English Language Paper 1 Language, the Individual and Society

Example Complete Paper (two and a half hours)

Section A Textual Variations and Representations

1. Analyse how language is used in Text A to create meanings and representations (25 marks)

2. Analyse how language is used in Text B to create meanings and representations (25 marks)

3. Analyse the similarities and differences between text A and B (20 marks)

Text 1 is an online article from The Guardian, a UK broadsheet newspaper.

Text 2 is the introduction to an American cookbook, 1917.

Text A (abridged)

Family cooking under coronavirus: 'I've become a chef with two grumpy regular customers'

Cooking and clearing up has been relentless – and that’s without adding a special birthday cake to my range of signature dishes

Tim Lewis

I’m sitting down to write this having just cleaned fox poo out of the tiny grooves in the soles of my four-year-old’s sandals. She also, somehow, smeared it all over her legs, her dress, my legs, my shorts. The only plus I can take from it is that, for once in our crowded corner of south London, social distancing was not an issue.

Of course, even in non-coronavirus times, 98% of anecdotes about young children end in someone being covered in something or other. But for many parents – at which point I insert an enormous caveat to make it clear that I’m talking about those who haven’t been infected, or made redundant, and aren’t frontline workers, and are extremely lucky enough to still be operating in a strange bubble of “normal” – I’d suspect that the greatest challenges of the past few weeks, and moments of profoundest despair, have come in the kitchen.

Cooking for your children can be a dispiriting experience. There’s often a magical window when they are around two, where they eat all sorts of exotic things: green vegetables, non-white food generally, Italian dishes that don’t begin with “p”. But gradually, imperceptibly, I have found my kids becoming entrenched in their tastes, suspicious of the unfamiliar. I’m not talking about olives and kimchi; just getting them to eat some courgette involves agreeing to a Peppa Pig all-nighter in return.

Not long ago, but BC (before coronavirus), I was moaning to a colleague about it, a serious home cook, a tweezers-and-soda-siphon guy. Also, his children are older, teenagers. I wanted to know if it got any easier. “You have to think of it like being a line cook,” he replied, years of pain in his voice. Your job is not to be showy. It’s to do your bit and get the job done: to make peace with cooking the same meal again and again. Innovation or experimentation were neither expected nor required from your customers (that is, your offspring).

Text B (abridged)

Mrs Allen’s Cookbook (1917)

Each year brings me thousands of letters from housewives all over the country, as well as from Canada and Mexico, and many from the old world. Some of them contain requests for recipes, but the majority ask for help in solving home problems of finance, the preparation of food, the saving of time and energy, and the institution of the balanced ration as a means toward economy and better family health. Many others ask about proper service, and what foods should be combined; but not a few contain a little heart-break, and many of them end in this wise ‘If I had only been taught how to cook, and how to do housework when I was a girl, instead of growing up in ignorance and selfishness, how much easier my life would be now, and how much more effective I should be as a mother, a wife and a housekeeper!’

In presenting this book the burden of my message is : Let every mother realize that she holds in her hands the health of the family and the welfare and the progress of her husband. It is she who helps to make brain and brawn.There is no magic in the work she does. There are no mortars and pestles, there are no text tubes and Bunsen burners. Her chemicals are foods pure and simple, her equipment, bowls and pans, kettles and a range. With these aids she must evolve a good family health, and in so doing contribute to the health of the nation.

Section B : Children's Language Development

Q4.‘Children acquire language purely through imitation.’ 

Referring to the data below and to relevant ideas from language study, evaluate this view of children’s language development.

Leonie (2 ½ -year-old) is talking here with her grandmother

G: Is that his head?

L: Yeah. There! We make a snake. 

G: Okay. Can you make his beak? What does his beak look like? 

L: Oh.. [indistinct] go(t) he go(t) a beak. A beak! 

G: Hmmmm 

L: that a beak? 

G: Where’s his beak? Can you put a beak on him? 

L: I’ve pa (put) a beak 

G: Put a beak, have you? 

L: Yeah 

G: And shall we have him standing on one leg? 

L: [indistinct] 

G: He’s just standing on one leg, isn’t he? Shall we make some legs?  

L: Here’s some legs! 

G: D’you want this leg? There we are. 

L: Thank you 

G: Good girl. How many legs has he got? 

L: One..two

G: Yes. Has he got three legs? 

L: No..he got ones legs 

G: One leg…two legs. 

L: an arm 

G: that’s it 

L: (he) look(s) like a tortoise 

G: looks like a tortoise? Does it? 

L: Yeah.. I .. (indistinct.) He’s stuck 

G: Okay. Well done! That’s very good, isn’t it? 

L: (indistinct.) 

G: Leonie…have you seen this (showing drawing on sheet.) Do you know what this is called? 

L: Yeah 

G: It’s a wug! 

L: Oh, a wug.