Marks left by movement
The two practice sources below were written for this question.
Text One: An account of an experiment at an invented packing workshop.
At the packing bench, a recorder marked the movement of a volunteer's hands on a plan of the work surface. A broad curve appeared each time the volunteer reached around the inspection lamp to collect tissue paper. The team moved the tissue tray to the other side of the lamp. In the next trial, the curve disappeared and that stage of the task took less time.
Other marks were less straightforward. A dark cluster was first interpreted as repeated hesitation. The volunteer explained that she had actually held the package still while a colleague checked its label. Arrows showed where her hands had travelled, but not why she had paused.
The volunteer also said that being observed had made her work more carefully than usual. We therefore kept her spoken comments and the timings with the movement record. The plan was useful for questioning the arrangement of the bench, but we stopped treating it as a complete account of the work.
Text Two: Notes from a trial of movement instructions at an invented paper-folding group.
A group devised a compact notation so that a folding sequence could be recorded on one page. Three choices were tested on readers who had not attended the original demonstration.
| Notation used | Meaning intended by the writers | What some new readers understood |
|---|---|---|
| Three arrows ending at one point | Bring three edges to the point in sequence | Move all three edges at the same time |
| A thick arrow | Move slowly during a difficult fold | Press more firmly on the paper |
| An empty box between two stages | Hold the paper still | An instruction had been left out |
Numbering the arrows and providing a key reduced some misunderstandings. However, the group retained a spoken demonstration because the notation still did not communicate every detail of pace and pressure. Its main advantage was that readers could see the overall sequence quickly and identify a stage they wanted to discuss.
Synthesise what you learn from both texts about the usefulness and limitations of recording movement.
528 exam-style questions on WJEC GCSE English Language 3.1 Section A (20%) – Reading, covering 3.1.1 Understanding description, narration and exposition texts, 3.1.2 Range of continuous and non-continuous texts, 3.1.3 Short and extended response question types, and 3.1.4 Editing task at word, sentence and text level. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.