Back

Illustrative example only. This isn't a real student submission. It shows the kind of feedback ExamPass.ai gives on both strong and weak answers.

GCSE English Language (AQA) · Paper 1: Explorations in Creative Reading and Writing

Sample marked answer · matches the sample paper and mark scheme

Sample marked paper

Half the marks are within reach

You know the material; it's the marks you missed that are worth the work.

48 / 80 marks
Question 1
3 / 4 marks

Read again the first part of the Source, from lines 1 to 9. List four things you learn about the Foundry District from these lines.

What we read from the handwriting
1. The chimneys are in crooked rows. 2. The sky is the colour of old pewter. 3. The canal is black with oil floating on the top of it. 4. He left the place when he was seventeen.

The first three are clean. Each one is a separate detail and each one sits inside the nine lines you were pointed at, so that's three marks. The fourth is true and it still scores nothing, because it comes from line 10 onwards and the question fences you into lines 1 to 9. The mark you wanted was two sentences below your third point: a child crouched over a drain, poking at it with a stick.

Strengths
  • Three points with no overlap between them, which is where this question usually leaks marks
  • Paraphrased instead of copying sentences out, which is faster and perfectly acceptable here
Areas to improve
  • Read the line reference twice before you start listing. Point 4 is accurate and it still earns nothing
  • There are nine usable details inside those nine lines. You need four, so there's never a reason to go looking further down the page
Question 2
Level 47 / 8 marks

Read again lines 10 to 20 ('I had left this place at seventeen...' to '...mean, purposeful, unyielding'). How does the writer use language to show the narrator's feelings about returning to the Foundry District? You could include the writer's choice of: words and phrases; language features and techniques; sentence forms.

What we read from the handwriting
The writer keeps trying to name the feeling and keeps failing. "not nostalgia, not grief, and not the relief I had privately hoped for" is three attempts in one sentence and every one of them is a negative, so we watch him rule things out without ever arriving at what is actually there. The reader ends up as stuck as he is. "The streets had the quality of a memory that refuses to soften" is the strongest part for me. "refuses" hands the decision to the memory. He isn't remembering the place, the place is holding its shape against him, and that is much worse than just being sad about coming back. He also puts his younger self next to the man standing there now. At seventeen he was "full of contempt for its smallness", which is a strong feeling even if it's an unpleasant one. At thirty-four there is nothing he can name. The distance between those two is the point. The paragraph then ends on "mean, purposeful, unyielding". No connectives, just adjectives and a full stop, so it shuts like a door. "unyielding" tells us the district hasn't given him an inch, which means the last word of the paragraph belongs to the place and not to him.

Four methods, each one carrying a short quotation inside your own sentence, and every one of them gets to an effect. The paragraph on "refuses" is the best thing here. You take a single verb and use it to move the power from the narrator to the place, and that is the difference between analysing a choice and naming one. What's missing is sitting inside a quotation you already copied out. "privately" is doing more work than the negatives around it: he hoped for relief and then hid the hope, and the person he hid it from was himself. One sentence on that word and this is 8 out of 8.

Strengths
  • Quotations are short and built into your sentences instead of parked in front of them
  • Every method gets an effect on the reader. None of them stop at the name of the technique
  • You go after the small words. "refuses" and "unyielding" are the two doing the most work in that paragraph
Areas to improve
  • "privately" is already inside the quotation you used and you walk straight past it. It's the word that turns emotional blankness into something he's concealing
Question 3
Level 12 / 8 marks

You now need to think about the whole of the Source. How has the writer structured the text to interest you as a reader? You could write about: what the writer focuses 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.

What we read from the handwriting
It starts by describing the Foundry District, the chimneys and the canal and how every building is the same colour. Then it moves on to him leaving at seventeen and coming back at thirty four with no feelings about it. Then he meets Mrs Hartley who is still at number nine and she says he took his time. Then it is night and he is lying on the bed listening to the hammer presses going thoom thoom thoom. At the end he walks to the mill pond and there is a man watching him, and the writer stops there without telling you who he is, which makes you want to read on.

This is an accurate account of what happens, in the right order, and that's the problem. Question 3 pays for how the extract is built, and a walk from the first line to the last is content. That's what's holding it at Level 1. Your two marks come from the last thing you wrote: noticing that the writer stops before you find out who the man is means you've spotted a structural decision, even though you haven't named it or said why it's there. Now do that on purpose, four times. The opening paragraph describes the district before we know anybody is looking at it, so the place arrives before the person does. At "I had left this place at seventeen" the writer turns inward and we move from what he can see to what he can't feel. Mrs Hartley interrupts that with the only spoken line in the whole extract. And the night section swaps sight for sound, which gives the district a pulse just before the final paragraph puts a stranger beside it.

Strengths
  • You've read the extract properly and you have the order right, which is more than half of what this question needs
  • Spotting that the writer stops before you learn who the man is counts as a structural observation, even unnamed
Areas to improve
  • Name the decision, then say what it does to the reader. The marks are attached to the second half of that sentence
  • Plan four structural moments and give each one a paragraph. Working start to finish will pull you into retelling every time
  • You already found the ending. What's missing is why the writer put it there
Question 4
Level 313 / 20 marks

Focus this part of your answer on the final paragraph of the Source (from 'In the morning I walked to the mill pond...' to the end). A student, having read this section of the text, said: 'The writer makes the ending feel deeply unsettling. The reader is left with a real sense that something threatening is about to happen.' To what extent do you agree with this view? In your response, you could: write about your own impressions of the ending; evaluate how the writer has created these impressions; support your opinions with references to the text.

What we read from the handwriting
I agree that the ending is unsettling. "The water was the colour of a bruise" is the first sign, because a bruise is damage that has already happened, so before anything else occurs in the paragraph the writer has told us something has gone wrong. The mist is "refusing to lift", which is the same word he used about the memory earlier in the extract, and it hides whatever is under the water. You can't see into the pond and you can't see into him either, he says he stood there "thinking of nothing I could afterwards recall". The man is the frightening part and it's because he isn't doing anything. "quite still, watching me" has no movement in it at all. Most threatening people in stories come towards you and this one just stands there, which is worse. The last line is what leaves you unsettled. "he knew exactly who I was" and the narrator doesn't know him back. The writer stops the extract on that, so we never find out, and you're left holding it.

Four methods, all of them evidenced, and the reading of the man is genuinely good. "Most threatening people in stories come towards you and this one just stands there" is your own thought and it's the right one, because the stillness is what does the damage. Picking up "refusing" as a repeat of a verb the writer had already used shows you're reading the ending against the rest of the source, which is what this question is for. What holds it at 13 is that you agree in your first line and then never come back to check. "To what extent" is asking you to test the statement, and the paragraph hands you the material to test it with. Three moorhens picking their way along the opposite bank is an ordinary morning detail. He also stands there long enough to lose track of time, which isn't what a frightened man does. The threat is only unmistakable in the final three sentences. Say that the writer keeps the paragraph close to peaceful and then turns it at "When I turned to leave", and you've stopped agreeing and started arguing. That's Level 4.

Strengths
  • One clear line on the statement, held from the opening sentence to the last
  • Quotations are short and sit inside your own sentences
  • Linking "refusing" back to the earlier use of that verb is the kind of whole-text connection that lifts an answer clear of Level 2
  • The point about stillness is yours and it's the best thing on the page
Areas to improve
  • "To what extent" is a question and it needs answering. Full agreement is allowed, but only once you've shown you tested it
  • The calm half of the paragraph is your strongest evidence and you don't use it. The moorhens and the lost time read as an ordinary morning, right up to the final three sentences
  • All four methods get about the same space. The man and the last line are where the marks are, so let those two take most of the answer
Question 5
Content Level 3 · Accuracy Level 223 / 40 marks

Look at the image provided, showing an abandoned railway station at dusk. Write a description suggested by this image. [24 marks for content and organisation + 16 marks for technical accuracy of language = 40 marks]

What we read from the handwriting
The last train out of here left a long time ago and nothing has come since. The rails are still down under the weeds, two thin lines running off into the dark, and the sleepers between them have gone soft and black with rain. At the far end the signal still has its arm down, which means stop, although there is nothing left to stop. The building has lost most of its windows and the glass that is left holds the last of the light and throws it back in bits, the door hangs open on one hinge and knocks whenever the wind gets behind it. Someone boarded up the ticket window but the board has come away at the corner. Inside there is a smell of wet paper and rust. The canopy is the part I keep looking at. The corregated roof has gone through in two places so you can see straight up at the sky through the iron ribs, and against what is left of the light the whole thing is a silouette of something picked clean. Birds live up there now. The stations name board is still bolted to the wall underneath. The paint has gone and you would have to already know what it said to read it.

Content and organisation, 15 out of 24. There's real control in this, and you dodge the obvious version of the image, which is a paragraph of adjectives about how sad an empty station looks. "gone soft and black with rain" is exact. So is "you would have to already know what it said to read it", which gets years of neglect across without using the word. What keeps it in Level 3 is shape. You take the station a piece at a time, rails then building then canopy then the sign, so it reads as a tour of the site instead of a piece that goes somewhere. And your best image is the one you spend first. A signal still telling trains to stop when there are no trains left to stop is a genuinely good idea, and it's buried in a subordinate clause in your opening paragraph. Put it last and the description closes instead of stopping. Technical accuracy, 8 out of 16. Four errors, all of them catchable in a reread. "corregated" is corrugated. "silouette" is silhouette. The name board belongs to the station, so it needs an apostrophe. And in your second paragraph you join two complete sentences with a comma. None of that is a writing problem. It's a proofreading problem, and it's costing you a level.

Strengths
  • You trust small physical detail. Sleepers gone soft and black with rain does more than any amount of atmosphere would
  • The signal with its arm down is your own idea and it's the strongest thing in the piece
  • The last line lands, and it lands because you underplay it
Areas to improve
  • "corrugated" and "silhouette" are both worth learning properly. They turn up whenever you write about a place like this
  • The name board belongs to the station, so it's "station's"
  • "throws it back in bits, the door hangs open on one hinge" is two sentences joined with a comma. Use a full stop, or a semicolon
  • Move the signal to the end. As it stands the piece stops. With the signal there, it finishes

An illustrative example. Before marking, you check what we read from your handwriting, and it's marked against the paper's own mark scheme.

Back