Source A: The onions before opening
An original contemporary non-fiction-style practice text, written for this question.
Through the glass door, the community kitchen looked more like a place of work than a place for volunteers. Steel surfaces shone beneath bright lights. Pans large enough to bathe a child in hung from hooks, and several people crossed the room carrying trays with the speed of passengers changing trains. I remained beside the entrance, wearing a borrowed apron and trying to appear both helpful and out of the way.
I had imagined that someone would ask what I was good at. Instead, the coordinator pointed towards a crate of onions. “Start with those,” she said, placing a knife beside me. Peeling onions seemed a disappointingly small contribution to the eighty meals we were meant to prepare. Around me, experienced hands chopped carrots, stirred sauce and checked lists. My first onion rolled away before I had cut it.
The man working opposite me rescued it with his foot. He looked at the uneven pieces on my board and said, “They don’t have to win a prize. They have to soften.” Then he returned to his own chopping. His kindness was so practical that there was no room for embarrassment. I began again.
As the kitchen filled with heat, it also became less mysterious. The quick movements I had mistaken for confidence were often simply habits repeated every week. One volunteer sang quietly while she washed spinach. Another stopped three times to search for his glasses before discovering them on his head. People asked for help without apologising and gave instructions without making speeches.
When a delivery arrived late, the coordinator moved me from the onions to the serving table. I was asked to divide rice between containers while somebody else added the sauce. At first, I checked every portion as if an examiner might appear. Then the queue outside became visible through the window. Parents talked to restless children; an elderly man folded and unfolded a shopping bag. The containers were not practice. People were waiting for them.
My hands became quicker. A woman beside me slid lids into place whenever I fell behind. We developed a rhythm without discussing it: rice, sauce, lid; rice, sauce, lid. The room still contained noise and confusion, but it no longer seemed to be evidence that I did not belong there. It was the sound of separate tasks joining together.
At the end of the evening, I wiped the tables. Nobody congratulated me for defeating the onions, and I was glad. I had arrived expecting to prove that I could be useful. Instead, usefulness had been made ordinary: notice what needs doing, accept guidance and continue. When the coordinator asked whether I could return the following week, the kitchen door no longer looked like an entrance reserved for experts.
Source B: A place in the second row
An original contemporary non-fiction-style practice text, written for this question.
I had agreed to attend one rehearsal of the neighbourhood choir. I repeated the word “one” to myself as I climbed the stairs to the meeting room. Through the door came a rising collection of voices, followed by laughter. I stopped on the final step. Everyone inside, I decided, would know how to read music, enter on the correct note and breathe without making it obvious.
The conductor asked whether I sang high or low. I said, truthfully, that I sang quietly. She placed me in the second row between a retired teacher and a student who offered me a pencil. The pages in front of me were crowded with symbols. I recognised the words, but the notes appeared to be instructions written for somebody else.
We began with warm-up exercises. Thirty adults stretched their faces, rolled their shoulders and produced a noise like a distant siren. The seriousness with which they performed these ridiculous actions was reassuring. When the retired teacher sang the wrong note and laughed, my private theory that mistakes were forbidden began to weaken.
During the first song, I followed the people beside me rather than the music. I entered late, ran out of breath and shaped several words without making a sound. Yet the song continued. Nobody turned around. My errors disappeared into the larger voice of the group, while its confidence carried me across the gaps in my own.
At the break, I discovered that the choir was not divided into experts and beginners as neatly as I had imagined. The student beside me had joined only a month earlier. A man at the back admitted that he still lost his place whenever the conductor removed her glasses. People exchanged advice about breathing, but they also discussed buses, leaking taps and what to cook for dinner. Singing was something they practised, not a talent that separated them from ordinary life.
We repeated the final song without stopping. This time, I watched the conductor raise her hands and felt the room become attentive. My own voice was impossible to distinguish, but I could feel when it supported the note around it. The sound grew because each person contributed something incomplete. For the first time that evening, being unheard did not feel the same as being absent.
As I walked downstairs, the rehearsal continued in my head. I had arrived believing that joining meant displaying an ability I already possessed. The choir had shown me a less alarming definition: joining could mean listening closely enough to take a place among other people. I had promised myself one rehearsal. Before leaving, I wrote the time of the next one in my notebook.
Compare how the writers present their changing ideas and perspectives about taking part in an unfamiliar community activity.
In your answer, you should compare:
Support your answer with detailed examples from both texts, including brief quotations.
77 exam-style questions on Edexcel A IGCSE English Language 1.1.3 Links and connections between writers' ideas. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.