION A: READING

Source A: This extract is from the beginning of Chapter 3 of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. The story depicts fashionable society of 1920s America.  

* * *

There was music from my neighbour’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 hors-d’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 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 five-piece 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 up-stairs; 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 bobbed 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 centre of a group, and then, excited with triumph, glide on through the sea-change of faces and voices and color under the constantly changing light. 

* * *

Question One: Guidance

Question One assessed AO1, which is about reading comprehension. Having read the text you’ve got to synthesise (meaning, combining a variety of information) this for your own uses. You might also have to make inferences, which is drawing a conclusion from the text based on evidence.

Question One: Exemplar

Read again the first part of the source, from lines 1 to 6.

List four things about Gatsby’s guests from this part of the source. 

[4 marks]

1. They party throughout the summer.

2. Lots of guests come and go.

3. They drink champagne.

4. During the day they go swimming. 

* * *

Question Two: Guidance

Question Two continues your working through the extract, covering perhaps six to ten lines, and it wants you to analyse how a writer uses language to describe something. You should spend 10 minutes on this question.

Questions Two and Three are assessed with Assessment Objective Two (AO2), which asks you to ‘explain, comment on and analyse’ the use of language and structure. These three skills need careful definition and they do work in a hierarchy (by that, I mean explain is the lowest skill whereas analyse is the highest, with comment in the middle).

Explaining how a writer uses language means to describe, paraphrase or write about the passage in general times. At this level, students show they understand the text, but offer little by way of focusing on effect.

When a student is commenting on the text, they are showing that they can explore the writer’s methods to produce an effect, but it does not fully engage with the text enough to be called analysis.

Analysis means to break down the passage into the techniques or choices made by an author and to then write about the effect of these choices in your work. In doing so, you’ll be synthesising the material (that is, understanding and then using it to make a point). 

You will be provided with some bullet points to help stimulate your ideas. Some students use these points as a way of structuring their response, but it is worth stressing here that there is no requirement for you to cover all aspects of these points. Often, in fact, it is the students who have a narrow choice but explore such in detail that do the best.

Also, on an issue of practicality – the exam board will provide the extract for Question Two in a box above the question. Before beginning Question Two, make sure you re-read the text and annotate it: keep the text as fresh in your mind as possible!

Question Two: Exemplar

Look in detail at this extract, from lines 6 to 15 of the source:

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.

How does the writer use language here to describe the preparations for the party?

You could include the writer’s choice of:

• Words and phrases

• Language features and techniques

• Sentence forms. 

[8 marks]

From the beginning of the extract,1 Fitzgerald emphasises the large-scale organisation needed to prepare for the party. Gatsby’s Rolls-Royce, a car that signifies class and wealth, becomes an ‘omnibus’, used to shepherd people throughout the day, perhaps reducing its prestige or emphasising his wealth.2 Meanwhile the simile that describes how the station wagon ‘scampered like a brisk yellow bug’ stresses how fast the vehicle has to move to collect the ever-growing number of guests from the train station.

This is then matched by the point that ‘eight servants, including an extra gardener’ work3 all day to repair the damage done before. Not only does beginning the sentence with ‘And’ imply the long list of jobs that need doing before each evening’s events but also in using ‘ravages’ to describe the repair work needed Fitzgerald suggests the violent damage these parties do to Gatsby’s property.  

Furthermore,4 Fitzgerald focuses on the ‘crates of oranges and lemons’ that arrive to be juiced, the sheer mass of which is emphasised through the repetition of the same line in line 12.5 By Monday, these fruits leave ‘in a pyramid of pulpless halves’, with Fitzgerald’s metaphor showing how these parties achieve a grandeur of something akin to the ancient Egyptians. The metaphor also suggests, then, that these parties have an almost mythical status. But Fitzgerald also describes the mundane activity that provides such a pile of fruit: a servant pushes a button for each piece of fruit to be squashed, with the repetition of ‘two hundred’ within the same sentence stressing the repetitive nature of the work. Though these parties are lavish, therefore, Fitzgerald’s language actually stresses the hard work needed to prepare for them.6  

* * *

Question Three: Guidance

Though students are often confused about Question Three – in 2018 many did not achieve more than 4 marks out of the maximum 8 – the skillset required is the exact same as Question Two: that is, your whole answer should be filled with analysis (or, AO2). Meaning, you need to offer specific comments on the effect of the structural features used by the author. 

Everything I’ve outlined above on Question Two regarding writing on effect also applies for Question Three. It has been noted that students who do better in Question Three tend not to overcomplicate it with subject terminology but are receptive to simpler changes. Why, for example, has a writer used a short sentence? For effect? For emphasis? To capture an emotion? Perhaps, it all depends on the context of the passage. But whenever you read a text, be alert to how it is structured – does it have short or long sentences, or extended paragraphs or brief ones – and think about how that influences the content. If you can think in this way, then you’re analysing structure. 

Aim to spend around 10 minutes on this question, just like Question Two.

Question Three: Exemplar 

You now need to think about the whole of the source.

This text is from the beginning of a chapter.

How has the writer structure the text to interest you as a reader?

You could write about:

• What the writer focuses your attention on at the beginning of the source.

• How and why the writer changes this focus as the source develops

• Any other structural features that interest you.

[8 marks]

Fitzgerald uses structure to interest the reader by accretively* adding points to the description of the party and its preparations. The opening of the source1 is broad and generic but by the end of the extract it is clear that more than just ‘music’ was to be found at Gatsby’s house. 

There is an attention to detail that draws the narrator in only for them to be distracted by something else: for example, the third paragraph begins by noting the lights in Gatsby’s ‘enormous garden’ before moving onto the buffet tables laden with food and then onto2 the intoxicating bar in the main hall. This quick change of focus is also aided by Fitzgerald’s sentences, which are often long and sprawling and demonstrate the narrator’s (and our own) fascination with this luxurious world.

Fitzgerald also uses repetition3 to stress how the orchestra was ‘no thin five-piece affair’, describing ‘a whole pitful of oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and coronets and piccolos, and low and high drums.’ The writer uses ‘and’ to add instruments to the group, slowly building it up and overall focusing on its size.

By the final paragraph, the intoxicating party is in full swing, the focus shifting across the faceless attendees. In contrast to the long sentences earlier that described the preparations for the party, here Fitzgerald litters his sentences with commas,4 creating short, pithy statements that capture the experiences (‘groups change more swiftly, swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath’) of each attendee. By the end of the source, then, readers are also experiencing the ‘constantly changing light’ described by the author.5 

* If something is ‘accretive’, it means it is gradually growing or increasing. Be aware of how lists accretively add to the overall tone of the passage.

* * *

Question Four: Guidance

This is the final question for Section A, and the first thing you should note is that it is worth 20 marks – so it’s worth 25% of the entire Paper – therefore it is meant to be challenging and it is important that you get your timings right during the exam so that you have enough time to spend on this answer. You need to spend at least 20 minutes on this question. 

This question is asking you to evaluate both the ideas in the source and the methods. AO4 is about evaluation: so, you need to assess to what extent the writer achieves the purpose and message implicit in the work.

It also requires you to use textual references: again, this means short and useful quotations that aide your point. Referring to the text in detail also counts towards this. 

All the skills you have practiced before – analysis of language and structure – can be used again here (though the analytical points you made in Question Three should not really be repeated) but now it is about the success of the effect of these features on the reader. 

It is important, therefore, that you build in evaluative language into your response, with words and phrases such as: ‘successfully’, ‘powerfully’, ‘clever use of’, ‘this is effective because…’, ‘this suggests…’, ‘the writer’s creative use of…’, ‘innovative’, ‘inventive’.

You want to be using this language from the opening line of your response. 

Question Four: Exemplar

Focus this part of your answer on the second part of the source, from line 20 to the end.

Upon reading this extract, a student said, ‘It is hard to know whether or not the narrator is attracted to or disgusted by the party.’ 

To what extend do you agree? 

In your response, you could:

• Evaluate how the writer depicts the party.

• Consider how the guests are portrayed.

• Support your response with references to the text.

[20 marks]

From the beginning of the extract, Fitzgerald carefully balances tones of attraction and disgust, leaving the reader unsure exactly of how the narrator is responding to the party.1 This tonal effect is achieved often through unsure word choices or occasional phrases that complicate the description of the party. For example, the bar in the main hall has drinks ‘so long forgotten that most of his female guests were too young to know one from another.’ Whilst there is a mystical quality to these drinks, they are also redundant and inaccessible to these young women. This ambivalence continues into the description of the house, which has rooms and verandas that ‘are gaudy with primary colors’. Given the sentence goes on to describe the hair styles of the party-goers (‘bobbed in new ways’),2 it could be suggested that the ‘gaudy’ primary colours refers to the clothing worn by the guests. Also the detail that cars are ‘parked five deep in the drive’ not only shows how many people are at the party but also how busy and full the house must be. This tone of excess continues throughout the extract, making it difficult to define how the narrator feels about the party.3

Once the extract shifts into the events of the party, this tone of tired wonder continues. There are ‘floating rounds of cocktails’ moving around the space, suggesting a magical power behind them. But, the narrator is also unable to focus: through a long sentence connected by the repetition of ‘and’, Fitzgerald shifts4 from the drinks to the ‘casual innuendo and introductions’ that are being shared to the ‘enthusiastic meetings between women’. Small details also suggest these people are all vapid: the introductions are ‘forgotten on the spot’.5 For all the lustre of the event, then, Fitzgerald continues to cleverly provide hints throughout that all is not as glamorous as it seems. 

The final paragraph of the extract begins by describing the setting sun, but Fitzgerald uses this moment to emphasise the amount of alcohol consumed during the party: the earth ‘lurches away from the sun’, as if the earth itself is drunk, with ‘lurches’ imbuing the lines with suggestions of a lack of control and again complicating the reader’s impression of the party.6 The party increasingly becomes overwhelming, with conversation described as an ‘opera of voices’ that moves ‘a key higher’; Fitzgerald’s metaphor juxtaposes the traditional concept of the opera as a higher form of singing with its actual presence here from the conversations of the guests. Amidst this cacophony, the groups of guests are said to ‘swell’, which implies a pregnancy to the party that threatens to burst. There is thus a tension in the air that makes reading the extract almost uncomfortable. 

But then, in the final part of the extract, Fitzgerald shifts focus7 to some girls ‘who weave here and there among the stouter and more stable’ guests. The use of the word ‘weave’ adds a delicacy to their movement, which matches with the later verb ‘glide’ that describes how they move from one group to the other. Fitzgerald deliberately holds the narrator’s attraction to and disgust with the party in tight tension throughout the extract;8 in doing so, he powerfully highlights the beauty of the event amidst the swirl of ‘gaudy’ and lurching guests.9 

A Special Event

SECTION B: CREATIVE WRITING

Question Five: Guidance

Now, I’m no creative writer, and this question can be daunting for students. But I want to suggest a way around them. To begin with, practice makes perfect and whilst you might not have time to write out each response, you can at least plan a series of responses to various generic prompts. Just engaging your imagination in this way can be a really useful exercise. 

The marks for Question Five are split into two: AO5 (Content and Organisation) and AO6 (Technical Accuracy). 

The terms of AO5 can be split and independently defined: ‘Content’ refers to your register (that is, the tone and vocabulary you use to grab your audience) and the way in which your piece is matched to its purpose (hence those little pre-ambles about entering an online or newspaper competition). ‘Organisation’ meanwhile refers to your use of structure alongside ideas that are, for top marks, compelling and convincing. 

AO6 is what we might reductively call Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar (SPaG), but at the top of the mark scheme it is about both accuracy and using a range of sentence structures and ambitious vocabulary. To access the top end of the scheme, there also needs to be a range of punctuation used (ideally including brackets, colons and semi-colons).

As I said in the answer to Questions Two and Three, the techniques you analyse in your English Language GCSE are the same as the English Literature GCSE. Just as you analyse how others use these techniques for effect (always for effect), you should (or, even, must) use these in your creative writing response. Through the three examples presented in this book  I’m going to show you some of the ways you write these techniques into your own creative writing.

You may be presented with a picture and the prompt to ‘Describe’ something based on the image. Carefully look at this picture: are there any details that surprise you? Try and put that picture into motion so that you can think what happens next (you might also think what has happened before). Again, practice makes perfect: take random pictures from newspapers or online articles and spend 10 minutes writing a description. With some hard work, you’ll soon find that Question Five is not as bad as it seems (and if I can write four short stories, you certainly can).  

As with the reading analysis I’ve included a commentary on the left-hand side to show you my creative process – hopefully from this you’ll realise that there can be a formula (or at least a method) to writing creatively that makes the task somewhat easier. If you know your techniques well, you can write them into your work. 

* * *

Question Five: Exemplar

Write a story about a special event.  

(24 marks for content and organisation

16 marks for technical accuracy)

[40 marks]

With another loud explosion1 the sparks spread into the air. Glimmering arms of red, green and gold announce themselves with great aplomb as an awed silence passed throughout the crowd.

The echoes of Big Ben chiming2 in the New Year come from the television indoors, which also shows crowds of people packed in like sardines.2 Here the garden is littered with members of my family: my son with his partner, my other son alone, and my daughter with her (rather drunk)3 husband. 

Why are people so obsessed with celebrating the New Year? What’s so special about celebrating the unknown? What’s so exciting about another year?4 

As clouds of blue smoke float into the night sky, it’s easy to see an ugliness: each firework lets off more sparks that look like glittering tentacles reaching into the coming year.5  

Tired of the biting6 cold, I move towards the backdoor. That’s another thing about this time of year: why does so much of it necessitate being outdoors? It starts with Halloween, that brooding evening of fancy dress, and goes on throughout what some people have the gall to call “the most wonderful time of the year”. 7

I shuffle8 towards the warmth of my son’s house, extending my new walking stick (a sick gift from ‘Santa’) with each step. There’s a slight step into his new, modern kitchen. With an island of black stone, exposed lights and underfloor heating (not that I’d know, I’m wearing my trusted slippers), it’s impressive, but cold. Not in terms of temperature (that’s what the heating is for),9 but in its character; it’s metallic and sterile.  

Then I see her.10 Slumped awkwardly in the armchair, my grand-daughter, aged five, dressed in a pink tutu with a yellow jumper. Eyes closed, chubby cheeks and her fist tightly gripping a purple crayon. 

No matter how annoyed or angry I might feel at the world, seeing her always makes me smile. 11

She is content with some mushed banana and some quiet music. In the years to come, it’s likely I too will be happy with the same things. A declarative bang outside causes her small eyes to barely open before, with a resigned sigh, she settles comfortably into what seems a painless contortion.12 

Steps outside signal that the “display” has finished (hopefully my son has not singed any of his remaining hair away)13 and the drunken masses return to what had become a place of calm. Smatterings of “Wasn’t that fun,” “It’s been so nice to see everyone again” and “Mum would’ve loved that”14 can be heard. 

But as they take the small step in, what they see surprises them: their miserable father sits in his recently-deceased wife’s favourite chair with his grand-daughter firmly in his arms, their chests rising and falling in unison.15

Alternatively, you can purchase and download an electronically delivered PDF directly from us here.

QUOTES FROM OUR CUSTOMERS

This essay guide offers helpful advice on how to approach Paper One - fiction. It offers model answers along with helpful tips and provides further explanation on the marking scheme and how to tailor your essays for both the content and accuracy expected, ensuring these marks are picked up.

This guide acknowledges the challenges faced by students and hopes to provide the skills to increase confidence in tackling the questions. It approaches essay writing technique from many angles and offers detailed guidance in the form of four worked exams. It will prove very helpful for parents hoping to support their child due to the level of detail included.

I have taught English Language GCSE for 9 years and this is an excellent guide for any student looking to achieve higher grades. The exemplar material is grade 9 standard, but it should be accessible to understand for anyone aiming for a grade 6 or above.

What sets this book apart from other revision guides is there is no 'waffle' - after a clear introduction, the book jumps straight into a sample paper and exemplar responses. Each response is annotated in an accessible way. I often find annotated examples overwhelming with the number of different colours/boxes/codes, but here there are simple numbered annotations explaining in first person what choices the writer has made.

A student who is self-motivated to try these questions for themselves, study the example responses, then try again, would make rapid progress on this paper and could go into an exam feeling confident.

This is an excellent resource. Clearly written with in-depth examples relating to the actual techniques students need to demonstrate.

As a tutor/teacher I am recommending my tutees/students purchase this resource as it stretches and challenges those students who are aiming to achieve the highest marks possible.

I have bought numerous English Language guides and this one is clearly different as here is a lot of focus on the skills needed.

As an educator I would highly recommend.

Great resource and really helpful for Year 11. Offers a range of interesting, challenging and engaging texts.

I have so far used this in 3 schools. The model responses are great and can be easily tailored to meet the needs of students. My students can work more independently with the various models provided and they do find the resources engaging. Great book to invest in!

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