This website works best with JavaScript switched on. Please enable JavaScript
- Centre Services
- Associate Extranet
- All About Maths
GCSE English Language
- Specification
- Planning resources
- Teaching resources
Assessment resources
- Answers and commentaries (1)
- Centre declaration sheets (4)
- Examiner reports (16)
- Grade descriptors (1)
- Mark schemes (12)
- Notes and guidance (11)
- Question papers (70)
- Component 3 NEA (9)
- Paper 1 (46)
- Paper 2 (48)
- June 2018 (18)
- June 2019 (18)
- November 2018 (17)
- November 2019 (15)
- November 2020 (14)
- November 2021 (16)
- Post-16 resits (4)
Showing 116 results
Centre declaration form: non-exam assessment, fieldwork and live performance: 2023
Published 25 Nov 2022 | PDF | 136 KB
Published 25 Nov 2022 | DOCX | 245 KB
Centre declaration form: Component 3 NEA Spoken language - November 2022
Published 13 Sep 2022 | PDF | 124 KB
Published 13 Sep 2022 | DOCX | 228 KB
Insert: Paper 1 Explorations in creative reading and writing - November 2021
Published 29 Jul 2022 | PDF | 203 KB
Question paper: Paper 2 Writers’ viewpoints and perspectives - November 2021
Published 29 Jul 2022 | PDF | 483 KB
Insert (Modified A4 18pt): Paper 1 Explorations in creative reading and writing - November 2021
Published 29 Jul 2022 | PDF | 130 KB
Question paper (Modified A4 18pt): Paper 2 Writers’ viewpoints and perspectives - November 2021
Published 29 Jul 2022 | PDF | 353 KB
Insert (Modified A3 36pt): Paper 1 Explorations in creative reading and writing - November 2021
Published 29 Jul 2022 | PDF | 138 KB
Question paper (Modified A3 36pt): Paper 2 Writers’ viewpoints and perspectives - November 2021
Published 29 Jul 2022 | PDF | 366 KB
Question paper: Paper 1 Explorations in creative reading and writing - November 2021
Published 29 Jul 2022 | PDF | 4.3 MB
Question paper (Modified A4 18pt): Paper 1 Explorations in creative reading and writing - November 2021
Published 29 Jul 2022 | PDF | 1010 KB
Question paper (Modified A3 36pt): Paper 1 Explorations in creative reading and writing - November 2021
Published 29 Jul 2022 | PDF | 1017 KB
Insert: Paper 2 Writers’ viewpoints and perspectives - November 2021
Published 29 Jul 2022 | PDF | 251 KB
Insert (Modified A4 18pt): Paper 2 Writers’ viewpoints and perspectives - November 2021
Published 29 Jul 2022 | PDF | 120 KB
Insert (Modified A3 36pt): Paper 2 Writers’ viewpoints and perspectives - November 2021
Published 29 Jul 2022 | PDF | 132 KB
Examiner report: Paper 1 Explorations in creative reading and writing - November 2021
Published 29 Jul 2022 | PDF | 151 KB
Examiner report: Paper 2 Writers’ viewpoints and perspectives - November 2021
Published 29 Jul 2022 | PDF | 159 KB
Mark scheme: Paper 1 Explorations in creative reading and writing - November 2021
Published 29 Jul 2022 | PDF | 318 KB
Mark scheme: Paper 2 Writers’ viewpoints and perspectives - November 2021
Published 29 Jul 2022 | PDF | 298 KB
Enter the characters you see below
Sorry, we just need to make sure you're not a robot. For best results, please make sure your browser is accepting cookies.
Type the characters you see in this image:
AQA Language Paper 1 - Question 5 - Creative Writing GCSE English RevisionPod
In an ideal world, you would improve your writing by reading many novels over a period of many years. But do listen in to get some advice on what you can do to revise for this question. The handout is crucial this week: https://tinyurl.com/y46ovdrx And do also download the general Language Paper 1 revision guide: https://tinyurl.com/y4uganwu Follow us on Twitter @GRevisionpod Email us: [email protected]
- More Episodes
- © 2022 GCSE English RevisionPod
Top Podcasts In Education
Search form
- My Timetable
- Revision Maths
- Revision Science
- Revision Videos
- Student Jungle
- AS & A2 LEVEL (A-Level) Revision
- English Language (GCSE & A-Level)
- English Language GCSE Past Papers
- AQA GCSE English Language Past Papers
This section includes recent GCSE English Language past papers (9-1) (8700) from AQA. You can download each of the AQA GCSE English Language past papers and marking schemes by clicking the links below.
November 2021 AQA GCSE (9-1) English Language (8700) Past Exam Papers (Labelled as June 2021)
November 2021: Paper 1: Explorations in Creative Reading and Writing (8700/1) Download Insert - Download Past Paper - Download Mark Scheme
November 2021: Paper 2: Writer's Viewpoints and Perspectives (8700/2) Download Insert - Download Past Paper - Download Mark Scheme
November 2020 AQA GCSE (9-1) English Language (8700) Past Exam Papers (Labelled as June 2020)
November 2020: Paper 1: Explorations in Creative Reading and Writing (8700/1) Download Insert - Download Past Paper - Download Mark Scheme
November 2020: Paper 2: Writer's Viewpoints and Perspectives (8700/2) Download Insert - Download Past Paper - Download Mark Scheme
June 2019 AQA GCSE (9-1) English Language (8700) Past Exam Papers
June 2019: Paper 1: Explorations in Creative Reading and Writing (8700/1) Download Insert - Download Past Paper - Download Mark Scheme
June 2019: Paper 2: Writer's Viewpoints and Perspectives (8700/2) Download Insert - Download Past Paper - Download Mark Scheme
November 2018 AQA GCSE (9-1) English Language (8700) Past Exam Papers
November 2018: Paper 1: Explorations in Creative Reading and Writing (8700/1) Download Insert - Download Past Paper - Download Mark Scheme
November 2018: Paper 2: Writer's Viewpoints and Perspectives (8700/2) Download Insert - Download Past Paper - D ownload Mark Scheme
June 2018 AQA GCSE (9-1) English Language (8700) Past Exam Papers
June 2018: Paper 1: Explorations in Creative Reading and Writing (8700/1) Download Insert - Download Past Paper - Download Mark Scheme
June 2018: Paper 2: Writer's Viewpoints and Perspectives (8700/2) Download Insert - Download Past Paper - Download Mark Scheme
November 2017 AQA GCSE English Language (8700) Past Exam Papers
November 2017: Paper 1: Explorations in Creative Reading and Writing (8700/1) Download Insert - Download Past Paper - Download Mark Scheme
November 2017: Paper 2: Writer's Viewpoints and Perspectives (8700/2) Download Insert - Download Past Paper - Download Mark Scheme
June 2017 AQA GCSE English Language (8700) Past Exam Papers
June 2017: Paper 1: Explorations in Creative Reading and Writing (8700/1) Download Insert - Download Past Paper - Download Mark Scheme
June 2017: Paper 2: Writer's Viewpoints and Perspectives (8700/2) Download Insert - Download Past Paper - Download Mark Scheme
For more GCSE English Language past papers from other exam boards click here .
- Create new account
- Request new password
- Cookies Policy
- Privacy Policy
Copyright © 2007 - 2023 Revision World Networks Ltd.
How I Would Teach… Creative Writing For AQA English Language Paper 1
How i would teach creative writing for aqa english language paper 1.
Andrew Atherton offers his advice on how to get students started with creative writing for AQA English Language Paper 1 when they don’t know how to begin.
A blank piece of paper can be a fearsome thing. Liberating to some, but anxiety-inducing to others. Nowhere is this more apparent than with creative writing. I imagine accosting a comedian whilst they’re shopping, a trolley filled with the weekly groceries, and insisting that they tell me a joke. Something splutters out, a half-joke, not really funny, and they limp off, back to the cereal aisle. Being creative on cue is never an easy task, but yet this is what is demanded of our students. ‘You have forty-five minutes’, their GCSE intones, ‘now be creative! Go!’ The clock starts to tick, louder than any clock should.
How can we help our students to crack this? They can’t rely on creativity striking at 9am on a random Friday in May. How do we transform a blank piece of paper from a source of angst to a source of enjoyment? One answer lies in teaching, rehearsing and modelling certain generative structures that students can depend upon, both to shape their response and to plan it.
Such structures not only prime student thinking, giving them a much needed starting point, but they feed forward into the piece of writing. This article outlines one such structure that you can use with your own students, either as something to rehearse or to model.
A Photograph Finish!
This strategy works best with a question that asks students to respond to an image, an increasingly common style of question. However, even if it doesn’t use this format, students can still utilise this structure. For ease, we’ll imagine the student is presented with some kind of image or photograph.
This structure works by imagining that you, as the narrative voice, are holding this image (whatever it is) as a photograph or, if it fits better with the task, a work of art. The given image is not just an image, but a photograph or a framed piece of art. Whatever the image is, students can just imagine it is framed and that they are physically holding it in their hands. This initial premise can offer students so many ideas and directions, which is precisely why it works well. Let’s consider what could happen next, as a series of four steps.
Step 1 – The Photograph
Students begin with a description of the physical photograph itself. What might they begin to think? Is it torn? It is fading? Is it recent? Do the edges slightly curl after many years of being looked at and handled? Is it colour or black and white? Is it in a shoe box or a family album or a decorative photo frame? How does it feel in the hand? Light like a feather or somehow heavy? What does it smell like?
If the given image is a painting then has it been rolled up or is it proudly displayed in a frame? Here, students are not describing the image, or perhaps just in passing, but rather they’re describing the perimeter or parergon of the image: its physical, corporeal existence as you hold it in your hand.
Step 2 – Your Hands
Now, students have two options, one of which I much prefer. The first option is to zoom into the image itself and describe the scene a little. Again, perforating any description with reminders that the narrator is holding it physically in their hand. It has a weight to it. A sensation.
The second option, though, and my preferred one, is to zoom into the hands holding the photograph. What do they look like? How are they holding it? Do they tremble? Do they clutch? Do they hold it at the fingertips, almost pinching the photograph? Are these hands wrinkled? Are they young? Are they cracked? Knotted? Knuckled? Do these hands hold it closer or at a distance?
This could turn into a masterclass of ‘show don’t tell’: what can we suggest to the reader about (1) this person, the ‘I’ of the response, and (2) their relationship to whatever it is they are holding? How can we tell a story without actually telling it?
Step 3 – Origin Story
At this point, students deal more directly with the image itself. The ‘I’ of the piece now recalls via a flashback the day the photograph was taken. What was happening? Where was it? What was the weather like? How long ago was it? How did they feel? Who else was there?
Students begin to build a sense of the narrator’s relationship to the image, engaging with wider ideas of transience and memory. If earlier in the piece the photograph was described as having crumpled edges from being looked at and handled over many years, what was it about this day that caused it? Why is it important?
Students might now shift into description of a more traditional kind as they cast their narrative gaze over the landscape, the sounds, the smells, the people, the weather, the colour of the sky, and how this makes the narrator feel and why it has reverberated in their mind over the years.
Step 4 – Lay to Rest
Students now return to the physical artefact of the photograph. The narrator is holding it again. What do they do with it? Do they lay it gently into a box? Do they crumple it up and shove it back into a shoe box, watching as the lid folds darkness around it? Do they hold it close? What are their hands doing? How do they feel? The final action the narrator takes tells the reader a lot about the relationship they have to this photograph and what it depicts.
Why Does This Work So Well?
There are a few reasons I think this approach works so well. Here are just a few:
- It provides students a set of prompts and self-generated questions to cue their thinking as they write and plan: How does the narrator hold the photograph? When was it taken? Who was there? What was the weather like, and so on. For students that may struggle to find a way into their creative writing, this set of cues is absolutely groundbreaking. Suddenly they are free from trying to devise a ‘set up’ to their piece and can focus instead on their control of language and choice of imagery.
- It almost has built in some of the features that often characterise a top response: a central motif that runs throughout the piece (the idea of a photograph), perspective shifts (from the photograph to the hands to the flashback), a tightly controlled structure (photograph, hands, memory, photograph), as well as a bank of imagery related to time and memory to call upon. But, again there is more than enough creative space for students to transform this premise and shape into something genuinely imaginative and emotive.
- Indeed, following the above, it offers a conceptual thread to their response that is really important but difficult to pin down: time and memory. If we imagine the shift from wrinkled hands holding the photograph to youthful hands the day it was taken, embedded into this is a potentially incredibly powerful meditation on the transience of time and the memories we hold onto. Equally, describing the photograph at the start as having curled, faded edges again taps into this. So, it gives a substantive shape to something, by its nature, very abstract and conceptual.
- Another aspect of this approach that I really like is that it again has embedded within its structure really effective opportunities for inference and ‘show don’t tell’. If we wish to express sadness, we don’t need to say this and instead we can describe how the hands ‘trembled’ whilst ‘clutching onto the edges of the photograph, a fresh dampness falling onto the plastic film and bringing to life once again the rain suspended by the camera’s click’. Students can imply the relationship between the narrator and the image by how the narrator handles and touches the physical artefact. It is again making concrete something that is often very abstract, and providing the cues that help students to think about it.
- One final aspect of this overall strategy that I think is great is the opportunity to teach students about ekphrasis. We can talk about how this basic idea (a descriptive piece about holding a photograph or work of art) taps into a rich repository of literary work broadly aligned to ekphrasis. We could, for instance, introduce this approach alongside Keats’ ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’, exploring how Keats too imagines a moment caught in time and how he also uses this to explore ideas such as the transience of time.
Now, whether or not you aim to teach this as a set shape or framework for students to use in the exam itself, there is of course another benefit to this strategy. A benefit for us. In the same way this approach offers students a set of prompts to think their way through a response, it also offers us a series of cues to help model creative writing.
Whenever I am introducing creative writing at GCSE, this shape tends to be the first full example I model to students. It works exceptionally well for this as it demonstrates and elucidates many of the typical characteristics of an excellent piece of descriptive writing as well as offering a set of ready-made cues to help me to verbalise my thought process as I live model.
Given there are so many different ways we could take this response, it also offers enough freedom for students to add their thoughts as we do it together and even produce a follow-up with a different image.
This basic shape, as well as the ideas it helps to generate, will ensure students always have at least a starting point. Now when they’re told to be creative, they’ll at least have a punch line.
You can read more articles by Andrew Atherton here .
Andrew Atherton is a Teacher of English as well as Director of Research in a secondary school in Berkshire. He regularly publishes blogs about English and English teaching at ‘Codexterous’ and you can follow him on Twitter @__codexterous
Related Posts
Ofsted, recruitment and whatsapp with gavin williamson, developing expertise through a coaching curriculum, how i would teach multiplication times tables, write a comment cancel reply.
Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.
- News and Analysis
- Download Latest Edition
- Charity Partners
- Subscribe to HWRK Magazine
- CPD Calendar
- Write For Us
- Mission Statement
- Terms and Conditions
- Our Company Privacy & Cookie Policy
Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.
IMAGES
VIDEO
COMMENTS
Question paper (Modified A4 18pt): Paper 1 Explorations in creative reading and writing - November 2021. Published 29 Jul 2022 | PDF | 1010 KB.
that make the very best creative writing, in the ... AQA GCSE English Language and English Literature: Advanced Student Book d She doesn't know it yet
Sample papers for AQA English Language GCSE (9-1). 5. − Paper 1: Explorations in Creative Reading and Writing. 5. − Section A: Reading.
Check out our 'Ultimate English Language & Literature AQA GCSE Course': https://www.firstratetutors.com/gcse-course
Check out our 'Ultimate English Language & Literature AQA GCSE Course': https://www.firstratetutors.com/gcse-course Not sure how to secure
Check out our 'Ultimate English Language & Literature AQA GCSE Course': https://www.firstratetutors.com/gcse-course Not sure how to secure
AQA GCSE English Language - Paper 1: Section B: Creative Writing: 12 A Star Exam Answers: Full mark A Star (Grade 9) Answers [Campbell, Joseph Anthony] on
In an ideal world, you would improve your writing by reading many novels ... AQA Language Paper 1 - Question 5 - Creative Writing GCSE English RevisionPod.
AQA (9-1) GCSE English Language (8700) exam past papers and marking schemes ... November 2021: Paper 1: Explorations in Creative Reading and Writing (8700/1)
Being creative on cue is never an easy task, but yet this is what is demanded of our students. 'You have forty-five minutes', their GCSE intones