RCF Model Paper 1: Edexcel English Language

An original RCF composition written in a nineteenth-century voice. It is presented as an extract from a novel published in 1879. It is not by any real author and is not taken from any real book.

From The Long Case

1 The shop had never, in Hannah's memory, been quiet, and the quiet was the worst of it. Forty-one clocks stood along the two long walls, and not one of them was going. Her father had wound them every Sunday evening after chapel, moving down the row with the key held out before him and his lips moving as he counted; and nobody had wound them since.

6 She had taken down the shutters that morning because she could not think what else to do. It was four days. Her aunt had said that the shop ought to stay shut until the month was out, and her aunt was very likely right; but the house behind the shop had become insupportable, and there was a kind of mercy in the front room, with its smell of oil and brass and its window full of ordinary weather.

12 On the bench under the window her father's work lay exactly as he had left it: a movement in pieces on a square of green baize, the parts set out in the order they came away, and beside them a scrap of paper with two figures written on it in pencil. She had not touched any of it. She did not know what the figures meant and there was no longer anybody who did.

17 At twenty minutes past ten the bell above the door went, and Mr Bewley came in out of the rain, shaking his hat over the mat in the way he had always done and that her father had always minded.

20 "Filthy morning," he said. "Filthy. Is he in the back?"

21 He was a large, comfortable man who had brought his watch to be regulated twice a year for eleven years, and he stood dripping in the doorway with his eyebrows up, entirely happy, waiting for her to fetch her father as she had fetched him a hundred times before.

25 Hannah found that she could not do it. She had said the words to the minister, and to the woman from the dairy, and twice to strangers in the street, and every time they had come out quite steadily; and now they would not come at all. She stood behind the counter with her hands flat upon it and said nothing whatever.

30 "The little Swiss one," Mr Bewley said, helpfully. "He said Thursday." He began to unbutton his coat; and then, finding that she had still not spoken, he stopped with his fingers at the second button.

33 She watched him look about the shop. She watched him see the clocks - all of them stopped, and stopped at different hours, which was the detail that gave it away, for a shop that was merely shut for the day would have had them stopped together. She saw the moment when he understood. It went over his face slowly, the way water finds its level, and his hand came down from his coat.

39 "Ah," he said.

40 That was the whole of it, and it undid her completely. She had borne the minister, and she had borne the dairy woman, and she had borne being told, four separate times, that it was a mercy; and she was undone by a large wet man saying Ah in the middle of her father's shop.

44 He did not come round the counter, which she was grateful for afterwards, and he did not say any of the things. He stood where he was until she had finished. Then he asked, in an ordinary voice, whether she would rather he went; and she said no.

48 When he did go - an hour later, having drunk a cup of tea standing up, and having said nothing further about the watch - she took the key from the drawer and wound the long case clock beside the door. It was the only one she wound that day. But she came to it again on the Sunday evening, after chapel; and after a while she began upon the others.

Read the text above and answer all questions.

You should spend about 1 hour on this section. [24 marks]

Question 1

From lines 1 to 5, identify the phrase which describes when Hannah's father wound the clocks.

(Total for Question 1 = 1 mark)

Question 2

From lines 17 to 24, give two ways in which the writer shows that Mr Bewley does not yet know what has happened.

You may use your own words or quotations from the text.

(Total for Question 2 = 2 marks)

Question 3

In lines 25 to 43, how does the writer use language and structure to show the change in Mr Bewley?

Support your views with reference to the text.

(Total for Question 3 = 6 marks)

Question 4

In this extract, there is an attempt to create strong feelings in the reader.

Evaluate how successfully this is achieved.

Support your views with detailed reference to the text.

(Total for Question 4 = 15 marks)

TOTAL FOR SECTION A = 24 MARKS

Answer ONE question.

You should spend about 45 minutes on this section.

EITHER — Question 5*

Look at the images described below. Write about a place of work that mattered to someone.

Your response could be real or imagined. You may wish to base your response on one of the images.

*Your response will be marked for the accurate and appropriate use of vocabulary, spelling, punctuation and grammar.

(Total for Question 5 = 40 marks)

OR — Question 6*

Write about a time when you, or someone you know, was shown unexpected kindness.

Your response could be real or imagined.

*Your response will be marked for the accurate and appropriate use of vocabulary, spelling, punctuation and grammar.

(Total for Question 6 = 40 marks)

TOTAL FOR SECTION B = 40 MARKS

TOTAL FOR PAPER = 64 MARKS