2024 CCEA GCSE English Literature 5110 Practice Paper with Answers

A strong response will construct a sustained argument ranging across the novel, broadly along these lines:

Case for loyalty: Steinbeck establishes the George–Lennie friendship from the opening chapter as unusual and precious within a world of isolated, transient migrant workers — Slim remarks that 'ain't many guys travel around together', framing their bond as something worth protecting; George's repeated recitation of their shared dream of owning 'a little piece of land' functions throughout the novel as an anchor of hope and identity for Lennie, and George's decision to describe that dream one final time, calmly and gently, in the moments before he shoots Lennie by the river shows a deliberate act of care, ensuring Lennie's last experience is one of comfort and hope rather than fear; by taking responsibility himself, using Carlson's gun and shooting Lennie in the same manner Candy's dog was shot (but with tenderness rather than the casual cruelty of that earlier scene), George controls the manner of Lennie's death and spares him the mob violence and terror that Curley's lynch party would certainly have inflicted; George's own devastation afterwards — his silence, his refusal to celebrate with Slim and Carlson — signals that this is a profound sacrifice made for Lennie's sake, not a callous or self-serving act.

Case for betrayal/complication: candidates should also weigh the reading that George's act, whatever its motive, permanently ends Lennie's only source of protection and companionship, and that Lennie, who trusts George completely and has no understanding of what is coming, is denied any choice in his own fate — Lennie dies believing they are about to realise their dream together, which could be read as a final deception rather than an honest ending; some critics note that George's act also frees him from the burden of caring for Lennie, raising the uncomfortable possibility of some self-interest mixed with compassion, even if the text discourages a cynical reading through Slim's final, sympathetic line to George ('You hadda, George. I swear you hadda').

Structural and contextual reinforcement: Steinbeck foreshadows the ending through the earlier killing of Candy's dog, inviting direct comparison between the two 'mercy killings' and highlighting how George's version is more compassionate (closeness, a beloved memory, no pain) than Carlson's careless dispatch of Candy's dog; the Depression-era context of loneliness and vulnerability among itinerant workers reinforces that no other viable future existed for Lennie once Curley's mob was mobilised, strengthening the case that George's act, however devastating, was the least cruel option available.

Justified conclusion: the strongest answers weigh both readings and reach a supported judgement — typically that Steinbeck constructs the killing as an act of profound, self-sacrificing loyalty and love, using structural parallels, gentle language and Slim's authoritative final verdict to guide the reader towards sympathy for George rather than condemnation, while acknowledging the moral complexity Steinbeck deliberately leaves unresolved.

[40 marks, AO1 & AO2] Marked in levels via a five-band grid: Band 1 (1–10): basic, largely narrative response with minimal reference to the question; Band 2 (11–18): emerging, some relevant comment but underdeveloped, limited textual evidence; Band 3 (19–26): competent, straightforward argument with relevant reference and some understanding of Steinbeck's craft; Band 4 (27–34): good, sustained focus on the question, reasoned argument supported by well-selected evidence, discussion of structural parallels and language; Band 5 (35–40): excellent, persuasive and evaluative response, assured interpretation weighing loyalty against complication, precise and fluent use of critical terminology and textual evidence, sensitive discussion of context. Accept any well-supported line of argument, whether the candidate ultimately agrees, disagrees or offers a qualified view.

A strong response will explore both the character's feelings/reactions and the writer's methods, using close textual reference.

Character's feelings and reactions: Margaret's initial avoidance — carrying the letter 'unopened... to the window seat' before reading it — conveys anticipatory dread rendered through delay rather than direct statement; her recognition that 'there is a considerable difference... between knowing a thing in the abstract and having it set down' articulates a precise, psychologically credible distinction between anticipated and confirmed loss; her repeated re-reading of the passage 'as though repetition might alter its sense' shows a controlled, almost superstitious refusal to accept the finality of the news, while her stillness ('sitting, quite still, with her hands in her lap') conveys restrained grief through physical composure rather than outward emotion, in keeping with expected period decorum; her reflection that losing the house is 'a smaller and a crueller thing than she had prepared herself for' reveals unexpected depth of feeling beneath her earlier practical dismissal of the house's faults, and the closing realisation that she must now tell her unsuspecting younger brother extends her private grief into a looming social and emotional responsibility, leaving the extract on a note of unresolved dread.

Writer's use of language: precise, understated diction ('regretted it exceedingly... not disposed to be patient') characterises the uncle's letter and, by extension, the impersonal financial forces beyond Margaret's control, before it is even quoted directly; the ironic aphorism 'patience... was not a virtue that survived contact with a ledger' uses dry, indirect wit to convey bitter resignation; specific, tactile domestic detail (the draughty house, the roof wanting 'mending in no fewer than three places', the room she 'had never once... succeeded in warming') grounds an abstract loss in lived, sensory experience, making the coming loss concrete and personal rather than merely financial.

Structure and form: the extract is structured around delay and repetition — the unopened letter, the threefold reading, the folding 'along its original creases' — which slows the pace and mirrors Margaret's reluctance to accept the news; the long, subordinate-clause-heavy sentences (particularly the sentence beginning 'But it had been the place...') accumulate clause upon clause to build emotional weight gradually, mimicking the way memory and grief compound rather than arrive all at once; the final short paragraph, shifting abruptly to the unaware brother 'calling to the dog' in the garden below, uses juxtaposition and dramatic irony (the reader knows what he does not) to end the extract on a note of quiet, unresolved tension that invites the reader's continued sympathy and curiosity about what happens next.

[20 marks, AO1 & AO2] Marked in levels: Band 1 (1–5): basic, narrative/descriptive response with minimal reference to language or structure; Band 2 (6–9): emerging, simple identification of feelings or language features, little development; Band 3 (10–13): competent response addressing both bullet points with relevant textual reference and some understanding of effect; Band 4 (14–17): good, sustained focus on both feelings/reactions and writer's methods, well-selected evidence, clear discussion of effects; Band 5 (18–20): excellent, perceptive and assured response exploring the character's feelings with sensitivity and analysing language, structure and form with precision and critical terminology. Credit any valid, well-supported observation on the extract's methods and effects.

A strong response will construct a sustained argument ranging across the play, broadly along these lines:

Case for Sheila's transformation being most significant: Priestley introduces Sheila in Act One as a somewhat conventional, privileged young woman, 'very pleased with life' and playfully possessive about her engagement ring, whose own admitted actions (having Eva Smith dismissed from Milwards out of jealous spite) initially align her with her parents' careless treatment of those beneath them socially; from the moment the Inspector reveals her role, however, Sheila responds with immediate, unprompted horror and guilt ('But these girls aren't cheap labour — they're people'), in sharp contrast to her parents' defensiveness, and her guilt only deepens as the interrogation continues, to the point where she begins anticipating the Inspector's questions and warning her family against denial; by the close of the play she explicitly and repeatedly articulates the Inspector's central message in her own words ('We are members of one body... We've no excuse now for putting on airs'), rejects her parents' attempt to treat the whole affair as a hoax to be dismissed, and shows willingness to end her engagement to Gerald once his own culpability is revealed, indicating that her change in values, not merely her feelings, is genuine and lasting.

Counter-case (Eric): candidates might argue that Eric undergoes an equally significant change, given that his culpability (getting Eva Smith pregnant, stealing money, his drinking) is arguably more serious than Sheila's, and his own admission of guilt and confrontation of his parents ('You're not the kind of father a chap could go to when he's in trouble') shows real moral growth; a strong answer will weigh this fairly rather than dismissing it.

Contrast with unchanged characters: Priestley structurally reinforces Sheila's significance by contrasting her with Mr and Mrs Birling, who remain committed to denial and self-justification throughout, and even, to some extent, with Gerald, whose regret is real but who ultimately seizes on the possibility of the Inspector being a hoax with evident relief; this structural juxtaposition — the older, established generation against the younger — is central to Priestley's socialist purpose, and Sheila is given the clearest, most sustained dramatic arc of realisation and moral commitment within that pattern, including her prescient warning near the end that 'it frightens me the way you talk' when her parents relapse into complacency.

Contextual reinforcement: writing in 1945 for an audience that had lived through the upheavals and social reckonings of two world wars, Priestley uses Sheila (and, to a lesser extent, Eric) to represent the hope that the younger generation might build a more socially responsible post-war society, in contrast to the unreformed, Edwardian capitalist attitudes of Mr and Mrs Birling.

Justified conclusion: the strongest answers weigh Sheila's transformation against Eric's and reach a supported judgement, typically favouring Sheila on the grounds of the clarity, consistency and moral articulacy of her change, and its function as Priestley's clearest vehicle for the play's central message.

[40 marks, AO1 & AO2] Marked in levels via a five-band grid: Band 1 (1–10): basic, largely narrative response with minimal reference to the question; Band 2 (11–18): emerging, some relevant comment but underdeveloped, limited textual evidence; Band 3 (19–26): competent, straightforward argument with relevant reference and some understanding of dramatic craft; Band 4 (27–34): good, sustained focus on the question, reasoned argument supported by well-selected evidence, discussion of structural contrast between characters; Band 5 (35–40): excellent, persuasive and evaluative response, assured interpretation weighing Sheila's change against Eric's, precise and fluent use of critical terminology, sensitive discussion of social/historical context. Accept any well-supported line of argument.

A strong comparative response will explore both poems' treatment of the individual human cost of war, using close reference to language and relevant context.

'The Man He Killed': Hardy uses a plain-speaking, colloquial first-person speaker whose hesitant, repetitive syntax ('I shot him dead because— / Because he was my foe') dramatises confused, unresolved justification rather than confident conviction, the dash and repeated 'because' suggesting the speaker is still working out his own reasoning even as he speaks; the poem's central irony — that 'if you'd met him where any bar is... you'd treat him' — collapses the abstract distinction between 'foe' and potential friend, exposing how war manufactures enmity between individuals who would otherwise have shared 'a half-a-crown' together; Hardy's use of a working-class, informal register throughout (rather than elevated, patriotic language) roots the poem's cost in a single, ordinary, believable human perspective rather than in grand national terms, and the speaker's final, almost embarrassed admission that war is 'quaint and curious', undercutting his own attempt at explanation, exposes how inadequate available language is for making sense of taking another life.

'Mametz Wood': Sheers presents the human cost of war through the physical, delayed re-emergence of soldiers' remains discovered by farmers decades after the First World War battle, the bones 'broken and half-crumbled' among the harvest reversing the expected imagery of agricultural renewal into one of persistent, buried loss; the simile comparing a skull to 'the relic of a broken mosaic' aestheticises and fragments the dead, suggesting both the passage of time and the incompleteness of memory and mourning; the image of skeletons found with 'their absent tongues... [and] arms in each other's, / a broken mosaic of boots and bone' conveys collective, anonymous loss (many individuals reduced to indistinguishable fragments) in contrast to Hardy's single, named encounter, while the final image of the dead 'singing' or offering up their bones to be found reframes their re-discovery as a delayed, involuntary testimony that the land itself preserves, insisting on the individual humanity of soldiers otherwise absorbed into abstract historical statistics.

Comparison: both poets resist glorified, nationalistic language, instead grounding the cost of war in physical, individual detail (a remembered face and a shared drink in Hardy; bones, boots and a skull in Sheers) rather than abstract heroism; however, Hardy's poem operates through a single surviving speaker's uneasy retrospective voice, immediate to the killing itself, while Sheers's poem operates through absence and much later physical discovery, the soldiers themselves silent and represented only by their remains, generating a different, more distanced but equally unsettling form of pathos.

Context: Hardy, writing around the time of the Boer War, draws on a long-standing English tradition of plain-spoken, ironic anti-heroic verse that questions the logic of war from an ordinary soldier's perspective; Sheers, a contemporary Welsh poet writing generations after the First World War, reflects a modern preoccupation with buried, unresolved national memory, informed by real archaeological discoveries of soldiers' remains at Mametz Wood, illustrating how the individual human cost of conflict continues to surface and demand acknowledgement long after the guns have fallen silent.

[40 marks, AO1, AO2, AO3, AO4] Marked in levels via a five-band grid: Band 1 (1–10): basic, narrative/descriptive response with minimal comparison; Band 2 (11–18): emerging, some relevant comment on one or both poems, limited comparison or context; Band 3 (19–26): competent, straightforward comparison with relevant reference to language and some awareness of context; Band 4 (27–34): good, sustained comparison with well-selected evidence, discussion of poetic methods and relevant, integrated context; Band 5 (35–40): excellent, sophisticated and sustained comparison, precise analysis of language/form/structure in both poems, well-integrated and apt contextual material, assured critical terminology throughout. Bulleted indicative content: what each named poem is about; candidates' response to each poet's use of language; similarities and differences in what the poems say about the individual cost of war; candidates' awareness of relevant historical/literary contexts. Accept any well-supported comparison with a different valid second poem from the Conflict anthology.