Reports from a changing street
Both texts are newly written practice sources about invented people, places or projects.
Text One: An original account of an invented community fountain-mapping project.
A volunteer reported that the Riverside fountain was unavailable and attached a photograph of a handle wrapped in tape. The report gave no location code. As local volunteers used the name “Riverside” for two different fountains, the editor asked which route the volunteer had followed and what stood opposite the fountain. Only then was the report attached to the eastern site.
Three days later, another volunteer found the tape gone and the water running. The editor did not delete the first observation or label it a mistake. It remained in the record with its date, while the map displayed the more recent status. A condition could change without making an accurate earlier report false.
A different entry described a crack across a metal panel. When the project received a closer inspection note, it became clear that the supposed crack was a painted line. This time, the team issued a correction: the condition had not changed, but the original evidence had been misinterpreted.
Text Two: An original report about a different fictional fountain-mapping project.
The second project considered both the strength and the age of submitted evidence. Its editors recorded the following decisions:
| Submitted claim | Evidence available | Published decision |
|---|---|---|
| “The Central fountain is closed.” | Two reports from the same afternoon; one included a location-coded image | Publish “reported closed at 15:20; confirmation pending” |
| “The Garden fountain has been removed.” | One undated message with no location marker | Withhold the map change and request a date and precise location |
| “The Station fountain is working again.” | An inspection record from the following morning | Replace the current marker but retain the earlier dated entry |
Repeated messages did not necessarily count as independent confirmation: two people might have passed on the same unverified claim. Equally, two apparently conflicting observations could both be accurate if they were made at different times. The editors therefore published some useful but incomplete information with a provisional label, while withholding claims that could not yet be connected to a particular place or time.
The project’s correction record separated reports attached to the wrong fountain from conditions that had genuinely changed. This allowed the public map to show the latest supported position without pretending that every earlier entry had been either permanently true or entirely worthless.
Synthesise what you learn from both texts about how the projects decide whether, and in what form, to publish reports about the fountains.
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.