RCF Model Paper: Eduqas Component 2 Marking Guide
Answers for all six reading questions, what separates a good answer from a middling one, and full model answers for the evaluation question, the comparison and the letter.
Unofficial original RCF practice material
This marking guide accompanies the RCF model paper for Eduqas Component 2, original practice material written by RCF English.
It is not an Eduqas mark scheme. The band descriptions below are RCF English's own plain-English account of how the marks divide; no Eduqas mark scheme wording is reproduced. For the authoritative standard, use Eduqas's own mark schemes and annotated exemplars, linked on the past papers page.
RCF English is not affiliated with, endorsed by or approved by Eduqas or WJEC.
A1: three one-mark questions (3 marks)
One mark each. These are retrieval questions and they want one fact, written plainly. A sentence is enough; a paragraph wastes a minute you will want later.
- (a) Six hours. (It had started at eleven that morning and she reached the track six hours later.)
- (b) Because peat burns downwards, so the fire can travel underground beneath a firefighter's feet - it can be forty metres away underground and surface somewhere else the next morning.
- (c) She stopped the whole line for four minutes, made him show her the boot, and sent two people ahead to test the ground with poles.
A2: how the writer shows danger and difficulty (10 marks)
The bullet points under the question are the plan: what the writer says, and the use of language, tone and structure. An answer that does only the first is capped, and it is the commonest way to lose marks here.
Ten marks is roughly 20 minutes and about three developed paragraphs.
Indicative content
- Scale established by numbers. "six hours", "two kilometres wide", "eleven firefighters and four hoses" - the mismatch between the size of the fire and the size of the crew is done arithmetically rather than stated.
- The expert contradicts the reader. People "assume they are the safer of the two"; Okonjo, with nineteen years, "does not think so". Setting up the assumption in order to knock it down makes the danger feel discovered rather than announced.
- The quotation about peat. "You can put out everything you can see" locates the danger in what cannot be seen, which is more frightening than flame.
- Understatement in the description of the crew. When the wind turns "nobody says anything about it; they simply pick up the beaters and walk backwards down the hill". The flatness of simply does the work: routine retreat is more alarming than panic would be.
- The smoke passage. It "does not rise cleanly", it "lies along the ground in sheets", and a firefighter "disappears completely and then returns". A person vanishing and reappearing is an image of danger without a single dangerous word in it.
- Structure: the incident is placed late. Thirty lines of accumulating detail precede the moment Whitelaw goes through the surface, so the reader has been taught what the ground is like before somebody falls into it.
- The pace of that sentence. "He was out again in under a second" - short, and immediately over, which is how the writer conveys that the near-miss was routine and not routine at the same time.
- The contrast of two reactions. He laughed; "Okonjo did not laugh." Four words, and they carry the whole judgement.
- The closing quotation. "counting eleven people, twice, because I got to nine the first time and my stomach went" - the danger is finally measured in the fear of the person in charge, not in flames.
- The last paragraph refuses a resolution. The plantation survives, then the fire returns two days later "exactly as she had said it would". The difficulty is presented as unfinished.
What separates the bands here
- Low. Retells the article. Danger is asserted from content only, with quotations used as illustration rather than evidence.
- Middle. Deals with what the writer says and picks out some language, but tone and structure are barely mentioned, and effects are general - this makes it sound dangerous.
- High. All three of language, tone and structure are handled. Effects are specific and argued, and the answer notices the writer's restraint - that the most frightening moments are the flattest sentences.
A3: three one-mark questions (3 marks)
- (a) He was put on the handles (the pump handles) - work he compares to a horse's labour.
- (b) His hands are burned or injured and are wrapped, so he cannot hold the pen in the ordinary way.
- (c) That he would be wanted at exercise on Monday, and that he might take the branch pipe if he liked.
A4: how well the diary captures his feelings (10 marks)
This is the evaluation question, and the word doing the work in it is how well. It is not enough to say what he feels; the answer has to judge how successfully the writing conveys it, and be willing to say where it does so less well.
The second bullet - how well you think the diary makes those feelings clear - is where the higher marks are, and it is the bullet most answers skip.
What his feelings are, across the three entries
- Tuesday: mild resentment, privately held. He is glad of a quiet week but "would not say so at the station", and he resents being on the handles - "the labour of a horse and the dignity of none" - but does not complain "in his hearing".
- Thursday: shock, and shame at his earlier ignorance. "I had thought I knew what a fire was... I was not in the middle of anything."
- Thursday: fear he can only describe indirectly. He records not his terror but the fact that Bagshaw twice had hold of his collar, and leaves the reader to work out why.
- Thursday: discomfort at being called a hero. Being shaken by the hand eleven times "has made me low rather than proud".
- Saturday: after-effects he will not describe. "I do not care to write what I saw when I closed my eyes."
- Saturday: quiet acceptance, and puzzlement at himself. "I find I am not afraid to go back. I had expected to be, and I am not, and I do not entirely understand it."
How well the diary conveys them - the evaluative half
- Withholding is the diary's method, and it works. Twice the writer stops short of the thing itself - the collar, and what he saw with his eyes closed - and both refusals convey more than a description would. A reader supplies what he leaves out.
- The form is doing real work. A diary written over five days can show change without narrating it. Tuesday's small vanity about the branch pipe is answered on Saturday when the pipe is offered and he does not thank anybody, and the diary never points this out.
- Physical detail stands in for emotion. The wrapped hands appear as a practical explanation for bad handwriting, not as a claim on sympathy, and are the more affecting for it.
- The sound of the fire is precisely observed. "a great crowd a long way off, all talking at once" is unexpected and therefore convincing; it is not the roar a reader was braced for.
- A fair criticism to make. The Tuesday entry is thin. Its resentment about the handles is a device to set up Saturday, and a reader can feel it being arranged. The best answers say so.
- A second fair criticism. He tells us plainly that he did not act bravely and explains why. Some readers will find this the most honest moment in the diary; others will feel it explains a feeling the earlier writing had already shown, and is therefore the one place where he says too much.
What separates the bands here
- Low. Lists his feelings with quotations. No judgement, or judgement as assertion: he makes his feelings very clear.
- Middle. Feelings are traced across the three entries and some evaluation appears, usually favourable and usually at the end.
- High. Evaluation runs throughout and is reasoned. The answer identifies the diary's method - restraint, physical detail, the gaps - and is prepared to find at least one place where it works less well.
A4: model answer
Question: How well do you think the diary captures the writer's feelings about the fire at Harrop's mill?
The diary captures his feelings unusually well, and it does so chiefly by refusing to describe them. On Thursday the writer does not tell us that he was terrified; he tells us that "twice he had hold of my collar", and then adds, in a separate sentence, "He has said nothing about it to-day and I think he will not." Nothing in either sentence names fear. But a reader understands that he froze, that another man had to move him, that it happened more than once, and that both men have agreed silently never to mention it. That is a great deal of feeling conveyed without a single word for feeling, and it is more convincing than an account of panic would have been.
The same withholding closes the Saturday entry: "I do not care to write what I saw when I closed my eyes." A weaker diary would have told us. By declining, the writer both admits that the images are still there and shows us that he cannot face setting them down, and the sentence is the shortest in the entry. The gaps in this diary are where its feeling lives.
The form is used intelligently. Because the entries are dated, the writer can show change without ever claiming it. On Tuesday he is a little vain and a little resentful, kept off the branch pipe after eleven months and calling the handles "the labour of a horse and the dignity of none". On Saturday the branch pipe is offered and he does not thank anybody, and neither man looks at the other. The diary never points out that the thing he wanted on Tuesday has arrived and no longer matters, which is exactly why the reader feels it.
His feelings about other people are equally well caught. He is not gratified by the town's praise but embarrassed by it - shaken by the hand "eleven times in the street to-day by men who were in their beds" - and that precise, slightly bitter count of eleven does the work of a paragraph of complaint.
It is not uniformly successful. The Tuesday entry is thin, and its resentment about the handles reads as a device planted to be paid off on Saturday; a reader can feel the arrangement. And when he writes "I did not do this bravely. I did it because Bagshaw said take his legs", he is explaining a modesty his earlier writing had already demonstrated, which makes it the one moment where he says too much. Set against the collar and the closed eyes, though, these are small faults, and the final admission - "I am not afraid to go back... and I do not entirely understand it" - is the most honest sentence in the piece precisely because it refuses to resolve anything.
Why this answer works
- **It answers how well from the first sentence.** The opening makes a judgement and names the method - refusing to describe - which the rest of the answer then tests.
- Both bullets are covered, and interleaved. What he feels and how well it is conveyed appear together in every paragraph, rather than as two separate halves.
- Structure is treated as evidence. The Tuesday-to-Saturday link about the branch pipe is a structural observation, and it is the strongest point in the answer.
- It finds fault, twice. The thin opening entry and the over-explained modesty. Evaluation that only admires cannot reach the top of this question.
- Quotations are short and load-bearing. Every one is followed immediately by what it shows.
- It ends by weighing the faults against the strengths rather than by summarising.
A5: what we learn about the equipment (4 marks)
Four marks, both texts, and it should take about five minutes. This question wants information, gathered from the two texts and put together. It does not want analysis of how either writer writes, and no marks are available for it.
Roughly one mark per clear point, with the best answers combining the two texts rather than listing each in turn.
- Text 1: four hoses for a fire front nearly two kilometres wide; beaters used in pairs for damping down; poles used to test the ground ahead for burning peat; protective boots, one of which survived a foot going into burning peat undamaged.
- Text 2: a manual engine worked by pump handles, needing men on the handles like horses; a branch pipe, which is the skilled position and is rationed by seniority; no protective equipment mentioned at all - his hands are burned and wrapped two days later.
- Combining them: both crews are short of what they need, but differently. The modern crew has too little of the right equipment for the size of the fire; the Victorian crew's equipment needs human muscle to work at all, and offers its users no protection.
- A likely fifth point: what counts as equipment has changed. In Text 1 a pole for testing the ground is a safety device; in Text 2 the nearest thing to a safety device is Bagshaw's hand on a collar.
A6: comparison (10 marks)
Both texts, and both bullets: the dangers faced, and how each writer gets their feelings across. The second bullet is about method, so an answer that compares only the dangers is answering half the question.
Both texts must appear in every paragraph. A paragraph on Text 1 followed by a paragraph on Text 2 is two descriptions, not a comparison, and it is the commonest fault on this question.
Indicative content: the dangers
- Hidden versus visible. Text 1's danger is underfoot and invisible - peat burning downwards, ground that gives way. Text 2's danger is overhead and audible - something going "with a crack like a gun".
- Duration. Text 1 is eleven hours of sustained, repeated risk; Text 2 is one night, and the writer has never been inside a burning building before.
- Danger to others. Okonjo's fear is for her eleven people. The diarist's danger includes two men to be carried out of the picking room.
- Equipment and protection. Four hoses and boots against a manual engine and bare hands.
- Unfinished danger. Text 1 ends with the fire returning two days later. Text 2 ends with the writer agreeing to go back.
Indicative content: how the feelings are conveyed
- Third person against first person. Text 1's reporter must convey Okonjo's feelings through what she says and does; the diarist has direct access to his own and still chooses not to state them.
- Both rely on understatement, but differently. The reporter uses flat narration - "nobody says anything about it" - while the diarist uses omission, leaving the reader to supply what he will not write.
- Both save the feeling for a late, small detail. Okonjo counting to nine and her stomach going; the diarist's closed eyes. In each case the emotional weight sits in one sentence near the end.
- Physical evidence stands in for emotion in both. The boot in Text 1, the wrapped hands in Text 2.
- Audience changes the register. Text 1 is written to be read by strangers and quotes an expert to earn its authority; Text 2 was written for nobody, which is why it can admit to being made "low rather than proud".
- **Both distrust the word hero.** Text 1: "That is the bit nobody films." Text 2: the eleven handshakes from men who were in their beds.
What separates the bands here
- Low. One text then the other. Some valid content, no genuine comparison.
- Middle. Both texts in most paragraphs, dangers compared competently, but the second bullet - method - is thin or arrives only at the end.
- High. Both bullets are handled together throughout, differences are as prominent as similarities, and the answer explains why the two writers convey feeling differently rather than only noting that they do.
A6: model answer
Question: Both of these texts are about people fighting a fire. Compare the dangers the firefighters faced, and how the two writers get their feelings about those dangers across to the reader.
The two dangers face in opposite directions. On the moor the threat is underfoot and invisible: peat "burns downwards", the ground gives way beneath Dan Whitelaw, and Okonjo's crews must test what they are standing on with poles. In the mill it comes from above and announces itself, "something above us would go with a crack like a gun". The modern crew is endangered by what it cannot see; the Victorian volunteer by what he can hear and cannot predict. That difference shapes everything else, because a danger you can hear produces a startled man who has to be held by the collar, while a danger you cannot see produces a manager who counts her people twice.
The scale of the risk also differs. Text 1 describes eleven hours of continuous work against a fire front two kilometres wide, with four hoses; the danger is grinding and it is still unresolved two days later, when the fire "came up again three hundred metres to the west". Text 2 is a single night, and its writer is a novice discovering that four fires watched from the street had taught him nothing. His danger is sharper and shorter, and it includes two men to be carried out of the picking room. Both writers, though, are short of equipment: four hoses against two kilometres, and a hand-worked engine with no protection at all beyond another man's grip.
Where the two are most alike is in how carefully they refuse to describe fear. The reporter never says that the crew was frightened; he writes that when the wind turned "nobody says anything about it; they simply pick up the beaters and walk backwards down the hill", and the flatness of simply does more than an adjective could. The diarist has the advantage of writing about himself and still declines to use it: he records that Bagshaw "twice" had hold of his collar and stops there. The reporter withholds by narrating plainly; the diarist withholds by leaving gaps. In both, the reader supplies the emotion, which is why both convince.
Each also saves its feeling for one late, physical detail. Okonjo's is a confession she makes only afterwards, in the dark - "I got to nine the first time and my stomach went" - and its power comes from being offered by the person supposedly in control. The diarist's is a refusal: "I do not care to write what I saw when I closed my eyes." The reporter must quote somebody else to reach the feeling, because the form gives him no other route to it; the diarist can reach his own directly and chooses not to. Both arrive at the same place, and it is a measure of how well each is written that the reader believes them equally.
Why this answer works
- Both texts appear in every paragraph. Not one paragraph could be cut in half and still stand.
- Both bullets are handled together. Paragraphs one and two compare the dangers; three and four compare the methods; and paragraph one already links the two by arguing that the kind of danger produces the kind of writing.
- Comparative connectives carry real weight: The modern crew is endangered by what it cannot see; the Victorian volunteer by what he can hear. The reporter withholds by narrating plainly; the diarist withholds by leaving gaps.
- Differences are given as much room as similarities, which is what the word compare asks for.
- It explains why, not only what. The last paragraph accounts for the difference in method by the difference in form - a reporter has no direct access to feeling, a diarist has nothing but.
- Quotations are short. At ten marks in fifteen minutes there is no room for long ones.
Section B: the two writing tasks (40 marks)
Two tasks, about thirty minutes each. Twenty per cent of the marks in this section are for spelling, punctuation and grammar, which means roughly one mark in five across both pieces - more than most students protect.
Finish both. Two complete pieces of 350 words score better than one polished piece of 700 and half of another. If you are running out of time, shorten the second piece deliberately: plan a three-paragraph version and write it properly.
What the content and organisation marks reward
- The stated form, obeyed. A letter to a newspaper opens and closes like one; an article does not.
- A register held steadily for the stated reader.
- A clear line of argument, in an order that could not be shuffled.
- Paragraphs that develop rather than repeat.
- A deliberate ending. The last sentence is the one read immediately before the mark is written.
What the technical marks reward
- Sentences varied in length and structure, and varied on purpose.
- Vocabulary chosen for precision rather than for size.
- Accurate sentence punctuation. Comma splices are the commonest single fault at this level.
- Correct spelling, including of words you chose to use.
- Visible paragraphing.
B1: model answer
Question: Your local fire service has proposed closing your nearest station at night and covering the area from a station twelve miles away. Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper giving your views on the proposal.
Sir,
I have read the fire service's consultation document twice, and I want to begin by saying that I believe the figures in it are honest. Callouts from our station between midnight and six are indeed low. Nobody is being deceived about that, and I would rather not join the letters you have printed suggesting otherwise.
My objection is to the word covered. The document says the area will be covered from Ashfield, twelve miles away. It does not say how long twelve miles takes at two in the morning, and I think your readers are entitled to that number rather than to the reassurance. On the two occasions I have measured it, driving carefully and meeting nothing, it took nineteen minutes. A fire in a house doubles in size roughly every minute once it takes hold. I am not qualified to say what nineteen minutes means in those terms, but neither is the person who wrote covered, and one of us has at least driven it.
There is a second point the document avoids. Our station is not only an engine; it is fourteen retained firefighters who live within four minutes of it and who do other jobs during the day. They cannot be moved twelve miles. Close the station at night and you do not relocate that crew, you lose it, and you will not get it back when the policy is reviewed in three years. Retained crews take a decade to build and one decision to disperse.
I would ask the service to publish three things before the consultation closes: the measured night-time response times from Ashfield, not the modelled ones; the number of current retained staff who say they would remain; and what the closure actually saves, in pounds, after the cost of covering this area from further away. If those three numbers support the proposal, I will accept it and say so in this column.
What I object to is being asked to accept a decision on the strength of a word. Covered is not a measurement. Our fire station has been on that corner since 1938 and has never yet had to be twelve miles away, and before it is, somebody should have to say in public exactly how long that will take.
Yours faithfully,
A resident of Barrow Lane
Why this answer works
- The form is obeyed from the first word to the last. Sir, / Yours faithfully, and a register that belongs in a newspaper letters column.
- It concedes the other side's strongest fact first. Callouts really are low. Persuasive writing that ignores the obvious objection reads as though it has not thought.
- One idea is attacked precisely. The whole letter turns on a single word, covered, which gives it a spine and makes it memorable.
- Specifics do the persuading: nineteen minutes, fourteen retained firefighters, four minutes, 1938. Invented detail is allowed and is what separates a strong answer from a general one.
- It ends by asking for something concrete - three published numbers - rather than by restating the objection.
- Sentence variety is deliberate. Long accumulating sentences in the argument, then short flat ones for the point: Covered is not a measurement.
- About 380 words, which is what twenty-five minutes of careful writing actually produces.
The faults that cost most on this paper
Do this
- Answer on one text fully before moving to the other.
- Cover both bullet points under A2, A4 and A6. They are the mark scheme in disguise.
- Judge how well in A4, and be willing to find a weakness.
- Keep both texts in every paragraph of A6.
- Keep A5 short. It is four marks and wants information, not analysis.
- Finish both writing tasks, even if the second has to be shorter.
Avoid this
- Do not write a paragraph on Text 1 and then a paragraph on Text 2 in A6.
- Do not analyse language in A5. There are no marks for it there.
- Do not merely list feelings in A4 without judging how well they are conveyed.
- Do not spend ten minutes on the six one-mark questions.
- Do not draw boxes, columns or headings in Section B.
- Do not run one writing task into the other's time. Two complete answers beat one and a half.
Related pages
The paper itself
Both texts and all eight questions, for working under timed conditions.
Component 2 method
How to approach each question type on this paper.
Official Eduqas papers
Eduqas's own past papers, mark schemes and annotated exemplars.
Eduqas overview
Both components, the weightings and what the specification actually says.