Text: an original contemporary classroom-account-style practice extract.
At the start of the fortnight, each pupil received a blue card. If an explanation became unclear, we could stand the card on our desk instead of putting up a hand. Our teacher said this would allow anyone to request a pause without speaking. Amir immediately slid his card under a book. Later, he explained, “I knew everyone would see who used it first.” A routine intended to make questions easier had created a new moment of exposure.
On Wednesday, Leila raised her card during the written instructions for a practical task. The teacher asked everyone to underline the sentence where they had become uncertain. Seven pupils chose the same one: it could be understood in two different ways. The teacher rewrote it on the board before the materials were handed out, preventing groups from beginning the task with different instructions.
By Friday, however, the cards no longer carried one clear message. One pupil wanted an unfamiliar word explained, another had finished early and a third wanted the window closed. Each time a card appeared, the teacher paused the whole class to discover what it meant. Maya observed that “we started watching other people’s cards instead of our own work”.
At the end of the fortnight, the teacher asked us which uses had helped. She then collected the cards and did not issue them again. From the following week, she stopped at two planned points for whole-class checks and reserved the final minutes for anyone wanting to speak privately. During the first lesson under the new routine, the practical task continued without an unplanned pause; afterwards, Amir stayed to ask about a word he had not understood.
In this extract, the writer tries to show that a classroom experiment can be useful even when the original idea is abandoned.
Evaluate how successfully this is achieved. Support your views with detailed reference to the extract.
You may wish to consider the pupils’ hesitation at the beginning, the different uses of the cards and the decision made at the end.
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.