The gate on weekdays
Text: an original contemporary speech-style practice extract.
On Saturday mornings, the orchard gate swings open and the path quickly fills. On Tuesday, the same path can be followed from one end to the other without meeting anyone. It is tempting to call that a quiet success: no crowd, no litter, no complaints. But a place can look peaceful simply because most people cannot visit it then.
Parents who collect children at the end of the school day, workers whose shifts finish in the afternoon and older residents who prefer a short walk before lunch do not share one convenient hour. A notice beside the gate tells visitors when the orchard is open, but a timetable is only useful if it includes times people can use. Changing those hours would not make every visit possible. It would at least ask whose routine the current arrangement serves.
Longer opening hours need someone to check the path and close the gate. We should not pretend that this happens without effort. The orchard group could test one weekday afternoon for a month and record who comes, then review the arrangement before deciding whether to continue. A gate is a small thing to open; deciding who gets the chance to walk through it is the larger question.
Analyse how the writer uses language and structure to interest and engage the reader.
In your answer, 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.