Reading the worn route
Both texts are newly written practice sources about invented places and investigations.
Text One: An original account of an investigation in an old public hall.
The broad stone staircase seemed to preserve the movement of former crowds. Its third and fourth treads dipped most noticeably in the centre, while the stone near each wall remained almost level. At first, one investigator suggested that generations of visitors must have climbed in a narrow stream up the middle.
A maintenance plan complicated this explanation. It showed that strips of stone beside both walls had been replaced during later repairs. Their sharper edges might therefore indicate their age rather than prove that nobody had walked there. The investigators recorded repaired and unrepaired sections separately instead of treating the whole staircase as one surviving surface.
Near a side entrance, a shallow channel in the step led towards the position of a former ticket hatch. An early floor plan supported the possibility that people had queued along that route. However, the hatch had later been moved, and the entrance remained in daily use for many years. The wear could have developed during several different arrangements of the hall.
A lamp directed across the stone made slight hollows easier to see, but the long shadows made them appear deeper. The final record therefore included measurements, photographs taken from directly above and notes about surfaces that showed little wear. The investigation used patterns of wear to form questions, but did not turn those patterns into a complete account of individual visitors.
Text Two: An original survey record from a different historic building.
A survey team examined three routes through the Riverside Rooms. They compared measured wear with surviving records.
| Location | Measured observation | Related record | Survey conclusion |
|---|---|---|---|
| Front threshold | The centre was 14 mm lower than the outer edges. | A photograph shows doors opening across the full width in 1908. A central access ramp was installed in 1982 and later removed. | Heavy use is likely, but the wear cannot be assigned only to early visitors. |
| Rear service step | The right side was 9 mm lower than the left. | Delivery books record food and fuel arriving through the right-hand doorway until 1936. | The records support repeated service use, but do not identify who or what caused particular marks. |
| Gallery staircase | The first five treads were 7–8 mm lower beside the left-hand rail. | A 1924 plan places the rail on the right. A 1961 photograph shows it on the left. | The wear may combine movement from different periods after the route was altered. |
The team concluded that documents could strengthen an interpretation of physical evidence without making it certain. Measurements also allowed different parts of a route to be compared, including sections where little wear survived. The survey recorded changes to the building so that later alterations were not mistaken for evidence of its earliest use.
Synthesise the evidence in both texts to show how far patterns of wear on stone steps can reveal the ways a building was used.
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.