8700/1
Paper 1 Explorations in Creative Reading and Writing
Edusites English Practice Paper
Time Allowed: 1 hour 45 minutes
Materials
For this paper you must have:
- Source A
- Source B
Instructions
- Answer all questions
- Use black ink or ball-point pen
- You must answer the questions in the spaces provided
- Do not write outside the box around each page or on blank pages
- Do all rough work in this book. Cross out any work you do not wish to be marked
- You must refer to the insert book provided
- You must not use a dictionary
Information
- The marks for the questions are shown in brackets
- The maximum mark for this paper is 80
- There are 40 marks Section A and 40 marks for Section B
- You are reminded of the need for good English and clear presentation in your answers
- You will be assessed on your reading in Section A
- You will be assessed on your writing in Section B
Advice
- You are advised to spend about 15 minutes reading through the source and the five questions you have to answer
- You should make sure you leave sufficient time to check your answers
Section A: Reading
- Answer all the questions in this section.
- You are advised to spend about 45 minutes on this section.
Question 1
Read lines 1-5 (para one) and write four things you learn about Ciaran.
- He is the older brother
- He does not physically resemble his brother
- He has a fat/bloated/big stomach
- His shirts do not fit/His stomach pokes through his shirt
- He likes ale/pub food/takeaways/tobacco (one mark for each- so three marks for all three even if on one line)
- He is lazy/doesn’t like exercise (one mark for each- so two marks for both even if on one line)
Do not accept
- he is a man
- he has had a bad childhood
- he is old
- he doesn’t like being fat
- anything from elsewhere in the text
Question 2
Read lines 6-12 How does the writer use language here to describe Niall?
You could include the writer’s choice of:
- words and phrases
- language features and techniques
- sentence forms
- cautiously? implies nervousness, hesitation, apprehension- he isn’t sure about getting in with his brother, perhaps doesn’t trust him or want to be there with him. OR he is cautious about the water or the boat.
- opposite: small, dark, careful? implies that Niall is perhaps a more risk averse person/doesn’t like taking risks/thinks more of others. ‘small’ could imply that he isn’t as strong as Ciaran.
- He seems childlike “youthfulness? “never greyed? “shy kid? more innocent than Ciaran, and perhaps vulnerable and more likely to be taken advantage of.
- His actions are that of someone who is scared/nervous “leg jiggled? and hands “taptaptapped? as if he can’t sit still, feels uncomfortable, uneasy- doesn’t trust his brother, or doesn’t want to be in the boat.
- His voice ‘lost’ as if he cannot be found, he doesn’t have confidence to speak, feels weak in front of his brother.
- The stones/wishing well coins are symbolic of his discomfort there and how he wants to be somewhere else. A wishing well is a childish notion, and fits with Niall’s whimsical personality.
Niall cautiously stepped into the boat. He was his brother’s opposite: small, dark, careful. His face was marked with freckles, and they gave him a misleading look of youthfulness. He had pale blue eyes that always seemed to be wet with tears, and when he tried to look someone directly, his head ducked to the side with uncertainty. His brown hair had never greyed, nor thinned, and instead had continued to sprout in thick, soft, unruly curls all over his head. When nervous, his hands would run through his curls, rather boyishly, as if he were a shy kid on the first day of school. Sat in the boat, his leg jiggled up and down, and his hands taptaptapped the wooden sides. When Niall spoke, it came out as a hoarse whisper, as if his voice had become lost somewhere between the vocal chords and the mouth. He looked at the stones at the bottom of the lough shimmer in the sunlight like coins at the bottom of the wishing well. ‘I wish…’ he thought, ‘I wish…’.
Question 3
You now need to think about the whole of the source.
The text is from an entire short story.
How has the writer structured 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
- Through the use of third person limited, we can tell Niall is the main character, and the story is told giving his POV, and the story is about how he feels about his brother.
- Ciaran and Niall are set up as two opposing characters to contrast each other- Ciaran is cruel and ruthless, whereas Niall is more unsure and smaller- an unfair match and would create sympathy for Niall’s predicament.
- Use of flashback to show how the past (stealing the car/prison) has now influenced how Niall feels about Ciaran, and why he is still so angry with him.
- The first killing of the fish foreshadows Ciaran’s death later on in the source.
- The pathetic fallacy- growing storm clouds and then the rain when Ciaran dies to convey the sadness of the death.
Ciaran set up his rod, and load the bait onto his hook, and Niall watched him. The grubs wriggled and squirmed as the metal plunged into their centres, and in that moment, Niall felt like the worm- trapped and pathetic; at the mercy of someone bigger, stronger, harder. Fire waved up inside, and then washed away again. He went to speak, to ask Ciaran what he’d been doing with himself all these years, but the words vanished on his tongue…still the silence hung between them.
“Are yis gonna have a go or wha’?? he spat, opening a can of lager. And Niall, stirred from his thoughts grunted in reply, and began setting up his own rod. The silence had now been broken, so Ciaran rambled on about how good the fishing was here, and how his man down in Cork had told him this was the place to go to to catch trout- and how much better it was than the limestone lakes in the south. Mayflies buzzed overhead, and Ciaran swatted them away irritably.
Question 4
Focus this part of your answer on the end of the source, from line 15 to the end.
A student, having read this section of the text said, ‘This part of the story, where Ciaran falls overboard and Niall doesn’t help him, makes you think Niall is justified in his actions and is right to not save him.’
To what extent do you agree?
In your response you could:
- consider your own impression of the characters
- evaluate how the writer creates the impressions of the characters
- support your response with references to the text
Niall was right
- The writer uses a flashback to when Niall was a child and being coerced into committing a crime by his older brother- who then abandoned him. The flashback implies that this event was very distressing for Niall as he still thinks about it, and explains why when Ciaran fell he did not save him.
- Characterisation of Ciaran as villainous, he was “bigger, stronger, harder? and Niall is the worm on the hook, being used by Ciaran- unable to move/trapped/a minor character in Ciaran’s life.
- The reversal of fortunes- Niall was imprisoned, and then at the end it is Ciaran who is taken prisoner by the water. The water is natural, and it is as if nature is correcting the wrong that has been done to Niall by taking Ciaran prisoner.
- “Niall was always going to get a cut of the money to the next time…the next time…definitely the next time…But where was Ciaran when Niall was arrested? Gone. Legged it? Ciaran as an unreliable brother, taking advantage of his little brother, and then not there for him when he needed him.
- The lough setting is symbolic of the loneliness and distance between the two brothers- isolated in nature and trying to rekindle their relationship. The lough could be symbolic of the womb/truth, and an attempt to join them together fails as Ciaran cannot talk about where he has been/why he left, and Niall cannot bring himself to ask.
Niall was wrong
- Niall is anxious from the start- could he have misread Ciaran’s behaviour? His eyes are “watery? and is depicted as very childlike. Niall’s reaction was over the top, and should have helped his brother out, as he had no right to decide he should die.
- Niall had committed the crime and was punished, Ciaran had no reason to also take the blame. The use of third person narration limits the sympathy to Niall as we never hear Ciaran’s version of events.
- Niall is unwilling to ask Ciaran the reason why he has been gone- if he had asked him, then he might have had a good reason. Niall’s “rage flooded him? and he felt as if he were “having a heart attack?. This implies that Niall cannot deal with stress well, and possibly had always intended to kill his brother.
- Niall is the trout: he is part of the circle of life, and he should accept that Ciaran is older and more powerful and the ‘fisherman’ whereas Niall is the catch, and sacrificed for the sake of the success of others.
