The chair nobody wanted
Text: an original contemporary personal-column-style practice extract.
At lunchtime, every chair in the library seemed to have an owner except one. It stood beside the returns trolley, slightly apart from the others, as if it had been sent there for misbehaving. Whenever somebody approached it, they noticed its uneven legs and continued walking.
I had nowhere else to sit, so I lowered myself carefully. It rocked. Not enough to throw me onto the carpet, but enough to make my pencil roll towards the edge of the table. Behind me, books landed in the trolley with heavy thumps. Its wheels clicked and complained whenever the librarian pushed it away.
After ten minutes, however, the chair began to reveal its advantages. Nobody squeezed past me to reach the shelves. Nobody leaned across my work to speak to a friend. The rocking even stopped me from slumping over my page. While the comfortable seats filled with conversations, bags and borrowed rulers, my rejected corner remained surprisingly peaceful.
The next day, I returned to the same place. This time, before I could sit down, another pupil rested a hand on the chair and asked, “Are you using this?” The chair nobody wanted had acquired a queue.
Analyse the ways in which the writer’s choices of language and structure make this account interesting and engaging.
You should consider:
Support your views with detailed reference to the extract.
834 exam-style questions on Edexcel GCSE English Language 2.3 Content: non-fiction study and transactional text types, covering 2.3.9 Write an article, 2.3.10 Write a letter, 2.3.11 Write a review, 2.3.12 Write a text for a speech, and 2.3.13 Write a section for a guide, textbook, leaflet or booklet. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.