RCF Model Paper 2: AQA English Language

An original RCF composition written in a nineteenth-century voice. It is presented as a letter published in a provincial newspaper in 1873, in which a physician recommends sea-bathing to his readers.

On the Practice of Sea-Bathing, and its Benefit to Persons of Sedentary Habit

1 Sir, - I have been asked by several of your readers to set down plainly what I have observed in twenty-two years of practice in this town concerning the sea, and I do so the more willingly because a great deal of nonsense is at present written upon the subject.

4 Let me say at once that I do not hold with the extravagant claims of certain of my colleagues. The sea does not cure. It has been represented in some quarters as a remedy for every complaint from the gout to a disordered mind, and any man who has attended as many patients as I have will know that this is not so. I have seen persons bathe daily through two seasons and remain exactly as ill as they were before, and I have seen others who never went near the water live to a very great age in perfect content.

11 What the sea does, and what I have never once known it to fail in doing, is to interrupt. That is the whole of its virtue and it is not a small one. A gentleman who spends eleven months of the year at a desk in a counting-house acquires, without ever noticing it, a habit of body and a habit of thought which are alike stagnant. He is not diseased; he is settled. Immerse such a man in the sea at seven in the morning and he will for perhaps four minutes be incapable of thinking about anything whatever except the sea, and I put it to your readers that four such minutes are worth a great deal more to him than the entire contents of my dispensary.

20 I am aware that this is not a fashionable opinion. The machines upon our beach are advertised with promises I would blush to make, and the visitors who come down by the railway have been told to expect a transformation. They are, in the main, disappointed. They bathe three times, find it disagreeable, and return home persuaded that the whole business is a fraud. It is not a fraud. It is merely that they were promised a miracle and given, instead, a habit - and a habit must be kept up before it will do anything at all.

28 My advice, therefore, is unromantic. Bathe if you are able; bathe early, before the beach is crowded and while the water is at its coldest, for the shock is the greater part of the benefit; bathe briefly, for I have never seen good come of a long immersion and I have twice seen very great harm; and above all, bathe regularly, or do not trouble to begin. A single visit to the sea will improve nothing but the conversation of the person who made it.

35 I remain, Sir, your obedient servant,

36 A PHYSICIAN OF THIRTY YEARS' STANDING

An original RCF composition. It is presented as an online column published in 2023, in which the writer describes a year of swimming in a cold reservoir.

Ninety Seconds

1 I have now swum in that reservoir in every month of the year, which sounds like an achievement and was mostly a scheduling problem. People imagine cold-water swimmers as a particular sort of person - lean, evangelical, up before six. I am none of those. I started because a friend cancelled on a Sunday and I could not face going home.

7 The first time in January I lasted ninety seconds and came out furious. Not exhilarated - furious. Nobody warns you about that. There is a stage, somewhere between the water reaching your ribs and your feet finding the ladder again, where the body decides you have done something unforgivable to it and simply says so, at volume, for about a minute and a half. The famous glow arrives later, on the walk back to the car, and by then you have forgotten how much you disliked it, which is presumably how anybody does this twice.

16 What nobody tells you either is how quickly it becomes ordinary. By March I was checking the water temperature the way you check the weather. By June it had stopped being an event at all, and I found I minded that. The whole point, or what I had assumed was the point, was that it was difficult. When it stopped being difficult it also stopped doing whatever it had been doing to my week.

23 So I am suspicious of the way this is talked about now. The reservoir has a car park that was empty three years ago and is not empty at half past seven on any morning, and half of the people in it are there because an app told them their nervous system needed regulating. I do not think their nervous systems needed anything of the sort. I think they were bored and slightly unhappy, which are not medical conditions, and they have found a thing that is briefly and reliably interesting.

31 I include myself in that. It is not a criticism. What worries me is only the promising - the claims that get made, the words transform and heal, the strong implication that ninety seconds of being cold will reorganise a life. It will not. I have been doing it for three years and my life is arranged exactly as it was, with the single difference that on Sunday mornings I am briefly and completely unable to think about it.

39 Which is, when I put it like that, quite a lot. I would just rather nobody sold it to me.

Answer all questions in this section. You are advised to spend about 45 minutes on this section. [40 marks]

Question 1

Read again the first part of Source A, from lines 1 to 10.

Choose four statements below which are TRUE. Choose a maximum of four statements. [4 marks]

• A The writer has practised in the town for twenty-two years.
• B The writer agrees with the claims made by his colleagues.
• C The writer says a great deal of nonsense is written about the sea.
• D The writer states plainly that the sea does not cure.
• E The writer has seen people bathe daily and stay just as ill.
• F The writer believes sea-bathing can cure a disordered mind.
• G The writer was asked by his fellow physicians to set down what he had observed.
• H The writer has never met anyone who avoided the water and lived long.

Question 2

You need to refer to Source A and Source B for this question.

The two writers describe what cold water does for a person.

Use details from both sources to write a summary of the differences between what each writer believes it achieves. [8 marks]

Question 3

You now need to refer only to Source B, the column about the reservoir.

How does the writer use language to convey her attitude to cold-water swimming? [12 marks]

Question 4

For this question, you need to refer to the whole of Source A together with Source B.

Compare how the two writers convey their different attitudes to what people expect from cold water. [16 marks]

In your answer, you could:

• compare their different attitudes
• compare the methods they use to convey their attitudes
• support your ideas with references to both texts

You are advised to spend about 45 minutes on this section. Write in full sentences. You are reminded of the need to plan your answer. You should leave enough time to check your work at the end.

Question 5

"Every few years something ordinary is sold to us as a cure. Cold water is only the latest. We should be far more suspicious of anything that promises to change us."

Write an article for a newspaper in which you explain your point of view on this statement.

(24 marks for content and organisation, 16 marks for technical accuracy) [40 marks]