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Question 7(a): Synthesising Similarities Practice Questions

Question 1

6 marks

Text 1

In the 1930s the writer George Orwell worked part-time as an assistant in a second-hand bookshop in London. In this essay he looks back on the customers he served there and on what the job did to his own feelings about books.

1When I worked in a second-hand bookshop—so easily pictured, if you don’t
work in one, as a kind of paradise where charming old gentlemen browse
eternally among calf-bound folios—the thing that chiefly struck me was the
rarity of really bookish people. Our shop had an exceptionally interesting
5stock, yet I doubt whether ten per cent of our customers knew a good book
from a bad one.
Many of the people who came to us were of the kind who would be a nuisance
anywhere but have special opportunities in a bookshop. For example, the
dear old lady who ‘wants a book for an invalid’ (a very common demand,
10that), and the other dear old lady who read such a nice book in 1897 and
wonders whether you can find her a copy. Unfortunately she doesn’t
remember the title or the author’s name or what the book was about, but
she does remember that it had a red cover. But apart from these there are
two well-known types of pest by whom every second-hand bookshop is
15haunted. One is the decayed person smelling of old bread-crusts who comes
every day, sometimes several times a day, and tries to sell you worthless
books. The other is the person who orders large quantities of books for
which he has not the smallest intention of paying. Scarcely half the
people who ordered books from us ever came back. It used to puzzle me at
20first. What made them do it? They would come in and demand some rare and
expensive book, would make us promise over and over again to keep it for
them, and then would vanish never to return. None of them, I noticed, ever
attempted to take books away without paying for them; merely to order them
was enough—it gave them, I suppose, the illusion that they were spending
25real money.
In a lending library you see people’s real tastes, not their pretended
ones, and one thing that strikes you is how completely the ‘classical’
English novelists have dropped out of favour. One of our subscribers to my
knowledge read four or five detective stories every week for over a year,
30besides others which he got from another library. What chiefly surprised
me was that he never read the same book twice. Apparently the whole of
that frightful torrent of trash (the pages read every year would, I
calculated, cover nearly three quarters of an acre) was stored for ever in
his memory.
35As a rule a bookshop is horribly cold in winter, because if it is too warm
the windows get misted over, and a bookseller lives on his windows. And
books give off more and nastier dust than any other class of objects yet
invented, and the top of a book is the place where every bluebottle
prefers to die.
40But the real reason why I should not like to be in the book trade for life
is that while I was in it I lost my love of books. A bookseller has to
tell lies about books, and that gives him a distaste for them; still worse
is the fact that he is constantly dusting them and hauling them to and
fro. There was a time when I really did love books—loved the sight and
45smell and feel of them, I mean, at least if they were fifty or more years
old. But as soon as I went to work in the bookshop I stopped buying books.
Seen in the mass, five or ten thousand at a time, books were boring and
even slightly sickening. The sweet smell of decaying paper appeals to me
no longer. It is too closely associated in my mind with paranoiac
50customers and dead bluebottles.

From "Bookshop Memories" by George Orwell (1936).

Glossary

  • calf-bound folios: large, old books with leather covers
  • bookish: fond of reading and knowledgeable about books
  • invalid: a person who is ill for a long time and has to stay in bed or at home
  • pest: an annoying person
  • decayed: here, shabby and run-down
  • lending library: here, shelves of novels in the shop that customers paid a small fee to borrow
  • subscribers: customers who paid to use the lending library
  • 'classical' English novelists: famous 19th-century novelists such as Charles Dickens and Jane Austen
  • torrent: a violent rush of water; here, a huge amount
  • an acre: an area of land about the size of a football pitch
  • lives on his windows: depends on his shop window display to attract customers
  • bluebottle: a large fly
  • in the mass: in huge numbers
  • paranoiac: here, a person with strange, unrealistic ideas about themselves (an old-fashioned and unkind word)

Text 2

In this blog post, a sixteen-year-old describes giving up Saturdays to help in a charity shop that sells second-hand books, clothes and household goods.

1Everyone assumes the worst thing about working in a charity shop is
the smell. It isn’t. The smell (old coats, lavender, something that
might once have been soup) wears off after about twenty minutes.
The worst thing is the till, which has a mind of its own. The best
5thing, by miles, is the customers.
I started on Saturdays last spring, mainly because I needed
something to put on my sixth-form application. I pictured myself
quietly folding jumpers. Instead I spent my first morning learning
to price a glass fruit bowl from Pat, who is seventy-eight and has
10volunteered there since before I was born.
Here is what nobody tells you: a charity shop is a sort of living
room for the whole street. There is Mr Okafor, who arrives every
Saturday at ten, reads the back of every crime novel on the shelf
and buys exactly one, always for fifty pence. He has never once
15bought a book he has already read, and he keeps no list. There is
the woman who wanted ‘a book my mum had when she was little – it
had a horse on the front’. She couldn’t remember the title or the
author. It took us three Saturdays, but we found it. (It was a
pony. Close enough.) She cried a bit at the counter, and so,
20embarrassingly, did I.
Not everyone is easy. Some people haggle over a forty-pence mug as
if their lives depend on it. One man asked us to put a lamp aside
for him, promised four times that he’d be back on Friday, and never
came. Pat just said, ‘Maybe he needed to say it more than he needed
25the lamp,’ and put it back in the window.
Some regulars don’t buy anything at all. Sid comes in on wet
afternoons, mostly to get warm and talk about the cricket. At first
I wondered why we let him stay so long. Now I save him the sports
pages from the donated newspapers, and I worry if he misses a week.
30The work itself is not glamorous. The stockroom is freezing in
January, the donation bags are full of dust, and after you have
sorted your five-hundredth paperback, books stop feeling magical
and start feeling heavy.
But I haven’t fallen out of love with them. If anything, I read
35more now, because every book that comes through the door belonged
to somebody, and every customer who comes in is looking for
something, even if it is only a chat. I don’t get paid a penny. I
would go every Saturday anyway.

Original passage.

Glossary

  • charity shop: a shop that sells donated second-hand goods to raise money for a charity; most of its staff are unpaid volunteers
  • sixth-form application: a form a student fills in to apply for a place to study after GCSEs
  • till: the machine that records sales and holds the money
  • regulars: customers who come in often
  • stockroom: the room at the back of a shop where goods are kept and sorted

Read both texts again.

The two texts show the customers of shops that sell second-hand books.

What similarities do these customers share?

Use evidence from both texts to support your answer.

Question 2

6 marks

Text 1

In 1892 the American writer Jack London, then sixteen, was travelling across the United States as a penniless tramp, stealing rides on trains and begging for food. In this extract from his memoir, he is in the town of Reno, Nevada, and needs a meal before riding a train west over the mountains that night.

1It was in the evening of my last day in Reno. Two acts remained for me to
perform before I shook the dust of Reno from my feet. One was to catch the
blind baggage on the westbound overland that night. The other was first to
get something to eat. Even youth will hesitate at an all-night ride, on an
5empty stomach, outside a train that is tearing the atmosphere through the
snow-sheds, tunnels, and eternal snows of heaven-aspiring mountains.
But that something to eat was a hard proposition. I was “turned down” at a
dozen houses.
At other houses the doors were slammed in my face, cutting short my
10politely and humbly couched request for something to eat. At one house
they did not open the door. I stood on the porch and knocked, and they
looked out at me through the window. They even held one sturdy little boy
aloft so that he could see over the shoulders of his elders the tramp who
wasn’t going to get anything to eat at their house.
15It began to look as if I should be compelled to go to the very poor for my
food. The very poor can always be depended upon. Time and again, all over
the United States, have I been refused food by the big house on the hill;
and always have I received food from the little shack down by the creek or
marsh, with its broken windows stuffed with rags and its tired-faced
20mother broken with labor. A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the
bone shared with the dog when you are just as hungry as the dog.
By this time I had lost heart. This begging for food was all a game, and
if I didn’t like the cards, I could always call for a new deal. I made up
my mind to tackle the next house. I approached it in the deepening
25twilight, going around to the kitchen door.
I knocked softly, and when I saw the kind face of the middle-aged woman
who answered, as by inspiration came to me the “story” I was to tell. For
know that upon his ability to tell a good story depends the success of the
beggar.
30I became a sweet, innocent, unfortunate lad. I opened my mouth and closed
it again. Never in my life before had I asked any one for food. My
embarrassment was painful, extreme.
“You are hungry, my poor boy,” she said.
I had made her speak first.
35“Come right in.” The door swung open. “We have already finished eating,
but the fire is burning and I can get something up for you.”
While that good woman warmed up biscuits, fried bacon, and cooked more
eggs, and while I kept pace with her in taking care of all that she placed
before me, I enlarged the picture of that poor orphan boy and filled in
40the details. I became that poor boy. I could have wept for myself. It was
very effective.
In fact, with every touch I added to the picture, that kind soul gave me
something also. She made up a lunch for me to carry away. She put in many
boiled eggs, pepper and salt, and other things, and a big apple. She
45provided me with three pairs of thick red woollen socks.
I hope that woman in Reno will read these lines and forgive me my
gracelessness and unveracity. I do not apologize, for I am unashamed. It
was youth, delight in life, zest for experience, that brought me to her
door. It did me good. It taught me the intrinsic kindliness of human
50nature.
But those woollen socks were great. I know. I wore a pair of them that
night on the blind baggage of the overland, and that overland went west.

From "Confession" in The Road by Jack London (1907).

Glossary

  • shook the dust of Reno from my feet: left Reno for good
  • blind baggage: the front end of a baggage car, which had no door, where tramps rode on the outside of the train without paying
  • westbound overland: the long-distance passenger train heading west
  • tearing the atmosphere: rushing through the air at great speed
  • snow-sheds: roofs built over a railway line in the mountains to keep the snow off it
  • heaven-aspiring: so high they seem to reach up to heaven
  • proposition: a task or problem
  • couched: worded
  • aloft: up in the air
  • labor: (American spelling) labour; hard work
  • call for a new deal: in card games, ask for the cards to be dealt again; start afresh
  • For know that: you must understand that
  • biscuits: (American) soft, scone-like bread rolls
  • kept pace with her: ate the food as fast as she cooked it
  • gracelessness: bad manners
  • unveracity: untruthfulness
  • intrinsic: natural, deep-down

Text 2

In this blog post, an eighteen-year-old describes running out of food on a Sunday in Italy during a month of travelling around Europe by train on a very small budget.

1I had planned everything except being hungry. My spreadsheet said
twenty euros a day, and for the first week I was smug about it:
supermarket bread, a jar of peanut butter that came with me across
four countries, and nights on trains so I never paid for a bed.
5Budget travel, I told my friends, is just a puzzle you solve with a
calculator.
Then I got stuck in a small Italian town on a Sunday. My night
train didn’t leave until eleven. The supermarket was shut. The only
café still open wanted twelve euros for a sandwich, which in my
10spreadsheet was most of a day. I asked whether they could fill my
water bottle, and the man behind the counter pointed at the bottles
in the fridge without looking up. A family at an outside table
watched me walk away. I felt about six years old.
I sat on a bench outside the station and did the maths again, as if
15the numbers might change. My bank card was in my bag. There was
money in my account for emergencies, and if I had been honest with
myself, I would have admitted that a few hungry hours were not an
emergency. It was only uncomfortable, and I wasn’t used to it.
That was where Rosa found me. She cleaned the station, and on her
20break she sat at the other end of my bench with a plastic box of
pasta. She asked, in a mixture of Italian and hand signals, whether
I had eaten. I lied and said yes. She looked at my peanut butter
jar, scraped clean, laughed, and pushed the box towards me.
I tried to refuse. I tried to pay her. She was offended by both. In
25the end we shared it, two forks, while she showed me photos of her
grandson on a cracked phone. When my train came, she pressed a
paper bag into my hands: two peaches, a bread roll, and a pair of
her own thick grey socks, ‘because the trains are cold at night’.
She was right. They were.
30I have thought about Rosa a lot since. I had chosen to have no
money for a month; she had not chosen anything. I was the one with
a rail pass and a bank card, and she was the one who gave. I would
love to say I learned to travel more cheaply. What I learned is
that I was never really poor at all, and that the kindest person I
35met all summer had the least to spare.
I still have the socks. I wear them on every long journey, and I
still feel slightly ashamed when I do.

Original passage.

Glossary

  • spreadsheet: a computer table used to plan and add up numbers, such as a budget
  • rail pass: a ticket that allows unlimited train travel for a set period

Read both texts again.

The two texts show young travellers who run out of food on a journey.

What similarities do these travellers share?

Use evidence from both texts to support your answer.

Question 3

6 marks

Text 1

In 1929 the writer George Orwell, almost penniless in Paris, took a job as a plongeur (a washer-up and kitchen hand) in a large, expensive Paris hotel, which he calls the Hôtel X. In this extract from his memoir he describes his first day at work there.

1I arrived at a quarter to seven in the morning. A stream of men with
greasy trousers were hurrying in and being checked by a doorkeeper who sat
in a tiny office. I waited, and presently the chef du personnel, a sort of
assistant manager, arrived and began to question me. He was an Italian,
5with a round, pale face, haggard from overwork.
He led me down a winding staircase into a narrow passage, deep
underground, and so low that I had to stoop in places. It was stiflingly
hot and very dark, with only dim, yellow bulbs several yards apart. There
seemed to be miles of dark labyrinthine passages—actually, I suppose, a
10few hundred yards in all—that reminded one queerly of the lower decks of a
liner; there were the same heat and cramped space and warm reek of food,
and a humming, whirring noise (it came from the kitchen furnaces) just
like the whir of engines. As we went along, something struck me violently
in the back. It was a hundred-pound block of ice, carried by a
15blue-aproned porter. After him came a boy with a great slab of veal on his
shoulder, his cheek pressed into the damp, spongy flesh. They shoved me
aside with a cry of ‘Sauve-toi, idiot!’ and rushed on.
After this I set to work rather hurriedly. Except for about an hour, I was
at work from seven in the morning till a quarter past nine at night; first
20at washing crockery, then at scrubbing the tables and floors of the
employees’ dining-room, then at polishing glasses and knives, then at
fetching meals, then at washing crockery again, then at fetching more
meals and washing more crockery. It was easy work, and I got on well with
it except when I went to the kitchen to fetch meals. The kitchen was like
25nothing I had ever seen or imagined—a stifling, low-ceilinged inferno of a
cellar, red-lit from the fires, and deafening with oaths and the clanging
of pots and pans. It was so hot that all the metal-work except the stoves
had to be covered with cloth. In the middle were furnaces, where twelve
cooks skipped to and fro, their faces dripping sweat in spite of their
30white caps. Everyone seemed to be in a hurry and a rage.
There were three counters, and the first time I went to the kitchen I took
my tray unknowingly to the wrong one. The head cook walked up to me,
twisted his moustaches, and looked me up and down. Then he beckoned to the
breakfast cook and pointed at me.
35‘Do you see that? That is the type of plongeur they send us nowadays.
Where do you come from, idiot? From Charenton, I suppose?’ (There is a
large lunatic asylum at Charenton.)
‘From England,’ I said.
I got this kind of reception every time I went to the kitchen, for I
40always made some mistake; I was expected to know the work, and was cursed
accordingly.
We had an excellent dinner from the leavings of the higher employees. I
was tired and drenched with sweat, but I felt a new man after a day’s
solid food. The work did not seem difficult, and I felt that this job
45would suit me. It was not certain, however, that it would continue, for I
had been engaged as an ‘extra’ for the day only, at twenty-five francs.
The sour-faced doorkeeper counted out the money, less fifty centimes which
he said was for insurance (a lie, I discovered afterwards). Then he
stepped out into the passage, made me take off my coat, and carefully
50prodded me all over, searching for stolen food.

From Chapter X of Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell (1933).

Glossary

  • chef du personnel: (French) the manager in charge of the staff
  • haggard: looking exhausted and ill
  • labyrinthine: like a maze
  • queerly: strangely
  • liner: a large passenger ship
  • reek: a strong, unpleasant smell
  • hundred-pound: weighing about 45 kilograms
  • veal: meat from a calf
  • Sauve-toi, idiot!: (French) "Out of the way, idiot!"
  • inferno: a raging fire; also a word for hell
  • oaths: swear words
  • Charenton: a town near Paris, known then for its large asylum (psychiatric hospital)
  • plongeur: (French) a washer-up and kitchen hand in a hotel or restaurant
  • leavings: leftovers
  • higher employees: the more senior staff
  • extra: a worker taken on for one day only
  • francs, centimes: French money (a hundred centimes made a franc)
  • insurance: money taken from wages to pay for cover against illness or accident

Text 2

In this blog post, a sixteen-year-old describes a first Saturday shift washing up in the kitchen of a busy café.

1Nobody warns you that a kitchen has its own weather. At nine
o’clock on Saturday morning, when I tied on my apron for my first
ever shift at the café, it was cool and quiet and smelled of
coffee. By eleven it was a tropical storm: steam rolled out of the
5dishwasher every time I lifted the hood, the grill spat, and the
back door was propped open with a bucket in a hopeless attempt to
let some air in.
I applied for the job because I wanted my own money. I’m sixteen,
so I’m paid the youth rate, and I’d worked out that four Saturdays
10would just about buy a pair of trainers. I had pictured myself
behind the counter, handing out slices of cake. Instead, I was the
kitchen porter, which is a polite way of saying the person who
washes everything.
And I mean everything. Plates, mugs, a frying pan the size of a car
15tyre, a tray of trays. The noise was unbelievable: the ticket
machine chattering out orders, pans clattering, the radio fighting
the extractor fan and losing, and Marta, the head chef, calling
‘Service!’ as if her life depended on it. On my first trip out with
a stack of clean plates, I put them on the wrong shelf, and she had
20to hunt for them in the middle of the rush. I braced myself. She
just laughed, showed me the right shelf and said, ‘Everyone does
that once. Do it twice and you’re on onions.’
That was what surprised me most. Everyone was in a hurry, but
nobody was horrible. Jay, who has worked on the grill for three
25years, slid me a bowl of leftover chips at half past two and told
me I was ‘faster than the last one’. I have decided to take that as
a compliment.
By the time we closed at four, my fingers were as wrinkled as
raisins, my feet throbbed and my hair smelled of bacon. I fell
30asleep on the bus home and nearly missed my stop. I had earned just
under fifty-five pounds, and I have never been so proud of a number
in my life.
So would I recommend it? Honestly, yes. It is hot and hard, and you
will smell of bacon. But you will learn more in one Saturday about
35teamwork, and about keeping your head when everything happens at
once, than in a month of lie-ins. And you get the chips.

Original passage.

Glossary

  • kitchen porter: the member of kitchen staff who washes up and cleans
  • youth rate: the lower minimum wage paid to workers under 18
  • ticket machine: a printer that prints customers' orders for the kitchen
  • on onions: given the job of peeling and chopping onions

Read both texts again.

The two texts show a first day of work in a kitchen.

What similarities do these first days share?

Use evidence from both texts to support your answer.

Question 4

6 marks

Text 1

Emmeline Pankhurst led the suffragettes, who campaigned, often by breaking the law, for women in Britain to have the vote. In 1913, while she was on a speaking tour of the United States, she gave this speech to an audience in Hartford, Connecticut. In this extract she explains why the suffragettes chose to protest so loudly.

1I don’t know, Mrs Hepburn, whether I have used the domestic illustration
in Hartford, but it is a very good one: it is quite worth using again. You
have two babies very hungry and wanting to be fed. One baby is a patient
baby, and waits indefinitely until its mother is ready to feed it. The
5other baby is an impatient baby and cries lustily, screams and kicks and
makes everybody unpleasant until it is fed. Well, we know perfectly well
which baby is attended to first. That is the whole history of politics.
Putting sentiment aside, people who really want reforms learn that lesson
very quickly. It is only the people who are quite content to go on
10advocating them indefinitely who play the part of the patient baby in
politics. You have to make more noise than anybody else, you have to make
yourself more obtrusive than anybody else, you have to fill all the papers
more than anybody else, in fact you have to be there all the time and see
that they do not snow you under, if you are really going to get your
15reform realised.
That is what we women have been doing, and in the course of our desperate
struggle we have had to make a great many people very uncomfortable. Women
broke some windows as a protest: they broke a good many shopkeepers’
windows: they broke the windows of shopkeepers where they spent most of
20their money when they bought their hats and their clothing. They also
broke the windows of many of the clubs, the smart clubs in Piccadilly.
One of the clubs was the Guard Club. One woman broke the windows of the
Guard Club, and when she broke those windows she stood there quietly until
the Guard hall porter came out and seized her and held her until the
25policemen came to take her to prison. A number of the guards came out to
see the kind of woman it was who had broken their windows, and they saw
there a quiet little woman. Some of the guards—I think men who had never
known what it was to earn a living, who knew nothing of the difficulties
of a man’s life, let alone the difficulties of a woman’s life—came out,
30and they said: “Why did you break our windows? We have done nothing.” She
said: “It is because you have done nothing I have broken your windows.”
But this experience will show you that if you really want to get anything
done, it is not so much a matter of whether you alienate sympathy;
sympathy is a very unsatisfactory thing if it is not practical sympathy.
35We had enough of sympathy for fifty years; it never brought us anything,
and we would rather have an angry man going to the government and saying,
my business is interfered with and I won’t submit to its being interfered
with any longer because you won’t give women the vote, than to have a
gentleman come onto our platforms year in and year out and talk about his
40ardent sympathy with woman suffrage.
“Put them in prison,” they said, “that will stop it.” But it didn’t stop
it. They put women in prison for long terms of imprisonment, for making a
nuisance of themselves—that was the expression when they took petitions in
their hands to the door of the House of Commons; and they thought that by
45sending them to prison, giving them a day’s imprisonment, would cause them
to all settle down again and there would be no further trouble. But it
didn’t happen so at all: instead of the women giving it up, more women did
it, and more and more and more women did it until there were three hundred
women at a time, who had not broken a single law, only “made a nuisance of
50themselves” as the politicians say.

From the speech "Freedom or Death" by Emmeline Pankhurst (1913).

Glossary

  • Mrs Hepburn: the American campaigner who was chairing the meeting
  • Hartford: a city in Connecticut, in the United States
  • domestic illustration: an example taken from home life
  • lustily: loudly and with energy
  • sentiment: feelings
  • reforms: changes to the law
  • advocating: speaking in favour of something
  • obtrusive: noticeable in a way that is hard to ignore
  • snow you under: bury you, so that you are forgotten
  • realised: made real; achieved
  • Piccadilly: a fashionable street in central London
  • the Guard Club: a London club for officers of the army's Guards regiments
  • hall porter: the doorman of a club or hotel
  • alienate: turn someone against you
  • practical sympathy: sympathy that leads to action
  • suffragist: someone who campaigns for women to have the vote
  • platforms: the stages at public meetings
  • ardent: passionate
  • woman suffrage: votes for women
  • petitions: written requests signed by many people
  • House of Commons: the elected part of the British Parliament

Text 2

In this blog post, a seventeen-year-old looks back on a year spent campaigning for a safe crossing on the busy road outside their school.

1Everyone has an opinion about the road outside our school, and for
years that was all anyone had. Every September a letter went home
asking parents to ‘take extra care’, every term someone had a near
miss, and every term the grown-ups sighed and said that somebody
5ought to do something.
Last spring my friend Callum was clipped by a van’s wing mirror on
his way in. He was fine, apart from a bruised elbow and a torn
blazer, but I was standing right behind him. That evening I decided
the somebody might as well be me.
10I didn’t storm anything. I am not a storming sort of person. I
started a petition, which felt about as revolutionary as signing a
birthday card, and I stood at the gates with a clipboard every
morning for three weeks. People were lovely. Parents signed, dinner
staff signed, a man walking his dog signed twice. By the end I had
15nine hundred names and a lot of people telling me what a brilliant
thing I was doing. The trouble with being told you are brilliant is
that it doesn’t change the road.
In June I took the petition to a council meeting. I had practised
my three minutes in front of the bathroom mirror until I could say
20‘pedestrian safety’ without my voice wobbling. The councillors
thanked me for my ‘passion’ and promised to ‘look into it’. Then
they moved on to bins.
Callum thought I was being far too polite. He wanted us to walk out
of lessons and stand in the road at home time with placards, so the
25local news would have to turn up. Part of me wanted to as well. But
I kept picturing a Year 7 stepping off the kerb in the middle of it
all, and I couldn’t agree.
So I did the boring things instead. I counted cars with a tally
chart for a fortnight. I emailed our councillor every month, so
30often that I’m fairly sure I became a nuisance. I got the primary
school down the road to write to him too.
In February a letter arrived. There will be a crossing next year,
it said, ‘subject to funding’.
I’d love to say I’ve proved that quiet campaigning works. Honestly,
35I don’t know. Maybe the emails did it. Maybe a protest would have
got the same answer in half the time. Maybe the crossing was always
coming. What I do know is that I’m not someone who waits for
somebody else any more. Whether that counts as winning, I’m still
working out.

Original passage.

Glossary

  • petition: a written request signed by many people
  • council meeting: a public meeting of the elected councillors who run the local area
  • pedestrian: a person walking rather than driving
  • placards: large signs carried in a protest
  • Year 7: the youngest pupils at secondary school, aged 11 or 12
  • tally chart: a way of counting by making a mark for each item
  • subject to funding: only if the money can be found

Read both texts again.

The two texts show people campaigning for change.

What similarities do these campaigns share?

Use evidence from both texts to support your answer.

Question 5

6 marks

Text 1

In 1911 the explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott and his team spent the long, dark Antarctic winter in a wooden hut at Cape Evans, preparing for an attempt to reach the South Pole the following summer. In these entries from his journal he describes daily life in the hut during June and July. Anton, Demetri, Hooper, Wilson, Bowers and Meares are members of the expedition.

1Monday, June 19.—A pleasant change to find the air calm and the sky
clear—temperature down to -28°. Our daily routine has possessed a settled
regularity for a long time. Anton is off to feed the ponies, Demetri to
see the dogs; Hooper bursts on the slumberers with repeated announcements
5of the time, usually a quarter of an hour ahead of the clock. There is a
stretching of limbs and an interchange of morning greetings, garnished
with sleepy humour. Wilson and Bowers meet in a state of nature beside a
washing basin filled with snow and proceed to rub glistening limbs with
this chilling substance. A little later with less hardihood some others
10may be seen making the most of a meagre allowance of water. Soon after
8.30 I manage to drag myself from a very comfortable bed and make my
toilet with a bare pint of water.
The evening meal, our dinner, comes at 6.30, and is finished within the
hour. The gramophone is usually started by some kindly disposed person,
15and on three nights of the week the lectures to which I have referred are
given. At 11 P.M. the acetylene lights are put out, and those who wish to
remain up or to read in bed must depend on candle-light. Day after day
passes in this fashion. It is not a very active life perhaps, but
certainly not an idle one.
20Friday, July 7.—The temperature fell to -49° last night—our record so far,
and likely to remain so, one would think. I was the victim of a very
curious illusion to-day. On our small heating stove stands a cylindrical
ice melter which keeps up the supply of water necessary for the dark room
and other scientific instruments. This iron container naturally becomes
25warm if it is not fed with ice, and it is generally hung around with socks
and mits which require drying. I put my hand on the cylindrical vessel
this afternoon and withdrew it sharply with the sensation of heat. To
verify the impression I repeated the action two or three times, when it
became so strong that I loudly warned the owners of the socks, &c., of the
30peril of burning to which they were exposed. Upon this Meares said, ‘But
they filled the melter with ice a few minutes ago,’ and then, coming over
to feel the surface himself, added, ‘Why, it’s cold, sir.’ And indeed so
it was. The slightly damp chilled surface of the iron had conveyed to me
the impression of excessive heat.
35Monday, July 10.—We have had the worst gale I have ever known in these
regions and have not yet done with it. Needless to say no one has been far
from the hut. It was my turn for duty on Saturday night, and on the
occasions when I had to step out of doors I was struck with the
impossibility of enduring such conditions for any length of time. One
40seemed to be robbed of breath as they burst on one—the fine snow beat in
behind the wind guard, and ten paces against the wind were sufficient to
reduce one’s face to the verge of frostbite. To clear the anemometer vane
it is necessary to go to the other end of the hut and climb a ladder.
Twice whilst engaged in this task I had literally to lean against the wind
45with head bent and face averted and so stagger crab-like on my course.
To-day with the temperature at zero one can walk about outside without
inconvenience in spite of a 50-mile wind. Although I am loath to believe
it there must be some measure of acclimatisation, for it is certain we
should have felt to-day’s wind severely when we first arrived in McMurdo
50Sound.

From Scott's Last Expedition, Volume I, the journals of Robert Falcon Scott (1913).

Glossary

  • -28°, -49°, zero: temperatures in degrees Fahrenheit: -28°F is about -33°C, -49°F is about -45°C, and zero (0°F) is about -18°C
  • ponies: the expedition used ponies and dogs to pull its sledges
  • slumberers: sleepers
  • in a state of nature: naked
  • hardihood: toughness; daring
  • make my toilet: wash and get dressed
  • acetylene lights: lamps that burn acetylene gas
  • gramophone: an early record player
  • the dark room: a darkened room for developing photographs
  • mits: mittens
  • &c.: etc.
  • peril: danger
  • wind guard: a flap of clothing that protects the face from the wind
  • anemometer vane: part of an instrument on the hut that measures the wind
  • loath: unwilling
  • acclimatisation: the body getting used to a new climate
  • McMurdo Sound: the bay in Antarctica where the expedition's hut stood

Text 2

In this blog post, a young researcher spending the winter at a scientific research station in Antarctica describes everyday life there. Temperatures are in degrees Celsius.

1Day seventy-four of the dark, and I have officially run out of ways
to describe the cold. This morning the screen by the kitchen door
said minus sixty-one, the lowest of the year so far. Everyone
crowded round to take a photo of it, as if it were a celebrity.
5People back home keep asking what an ordinary day looks like, so
here it is. My alarm goes at seven, but nobody needs it, because
Tomas, our chef, plays the same cheesy song through the kitchen
speaker every morning until we drag ourselves out of bed. Breakfast
is porridge. It is always porridge. Showers are limited to two
10minutes, because every drop of water here starts life as snow that
somebody has shovelled into the melter, and the rota for that job
is pinned to the wall in very large letters.
My job is looking after the weather instruments, which sounds cosy
until you remember that they live outside. Before I go out, I put
15on six layers, two pairs of gloves and a face mask, and the cold
still finds the one gap at my wrist. Last week the wind was so
strong that I had to walk to the mast bent almost double, and it
took me ten minutes to cover a distance I could normally run in
one. When I got back, the medic took one look at my cheek and said,
20‘Frostnip. Congratulations.’ Nobody tells you how much it stings
when it thaws.
The strangest thing is metal. I once grabbed the outside door
handle with a bare hand for about a second, and it felt exactly
like touching a hot pan. My skin has still not forgiven me.
25I won’t pretend I love it all the time. Some evenings the dark
presses in, and I sit in my tiny room scrolling through old photos
of green fields and feeling a very long way from my mum. The
internet is so slow that our video calls freeze on a frame of her
mid-sneeze. On those nights I go and find people. Friday is film
30night, there’s a quiz on Sundays, and on Wednesdays one of the
scientists gives a talk about their research, which is more fun
than it sounds.
And then, sometimes, the sky turns green. The aurora rolls overhead
in silent curtains, and the whole station stands outside, freezing,
35just staring up. The odd thing is that minus thirty now feels
almost mild. I never thought I would get used to this. I’m not sure
I have. But I’m still here.

Original passage.

Glossary

  • the dark: in the Antarctic winter the sun does not rise for months
  • melter: a machine that melts snow into water
  • rota: a list that shows whose turn it is to do a job
  • mast: a tall pole that carries weather instruments
  • frostnip: the first, mild stage of frostbite
  • aurora: the 'southern lights', bands of coloured light in the night sky

Read both texts again.

The two texts show people living and working through a winter in Antarctica.

What similarities do these winters share?

Use evidence from both texts to support your answer.

Question 6

6 marks

Text 1

In 1915 the ship of the explorer Ernest Shackleton was crushed by the Antarctic ice. After months camped on the ice and a voyage of about 800 miles in a small open boat, Shackleton and two of his men, Frank Worsley and Tom Crean, landed on the island of South Georgia in May 1916. To fetch help for the rest of the crew, the three set out on foot across the island's unmapped, ice-covered mountains towards a whaling station on the far side. In this extract from his account of the expedition, they have been climbing all day and have just turned back from a ridge with a sheer drop below it.

1The afternoon was wearing on and the fog was rolling up ominously from the
west. Back we went, and after a detour we reached the top of another ridge
in the fading light. After a glance over the top I turned to the anxious
faces of the two men behind me and said, “Come on, boys.” We could not see
5the bottom clearly owing to mist and bad light, and the possibility of the
slope ending in a sheer fall occurred to us; but the fog that was creeping
up behind allowed no time for hesitation. There could be no turning back
now, so we unroped and slid in the fashion of youthful days. When we
stopped on a snow-bank at the foot of the slope we found that we had
10descended at least 900 ft. in two or three minutes. We looked back and saw
the grey fingers of the fog appearing on the ridge, as though reaching
after the intruders into untrodden wilds. But we had escaped.
Night was upon us, and for an hour we plodded along in almost complete
darkness, watching warily for signs of crevasses. Then about 8 p.m. a glow
15which we had seen behind the jagged peaks resolved itself into the full
moon, which rose ahead of us and made a silver pathway for our feet. The
friendly moon seemed to pilot our weary feet.
We had now been on the march for over twenty hours, only halting for our
occasional meals. After 1 a.m. we cut a pit in the snow, piled up loose
20snow around it, and started the Primus again. Worsley and Crean sang their
old songs when the Primus was going merrily. Laughter was in our hearts,
though not on our parched and cracked lips.
We felt almost sure now that we were above Stromness Bay. Our high hopes
were soon shattered. I knew there was no glacier in Stromness and realized
25that this must be Fortuna Glacier. The disappointment was severe. Back we
turned and tramped up the glacier again, not directly tracing our steps
but working at a tangent to the south-east. We were very tired.
At 5 a.m. we were at the foot of the rocky spurs of the range. We were
tired, and the wind that blew down from the heights was chilling us. We
30put our sticks and the adze on the snow, sat down on them as close to one
another as possible, and put our arms round each other. Within a minute my
two companions were fast asleep. I realized that it would be disastrous if
we all slumbered together, for sleep under such conditions merges into
death. After five minutes I shook them into consciousness again, told them
35that they had slept for half an hour, and gave the word for a fresh start.
We were so stiff that for the first two or three hundred yards we marched
with our knees bent.
At 6.30 a.m. I thought I heard the sound of a steam-whistle. I dared not
be certain, but I knew that the men at the whaling-station would be called
40from their beds about that time. Descending to the camp I told the others,
and in intense excitement we watched the chronometer for seven o’clock,
when the whalers would be summoned to work. Right to the minute the
steam-whistle came to us, borne clearly on the wind across the intervening
miles of rock and snow. Never had any one of us heard sweeter music. That
45whistle told us that men were living near, that ships were ready, and that
within a few hours we should be on our way back to Elephant Island to the
rescue of the men waiting there under the watch and ward of Wild. It was a
moment hard to describe. Pain and ache, boat journeys, marches, hunger and
fatigue seemed to belong to the limbo of forgotten things, and there
50remained only the perfect contentment that comes of work accomplished.

From Chapter X of South by Ernest Shackleton (1919).

Glossary

  • ominously: in a threatening way, as if something bad is coming
  • detour: a longer way round
  • ft.: feet (900 ft. is about 275 metres)
  • unroped: untied the rope that joined them together for safety
  • in the fashion of youthful days: as they used to when they were boys, like children sledging
  • intruders into untrodden wilds: people entering wild places where no one had walked before
  • crevasses: deep cracks in a glacier
  • Primus: a small portable stove
  • parched: very dry
  • Stromness Bay: the bay with the whaling station they were trying to reach
  • Fortuna Glacier: a glacier leading down to a different bay, on the wrong side of the mountains
  • glacier: a huge, slow-moving mass of ice
  • at a tangent: in a different direction
  • spurs: ridges that stick out from the side of a mountain
  • lee: the side sheltered from the wind
  • adze: a tool like an axe, used here to cut steps in the ice
  • slumbered: slept
  • whaling-station: a base where whales were brought ashore and processed, with men living and working there
  • chronometer: a very accurate clock, used at sea
  • Elephant Island: the island where the other twenty-two men of the expedition were waiting to be rescued
  • under the watch and ward of Wild: in the care of Frank Wild, Shackleton's second-in-command
  • limbo: a place where things are forgotten or set aside

Text 2

In this article for a school magazine, a Year 10 student describes a two-day practice expedition across the moors in bad weather.

1Everyone kept telling us the expedition would be
character-building. I can now confirm that my character has been
built, mostly out of mud.
The plan was simple: two days walking across the moors in groups of
5five, carrying everything we needed on our backs. Tent, stove,
sleeping bags, pasta and roughly a kilo of emergency jelly babies.
The forecast said ‘light showers’. The forecast lied. By ten
o’clock on the first morning the rain was coming at us sideways,
and the hill we were aiming for had vanished into a mist so thick
10that I could barely see Priya, who was holding the map three metres
in front of me.
That map, by the way, is the reason we walked an extra four
kilometres. We followed a stream we were certain was the right one,
chatting about what brilliant navigators we were, until we reached
15a farm that definitely should not have been there. Nobody shouted.
Nobody cried (much). We sat on a wall, shared the jelly babies and
turned round.
The low point came that afternoon. My boots were full of water, my
shoulders ached from the rucksack, and the last stretch to the
20campsite was a steep, muddy bank. Halfway down, Callum’s feet shot
out from under him and he slid the rest of the way on his backside,
yelling the whole time. Then, because it honestly looked quicker,
the rest of us did the same.
Cooking in the rain is a skill nobody teaches you. We crouched
25round the stove in the porch of the tent, two of us holding a coat
up to keep the wind off the flame, and ate pasta that was somehow
burnt and crunchy at the same time. It was the best meal of my
life. Someone started singing, badly, and we all joined in until a
teacher in the next field asked us to keep it down.
30I won’t pretend I slept. The tent dripped onto my sleeping bag all
night. But on the second afternoon, when we came over the last hill
and saw the minibus waiting in the car park, we started running,
packs bouncing, and high-fived as if we had won the cup final.
In a way, we had. To be fair, we were never in real danger: a
35teacher checked on us at every stage, and there was a phone in
every pocket. But I found out that I can keep going when I am cold,
wet and fed up, as long as the people around me are cold, wet and
fed up too. Would I do it again? Ask me when my socks have dried.

Original passage.

Glossary

  • character-building: developing good qualities such as determination and patience
  • moors: high, open, wild land, often boggy and windswept
  • navigators: people who find the way, using a map
  • porch: the covered area at the entrance of a tent

Read both texts again.

The two texts show difficult journeys on foot.

What similarities do these journeys share?

Use evidence from both texts to support your answer.

Question 7

6 marks

Text 1

In this essay, first published in a London newspaper in January 1946, when tea was still rationed in Britain, the writer George Orwell sets out his rules for making the perfect cup of tea. The extract includes five of his eleven rules.

1If you look up ‘tea’ in the first cookery book that comes to hand you will
probably find that it is unmentioned; or at most you will find a few lines
of sketchy instructions which give no ruling on several of the most
important points. This is curious, not only because tea is one of the
5mainstays of civilization in this country, as well as in Eire, Australia
and New Zealand, but because the best manner of making it is the subject of
violent disputes.
When I look through my own recipe for the perfect cup of tea, I find no
fewer than 11 outstanding points. On perhaps two of them there would be
10pretty general agreement, but at least four others are acutely
controversial. Here are my own 11 rules, every one of which I regard as
golden:
First of all, one should use Indian or Ceylonese tea. China tea has virtues
which are not to be despised nowadays—it is economical, and one can drink
15it without milk—but there is not much stimulation in it. One does not feel
wiser, braver or more optimistic after drinking it. Anyone who has used
that comforting phrase ‘a nice cup of tea’ invariably means Indian tea.
Secondly, tea should be made in small quantities—that is, in a teapot. Tea
out of an urn is always tasteless, while army tea, made in a cauldron,
20tastes of grease and whitewash.
Fourthly, the tea should be strong. In a time of rationing, this is not an
idea that can be realized on every day of the week, but I maintain that one
strong cup of tea is better than twenty weak ones. All true tea lovers not
only like their tea strong, but like it a little stronger with each year
25that passes—a fact which is recognized in the extra ration issued to
old-age pensioners.
Tenthly, one should pour tea into the cup first. This is one of the most
controversial points of all; indeed in every family in Britain there are
probably two schools of thought on the subject. The milk-first school can
30bring forward some fairly strong arguments, but I maintain that my own
argument is unanswerable. This is that, by putting the tea in first and
stirring as one pours, one can exactly regulate the amount of milk whereas
one is liable to put in too much milk if one does it the other way round.
Lastly, tea—unless one is drinking it in the Russian style—should be drunk
35without sugar. I know very well that I am in a minority here. But still,
how can you call yourself a true tea-lover if you destroy the flavour of
your tea by putting sugar in it? It would be equally reasonable to put in
pepper or salt. Tea is meant to be bitter, just as beer is meant to be
bitter. If you sweeten it, you are no longer tasting the tea, you are
40merely tasting the sugar; you could make a very similar drink by dissolving
sugar in plain hot water.
Some people would answer that they don’t like tea in itself, that they only
drink it in order to be warmed and stimulated, and they need sugar to take
the taste away. To those misguided people I would say: Try drinking tea
45without sugar for, say, a fortnight and it is very unlikely that you will
ever want to ruin your tea by sweetening it again.
It is worth paying attention to such details as warming the pot and using
water that is really boiling, so as to make quite sure of wringing out of
one’s ration the 20 good, strong cups that two ounces, properly handled,
50ought to represent.

From "A Nice Cup of Tea" by George Orwell (1946).

Glossary

  • mainstays: the most important parts that something depends on
  • Eire: the name then used for the Republic of Ireland
  • acutely: extremely
  • Ceylonese: from Ceylon (now Sri Lanka)
  • stimulation: the lift or burst of energy a drink gives you
  • urn: a large metal container for making a lot of hot water or tea at once
  • cauldron: a very large cooking pot
  • whitewash: a cheap white paint made from lime and water
  • rationing: a limit on how much of some foods each person could buy, which continued in Britain after the Second World War
  • old-age pensioners: retired people who receive a state pension
  • schools of thought: groups of people who share an opinion
  • regulate: control
  • in the Russian style: the Russian way of drinking tea, usually from a glass and often sweetened
  • fortnight: two weeks
  • two ounces: about 57 grams, the amount of tea one adult was allowed each week under rationing

Text 2

In this blog post, a teenager describes a weekly trip to a bubble tea shop with two friends, and compares it with the way the writer's gran makes tea.

1Every Friday at ten past four, the three of us walk past the bus
stop, past the chip shop and into the bubble tea place by the
station. Nobody ever suggests it. We just go. It is less a plan
than a habit, like brushing your teeth, only sweeter.
5Ordering is the best part. You can’t just ask for ‘a tea’. First
you choose the tea itself (black, green, jasmine, or something
purple called taro that I still can’t explain), then the milk, then
the toppings, then the ice, and then, most importantly, the sugar,
which comes in percentages like a maths test. Priya always has a
10hundred per cent. She says anything less is ‘lying to yourself’.
Sam has twenty-five and looks at her as if she has committed a
crime. I sit in the middle at fifty, which I like to think shows
maturity but probably just shows that I can’t make decisions.
Then comes the ritual. The cup arrives sealed with a shiny plastic
15lid, tight as a drum, and you have to stab it with the fat straw in
one go. If you hesitate, the straw bends and everyone groans. If
you get it first time, there is a satisfying pop and a small round
of applause. Then the first sip, and the first chewy pearl of
tapioca shoots up the straw like a cannonball and hits the back of
20your throat. Every week we act surprised. Every week it happens
anyway.
My gran does not approve. She makes her tea in a brown teapot that
is older than my mum, warms the pot first, puts the milk in the cup
before the tea and will argue about this with anyone who stands
25still long enough. She calls my bubble tea ‘a pudding with a straw
in it’ and once asked whether you were supposed to chew it. (You
are, Gran. That’s the whole point.)
But I think we want the same thing. After a terrible week of mock
exams, Priya and Sam didn’t ask how they had gone. They just bought
30me a large one with extra pearls and let me moan for twenty
minutes. When Gran heard, she put the kettle on before I had even
taken my coat off.
So, honestly, I don’t think the tea matters that much. Pot or
plastic cup, milk first or last, a hundred per cent sugar or none
35at all. What matters is who is sitting across the table from you
while you drink it, and knowing they’ll be there again next Friday.

Original passage.

Glossary

  • bubble tea: a sweet, usually iced tea drink, often with milk, served with chewy balls of tapioca and a wide straw
  • taro: a root vegetable used to flavour some bubble tea; it turns the drink purple
  • tapioca: a starch made from the root of the cassava plant, here rolled into chewy balls ('pearls')
  • mock exams: practice exams taken in school before the real ones

Read both texts again.

The two texts show people’s habits and preferences when drinking tea.

What similarities do these tea-drinking habits share?

Use evidence from both texts to support your answer.

Question 8

6 marks

Text 1

In this extract from a book based on talks she gave to students at two women’s colleges in 1928, the writer Virginia Woolf describes a morning in an imaginary university town she calls "Oxbridge". At the time, most university colleges were run by and for men. She has been sitting by the river, thinking. Later her thoughts turn to the essayist Charles Lamb, who once visited a college library there to see the handwritten draft of a poem by John Milton.

1Thought—to call it by a prouder name than it deserved—had let its line
down into the stream. Alas, laid on the grass how small, how insignificant
this thought of mine looked; the sort of fish that a good fisherman puts
back into the water so that it may grow fatter and be one day worth
5cooking and eating.
But however small it was, it had, nevertheless, the mysterious property of
its kind—put back into the mind, it became at once very exciting, and
important; and as it darted and sank, and flashed hither and thither, set
up such a wash and tumult of ideas that it was impossible to sit still. It
10was thus that I found myself walking with extreme rapidity across a grass
plot. Instantly a man’s figure rose to intercept me. Nor did I at first
understand that the gesticulations of a curious-looking object, in a
cut-away coat and evening shirt, were aimed at me. His face expressed
horror and indignation. Instinct rather than reason came to my help, he
15was a Beadle; I was a woman. This was the turf; there was the path. Only
the Fellows and Scholars are allowed here; the gravel is the place for me.
As I regained the path the arms of the Beadle sank, his face assumed its
usual repose, and though turf is better walking than gravel, no very great
harm was done. The only charge I could bring against the Fellows and
20Scholars of whatever the college might happen to be was that in protection
of their turf, which has been rolled for 300 years in succession they had
sent my little fish into hiding.
What idea it had been that had sent me so audaciously trespassing I could
not now remember. The spirit of peace descended like a cloud from heaven,
25for if the spirit of peace dwells anywhere, it is in the courts and
quadrangles of Oxbridge on a fine October morning. Lamb then came to
Oxbridge perhaps a hundred years ago. It then occurred to me that the very
manuscript itself which Lamb had looked at was only a few hundred yards
away, so that one could follow Lamb’s footsteps across the quadrangle to
30that famous library where the treasure is kept. Moreover, I recollected,
as I put this plan into execution, it is in this famous library that the
manuscript of Thackeray’s Esmond is also preserved. But then one would
have to decide what is style and what is meaning, a question which—but
here I was actually at the door which leads into the library itself. I
35must have opened it, for instantly there issued, like a guardian angel
barring the way with a flutter of black gown instead of white wings, a
deprecating, silvery, kindly gentleman, who regretted in a low voice as he
waved me back that ladies are only admitted to the library if accompanied
by a Fellow of the College or furnished with a letter of introduction.
40That a famous library has been cursed by a woman is a matter of complete
indifference to a famous library. Venerable and calm, with all its
treasures safe locked within its breast, it sleeps complacently and will,
so far as I am concerned, so sleep for ever. Never will I wake those
echoes, never will I ask for that hospitality again, I vowed as I
45descended the steps in anger. But the sound of music reached my ear. Some
service or celebration was going forward. The organ complained
magnificently as I passed the chapel door. I had no wish to enter had I
the right, and this time the verger might have stopped me, demanding
perhaps my baptismal certificate, or a letter of introduction from the
50Dean.

From Chapter One of A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf (1929).

Glossary

  • insignificant: unimportant
  • tumult: noisy confusion
  • with extreme rapidity: very quickly
  • intercept: stop someone on their way
  • gesticulations: wild movements of the arms and hands
  • cut-away coat: a formal coat cut away at the front, with tails at the back
  • indignation: anger at something that seems unfair or wrong
  • Beadle: a college official whose job included keeping order
  • turf: short, carefully kept grass
  • Fellows and Scholars: the senior teaching members of a college, and students who have won places or prizes there
  • gravel: small stones used to make paths
  • repose: calm, rest
  • audaciously: boldly
  • quadrangles: square courtyards surrounded by college buildings
  • Lamb: Charles Lamb (1775–1834), an essayist
  • manuscript: a writer’s original, handwritten copy
  • Thackeray’s Esmond: a novel by William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863)
  • deprecating: apologetic
  • Venerable: respected because of great age
  • complacently: smugly, without any worry
  • hospitality: a friendly welcome to guests
  • verger: a church or chapel official who looks after the building
  • baptismal certificate: a document proving that someone has been baptised as a Christian
  • Dean: a senior member of a college

Text 2

In this piece for a student magazine, a student looks back on her first week at a large, old sixth-form college.

1On my first morning at sixth form, I took a short cut and got told
off by a man on a ride-on mower.
In fairness, the field was enormous, and the path went the long way
round, past the old building with the clock tower that is on the
5front of every prospectus. I was late, my new shoes were rubbing,
and I had a timetable I couldn’t read. So I cut across the grass.
Halfway over, the mower stopped and the man driving it pointed at a
little sign I hadn’t noticed: ‘Please keep off the grass’. He didn’t
shout. He didn’t need to. I went back to the path with my face
10burning, sure that everyone at every window had seen.
That was how the whole first week felt. I came from a school where
hardly anyone stayed on after Year 11. Here, people had older
brothers and sisters who had been here before them, and parents who
said ‘when I was at college’. They knew which staircase led to which
15classroom. They called the teachers by their first names without
blushing. I kept waiting for someone to tap me on the shoulder and
explain that there had been a mistake with my letter.
On Thursday, I thought it had happened. I went to the library in a
free period (a proper library, with a balcony, green lamps and the
20smell of old paper) and the woman at the desk stopped me at the
gate. ‘Lanyard?’ she said. I didn’t have one. I’d left it on the
kitchen table. I was already turning round when she said, ‘Hang on,’
wrote my name on a visitor sticker and pressed it on to my jumper
herself. ‘There. Now you’re official. The comfy chairs are upstairs,
25and nobody ever sits by the window, which is a crime.’
I sat by the window for an hour. I didn’t do much work. Mostly I
looked down at the field, at the long path and the short cut, and
thought about how small that moment on the grass had been, and how
big I had let it become.
30It’s March now. I have a lanyard I never forget, a favourite chair,
and two friends who were also told off by the mower man in their
first week. (He does it to everyone. He told me in the lunch queue
that his name is Dev and that the grass had been reseeded in August,
which is why he was ‘a bit protective’.) I still take the long way
35round. But I walk it now as if I’m meant to be there, because I am.

Original passage.

Glossary

  • prospectus: a booklet advertising a school or college to new students
  • free period: a lesson-time gap in a student’s timetable, for private study
  • lanyard: a cord worn round the neck that holds an ID card
  • reseeded: sown with new grass seed

Read both texts again.

The two texts show writers who feel like outsiders in a place of learning.

What similarities do these experiences share?

Use evidence from both texts to support your answer.