The guide who let us pause
Original opinion extract, written for practice.
My favourite guide left several things out. I cannot tell you how many kings slept in the hotel or which balcony deserves the longest photograph. I can describe the small courtyard where she let us sit while a baker carried trays past the gate. We asked about the smell before we asked about the date. Nobody sounded disappointed to discover that the world contained more than the next monument. A tour is not improved merely by cramming another century between lunch and the coach. Give me a guide who knows enough to leave a gap, who can answer a question which was not printed on the route card. I can buy a list of famous buildings. I cannot buy back an afternoon spent hurrying past the place I wanted to notice.
Use your own words to evaluate the writer’s attitude to a guided tour that allows time to stop. Give details from the extract to justify your answer.
100 exam-style questions on CIE IGCSE English Language 5.2 Section A Directed Writing (40 marks), covering 5.2.1 Question structure and stimulus texts, 5.2.2 Question 1(a) analysis and evaluation of the text(s), and 5.2.3 Question 1(b) directed writing task. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.