H474/03 Mark Scheme June 2023 6 12. Subject Specific Marking Instructions Candidates answer one question from Section A and two questions from Section B. Assessment objectives AO1, AO2 and AO3 are assessed in Section A. Assessment objectives AO1, AO2 and AO5 are assessed in Section B. For each section the level descriptors are organised with the dominant assessment objective first. The question-specific guidance on the tasks provide an indication of what candidates are likely to cover in terms of AOs 1, 2, 3 and 5. The guidance and indicative content are neither prescriptive nor exhaustive: candidates should be rewarded for any relevant response which appropriately addresses the Assessment Objectives. Awarding Marks 1. Each section is worth 32 marks. 2. Section A has one question worth 32 marks. Section B has two questions which added together are worth a maximum of 32 marks. 3. In Section B Question 3 is worth 18 marks and Question 4 is worth 14 marks. Mark each question and then add the marks together for a total mark out of 32. For each answer, award a single overall mark out of 32, following this procedure: • refer to the question-specific Guidance for Higher and Lower response and indicative content • using ‘best fit’, make a holistic judgement to locate the answer in the appropriate level descriptor • place the answer precisely within the level and determine the appropriate mark out of 32 considering the relevant AOs • bear in mind the weighting of the AOs, and place the answer within the level and award the appropriate mark out of 32 • if a candidate does not address one of the assessment objectives targeted they cannot achieve all of the marks in the given level. Mark positively. Use the lowest mark in the level only if the answer is borderline /doubtful. Use the full range of marks, particularly at the top and bottom ends of the mark range. When the complete script has been marked: • if necessary, follow the instructions concerning rubric infringements; • add together the two marks out of 32, to arrive at the total mark for the script out of 64. Rubric Infringement Candidates might infringe the rubric in one of the following ways: • only answering one question • answering two questions from Section A or one from Section B • answering more than two questions. If a candidate has written three or more answers, mark all answers and award the highest mark achieved in each Section of the paper. H474/03 Mark Scheme June 2023 7 These are the Assessment Objectives for the English Language and Literature specification as a whole. AO1 Apply concepts and methods from integrated linguistic and literary study as appropriate, using associated terminology and coherent written expression. AO2 Analyse ways in which meanings are shaped in texts. AO3 Demonstrate understanding of the significance and influence of contexts in which texts are produced and received. AO4 Explore connections across texts informed by linguistic and literary concepts and methods* NOT ASSESSED IN H474/3 AO5 Demonstrate expertise and creativity in the use of English to communicate in different ways. H474/03 Mark Scheme June 2023 8 WEIGHTING OF ASSESSMENT OBJECTIVES The relationship between the units and the assessment objectives of the scheme of assessment is shown in the following table: Component % of A Level AO1 AO2 AO3 AO4 AO5 Total Exploring non-fiction and spoken texts (01) 4% 3% 4% 5% 0% 16% The language of poetry and plays (02) 9% 12% 8.5% 2.5% 0% 32% Reading as a writer, writing as a reader (03) 9% 11% 5% 0% 7% 32% Independent study: analysing and producing texts (04) 3% 4% 2.5% 4.5% 6% 20% Total: 25% 30% 20% 12% 13% 100% H474/03 Mark Scheme June 2023 9 Section A - Reading as a writer The weightings for the assessment objectives are: AO2 6% AO1 5% AO3 5% Total 16% In Section A the dominant assessment objective is AO2 Analyse ways in which meanings are shaped in texts. Answers will also be assessed for AO1 and AO3. Answers should explore how meanings are shaped by analysing the author’s use of narrative techniques (AO2). They should develop a coherent argument, using relevant concepts and methods from linguistic and literary study and associated terminology (AO1). Answers should be developed with reference to literary and generic contexts (AO3). The criteria below are organised to reflect the order of the dominant assessment objectives. A response that does not address any one of the three assessment objectives targeted cannot achieve all of the marks in the given level. Level 6: 27-32 marks AO2 Excellent, fully developed and detailed critical analysis of ways in which meanings are shaped in texts. AO1 Excellent application of relevant concepts and methods from integrated linguistic and literary study as appropriate. Consistently coherent and fluent written expression and apt and consistent use of terminology relevant to the task and texts. AO3 Perceptive understanding of the significance and influence of the contexts in which texts are produced and received. H474/03 Mark Scheme June 2023 10 Level 5: 22-26 marks AO2 Clear and well developed critical analysis of ways in which meanings are shaped in texts. AO1 Secure application of relevant concepts and methods from integrated linguistic and literary study as appropriate. Consistently clear written expression and appropriate use of terminology relevant to the task and texts. AO3 Clear and relevant understanding of the significance and influence of the contexts in which texts are produced and received. Level 4: 17-21 marks AO2 Competent analysis of ways in which meanings are shaped in texts. AO1 Competent application of relevant concepts and methods from integrated linguistic and literary study as appropriate. Generally clear written expression and mainly appropriate use of terminology relevant to the task and texts. AO3 Some understanding of the significance and influence of the contexts in which texts are produced and received. Level 3: 12-16 marks AO2 Some analysis of ways in which meanings are shaped in texts. AO1 Some application of relevant concepts and methods selected appropriately from integrated linguistic and literary study. Generally clear written expression with occasional inconsistencies and some appropriate use of terminology relevant to the task and texts. AO3 Some awareness of the significance and influence of the contexts in which texts are produced and received. H474/03 Mark Scheme June 2023 11 Level 2: 7-11 marks AO2 Limited analysis of ways in which meanings are shaped in texts. AO1 Limited attempt to apply relevant concepts and methods from integrated linguistic and literary study appropriately. Some inconsistent written expression and limited use of terminology relevant to the task and texts. AO3 Limited awareness of the significance and influence of the context in which texts are produced and received. Level 1: 1-6 marks AO2 Very little analysis of ways in which meanings are shaped in texts. AO1 Very little attempt to apply relevant concepts and methods from integrated linguistic and literary study appropriately. Inconsistent written expression and little use of terminology relevant to the task and texts. AO3 Very little awareness of the significance and influence of the contexts in which texts are produced and received. 0 marks: no response or response not worthy of credit. H474/03 Mark Scheme June 2023 12 Question Response Marks Guidance 1 In what ways does the ending of the novel provide a resolution of its narrative? You should range across the text to explore how features such as character, setting and viewpoint are presented during the final stages of the novel, the function the ending plays in the novel as a whole, and the broader generic context. A higher level response (levels 4 to 6) will: AO2 Explore the ways the writer presents the ending, going beyond the most obvious features, and giving a strong sense of how the ending creates meaning in the novel as a whole. AO1 Use vocabulary, terminology and narrative concepts appropriately, to analyse the ways in which the writer presents the ending. Express ideas coherently and fluently, with a wide vocabulary. AO3 Show an understanding of the literary and generic context, using this 32 The indicative content shows an integrated approach to AO2 and AO1 with additional guidance for AO3. Depending on the text studied, candidates may discuss: Jane Eyre AO2 and AO1 The ending of Jane Eyre resolves the question of Jane’s inheritance, proving her to be an heiress after all, and sees St John depart to missionary work in India without her; her love for Rochester, via something like telepathic communication, has proved stronger than St John’s arid but selfless proposal. The final movement of the novel involves a retrospect, Jane ‘catching up’ with the story of the Thornfield fire from a local innkeeper, and then encountering a much more vulnerable Rochester, partially blinded and injured from his efforts to save Bertha, apparently having atoned in suffering for his past sins. The final scene takes place at Ferndean, Rochester’s less salubrious second mansion, where damp always prevented him from exiling Bertha. In these decisive scenes, where Jane is young, strong and vigorous, and Rochester a subdued and wounded middle-aged husk, many will argue that Jane’s narrative (‘Reader I married him’) gives the female voice the upper hand. Others will find this regularisation of their love profoundly romantic. AO3 This is the ending of an early Victorian romantic novel, a space of reward and punishment, but buoyed with the pious hope that God has forgiven Rochester and looks favourably on his injuries. The bildungsroman element of the novel resolves in a conventional concluding marriage, Jane empowered by her uncle’s legacy. Unexpected, however, is the way the novel finishes not with Rochester or Jane but with that angular pilgrim St H474/03 Mark Scheme June 2023 13 Question Response Marks Guidance knowledge to illuminate their discussion of the use of the novel’s ending. A lower level response (level 1 – 3) will: AO2 Identify and list some ways in which the writer accomplishes the novel’s ending. AO1 Use some appropriate vocabulary and narrative concepts to analyse the ways in which the novel’s ending is presented. Expression is clear but may lack precision. AO3 Show limited understanding of the literary and generic context in relation to the ending of the novel studied. John Rivers sacrificing himself to the glory of God in India. Its very last words are the last words of the Bible. The Great Gatsby AO2 and AO1 The death of Gatsby, dreaming in his lonely swimming pool at the onset of autumn, gives way to Nick’s increasing disquiet about the funeral, when Gatsby’s followers desert him. As often in the second half of the novel, we are given deeper insights into Gatsby’s distinct but distant personality. These are provided by his father, showing Nick a teenage task-book that demonstrates how assiduously young Jay Gatz took and monitored the task of self-improvement. Then follows that remarkable coda on the damaging ubiquity of the American dream. Some candidates will feel that Nick provides a fitting meditation on an appropriately tragic ending; some may commend the primary colour symbolism of Nick’s prose (‘green light’, ‘fresh green breast’); others might approve of how the optimistic oars beat on ‘against the current’: ‘and one fine morning—’ AO3 Nick develops two themes in the book’s final pages: the ubiquity of the American dream and the need for self-renewal, something sensed by the early Dutch colonists in what was then New Amsterdam; and that strange sense that none of the major characters really belongs in New York, or on the East Coast, or even among the traditions of privileged America: ‘We were all Westerners’. This is as true of the ‘vast carelessness’ of Tom and Daisy as of the exquisite uncertainties of Gatsby himself. H474/03 Mark Scheme June 2023 14 Question Response Marks Guidance Things Fall Apart AO2 and AO1 The final chapters of Achebe’s hitherto leisurely novel signal a change in pace and direction. At first the arrival of the European missionaries provides distraction and humour (‘Instead of saying “myself” he always said “My buttocks”), with the church providing an intriguing (‘lunatic’) alternative to the local religions, though there is tension when a sacred python is killed. Nobody is clear, as yet, whether the missionaries offer a threat to traditional tribal ways of life, but warriors like Okonkwo feel themselves emasculated (‘Why have they lost the power to fight?’). Right at the end of the book a British colonial power arrives. Now tribal disputes are to be settled in court and transgressors are to be hanged, apparently without malice. Without understanding very much about it, except that he is dressed as a warrior again, Okonkwo and his clansmen destroy a church. Soon after he slaughters a government messenger, and commits suicide. AO3 Throughout these final scenes, as throughout the book, neither Okonkwo nor his people nor even Achebe has much to say about their predicament: the old tribal ways end overnight, described in Achebe’s characteristically limpid prose, all dramatisation without reflection. With brilliant irony the District Commissioner is writing a book called ‘The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger’, no doubt an academic treatise reminiscent of the pamphlet of Conrad’s Mr Kurtz. H474/03 Mark Scheme June 2023 15 Question Response Marks Guidance The God of Small Things AO1 and AO2 The ending of this novel, long prepared for, is the graphic incestuous lovemaking of Velutha and Ammu, as inevitable as daylight, ‘a luminous woman opening herself to a luminous man’. Recently the cruel momentous death of Sophie Mol (‘Loved from the Beginning’) has been recounted, and its sequel at the hands of the brutal ‘touchable’ police, but the novel’s final sequence delves much further back into the past, where the lovers are only just becoming lovers, and act by instinct, not by moral consciousness. Sophie Mol is alive again and has just come home. For thirteen nights over the novel’s final pages the lovers are given over to the ‘Small Things’ of copulation, before Roy reaches that potential love-charm, a ‘Tomorrow’ which hasn’t happened yet. The novel has played so many games with time it is not surprising it should end near the beginning of its time-scheme, nor that a novel which is all about the consequences of guilt and shame should end in a scene of transgressive love that is seen by the lovers as innocent and inevitable. It becomes clear that the book is finally about the nature and consequences of illicit love. AO3 The end of the novel seems to hang fire in time, as if the large cultural questions it asks, not least the nature of Indian moral attitudes after the departure of the British, have not been answered yet. The History House, monument to the Raj, is a dark space. Most of the talk is of commerce, Lotteries, the lettering for bottles of Paradise Pickles. Father Mulligan, the apostle of Missionary Catholicism has just died. It is still 1969, and the novel’s subversive sound-track is popular music from London or Hollywood musicals. Some wait for a Marxist Revolution. The Twins bring about a kind of Revolution through their love. H474/03 Mark Scheme June 2023 16 Question Response Marks Guidance Atonement AO1 and AO2 Seventy-seven year old Briony, a brilliantly successful novelist in an age of public readings and awards, makes her way from museums to auditoria via taxicabs. She explains how she has had repeated goes at her novel between January 1940 and the present moment, 1999. The book has evolved as it increasingly recognises her guilt at her inadvertent ‘framing’ of Robbie when she was an adolescent girl. But her final decision is to leave the falsely sanguine manuscript of her novel alone. She will not offer herself or us a purely aesthetic display of ‘atonement’. Robbie and Cecilia continue to make peace with her in an invented final meeting. She will not substitute the ‘fact’ there never was such a meeting, an ending of ‘bleakest realism’. She is keen, even in this last chapter, to check the facts in her novels with experts, but, as in time past, she gets them horribly wrong, as a Man from the Museum points out: ’Madame (underlined three times) a Stuka does not carry a single thousand ton bomb.’ Briony is still wondering how a feted successful novelist, simultaneously fallible and ignorant, can, with the ‘novelist’s absolute power of deciding outcomes’ also be ‘God’. The novel ends with quiet force, asking more questions about the nature of fiction than it answers, reflecting on the idyllic summer of 1935 in the big house, where all the damage was done, incorporating the war-torn sections in the hospital and the retreat from Dunkirk. All these are of course episodes brilliantly concocted by Briony the conflicted novelist. AO3 The final section juxtaposes the distant English history of big houses and businessmen before the Second World War, with the agonised surgery to clear up the mess of War and the iconic retreat to Dunkirk. It is clear that Briony is drawing her inspiration from one time and writing about it in another, struggling against encroaching memory loss (‘vascular dementia’), H474/03 Mark Scheme June 2023 17 Question Response Marks Guidance noting that her ‘accomplices’ in the destruction of Robbie, Lola and Marshall, are vulgarly portentous as ever, reflecting that the island and its Temple have gone from the Big House and London has become a cemetery of memories: ‘The addresses of the dead pile up’. The Namesake AO1 and AO2 The Namesake ends with its hero meditating on his namesake, Nicolai Gogol, author of the story about an overcoat that has meant so much to himself and his father in the American lives they so often take for granted. By the end of the book Gogol no longer dreams of the vibrancy of distant Calcutta, the city his parents quit for a successful academic life in America thirty-three years before. The sense of that place is no stronger to him in the final chapter than it was at the beginning of the book. Lahiri’s prose is just as purposefully flat and dry. ‘Gogol knows now that his parents had lived their lives in America in spite of what was missing.’ He himself has sampled New York, ‘but has always hovered close to this quiet, ordinary town that had remained, for his mother and father, stubbornly exotic.’ His mother is still stubbornly preparing Indian food on American cookware for a farewell party, lighting incense sticks, but no longer sure if she wants to return to India. AO3 Lahiri reminds us at the end of the book just how much social change she has incorporated: counter-culture, the sexual revolution, the Cold War, Reaganomics. And yet for Ashok and his family America merely presents a sequence of bland, fulfilling opportunities and plenty of purchasing power. For Gogol there is a familiar cultural confection of student life, with Bengal usually conspicuous by its absence: Comparative Literature, Stendhal, The H474/03 Mark Scheme June 2023 18 Question Response Marks Guidance Names of Popes. This is a suitably low key study of successful people who feel the hollow spaces of globalism at the centre of their lives. H474/03 Mark Scheme June 2023 19 Question Response Marks Guidance 2 In what ways does the writer use characterisation to shape the narrative? You should range across the text to explore how character contributes to the structure of the narrative, the function character plays in the novel as a whole, and the broader generic context. A higher level response (levels 4 – 6) will: AO2 Explore the ways the writer develops character, going beyond the most obvious features, and giving a strong sense of the role played by characterisation within the novel as a whole. AO1 Use vocabulary, terminology and narrative concepts appropriately, to analyse the ways in which character is developed in the novel. Express ideas coherently and fluently, with a wide vocabulary. AO3 Show an understanding of the literary and generic context, using this knowledge to illuminate their discussion of character development. 32 The indicative content shows an integrated approach to AO2 and AO1 with additional guidance for AO3. Depending on the text studied, candidates may discuss: Jane Eyre AO2 and AO1 Jane Eyre is a first person novel, so all the characters are reflected through Jane’s personal vision. This can lead to complex ‘double takes’: at first Jane sees Aunt Reed as a focus of injustice; later in the novel, however, she empathises with her needs enough to visit her deathbed. St John Rivers is sometimes a life denying disciplinarian, at other times a saint. Many candidates will argue that, as a bildungsroman, the novel is structured to develop Jane’s own character: her vulnerable girlhood, where she needs ‘cover’ to survive at self-seeking Gateshead Hall; the Gothic introduction to Thornfield, matching Jane’s exploration of the feeling that brings her love for Rochester to life; the agonised departure from Rochester after the discovery of his bigamy; the ‘destitution’ at Whitcross, a kind of expressionist demonstration of Jane’s exhausted soul. As the novel progresses, Jane’s judgments become more and more secure: her serious tiffs with Rochester, not at all like flirtation; basking in the glow of discovering a family of cousins; refusing to hide her temptations from God. AO3 Many will argue that Jane progresses from a poor, plain orphan to something like a model early-Victorian wife, and the book dramatizes her progress through the limited choices and moral difficulties of a time when it was arguably easier to become an ‘angel in the house’. However, the H474/03 Mark Scheme June 2023 20 Question Response Marks Guidance novel explores other pressures on its characterisation: the distant evil of slavery and its consequences for the Madwoman in the Attic; the tendency of Victorian plots (like this one) to reward worthy people (like Jane) with unexpected legacies; the surprise that Jane has had a ‘family’ waiting for her in a Derbyshire parsonage all the time. The Great Gatsby AO2 and AO1 The Great Gatsby is a short book with many characters, many of whom do not develop very much, but who may come to be viewed slightly differently as Nick Carraway’s narrative becomes more insightful and sharply focused. Jordan Baker, at first a picture of slightly dissatisfied fashionable dishonesty, becomes neglected, even passed over as the book goes on. Tom and Daisy, selfish, self-seeking people, have a limited glamour when Nick first encounters them, but they are dismissed without compassion in the final pages. Gatsby himself remains an enigma, but the book is structured so that more and more of his backstory is revealed, to Nick and us, the episodes with Dan Cody, the homage paid by his odd, detached father. Fitzgerald’s editor urged him to structure the book this way, so that the initial flat reflection ‘the Platonic idea of himself’ becomes a wounded romantic who somehow encapsulates his age. But the book is Nick’s story as much as Gatsby’s. Some may argue that Nick, as a ‘limited narrator’ should be trusted in very little, but he mediates the novel’s symbolism with a touch of poetry, and sums up the American dream, and the feelings of insecurity in the hearts of most Americans, brilliantly in the novel’s final pages. H474/03 Mark Scheme June 2023 21 Question Response Marks Guidance AO3 This is a book crowded with extras, populating hedonistic New York like the weird proper names who come to Gatsby’s party, or that memorable hanger-on Klipspringer. There is not much time to dwell on setting, but proper attention is given to more and less glamorous living-spaces, and the impact of derelict spaces liked the Valley of Ashes on the ‘hot struggles of the poor’. Things Fall Apart AO2 and AO1 Achebe’s prose is unadorned, direct and forceful. Many of the characters are undeveloped, and the register is starkly dramatic rather than analytic. Achebe does, however, make clear on many occasions Okonkwo’s fear of seeming weak before his tribesmen, and his tendency to lose his uncertainty in macho displays or violent games. Meanwhile there is no hint that the novel has a time frame. This turns out to be the later nineteenth century but nothing can be dated until the missionaries arrive. In the sense of the outer world time does not exist for these tribes, and life is a tough but sustainable sequence of plantings, harvests, locust plagues and natural and unnatural deaths. Achebe suggests that despite the waywardness of tribal culture, it is purposive, and in this sense tests and brings out character: ‘A man’s life from birth to death was a series of transition rites which brought him nearer and nearer to his ancestors.’ H474/03 Mark Scheme June 2023 22 Question Response Marks Guidance A lower level response (levels 1 to 3) will: AO2 Identify and list some ways in which the writer develops character. AO1 Use some appropriate vocabulary and narrative concepts to analyse the ways in which characters develop in the novel. Expression is clear but may lack precision. AO3 Show limited understanding of the literary and generic context in relation to development of character. AO3 Much contextualising of tribal life is managed by constant dramatic reference to communal rites, snatches of songs, and folk-fables of wily creatures such as the tortoise and cat. Gossip, too, is a significant aspect of specification: it is clear that characters are expected to behave in an appropriate way, even sometimes killing, for the honour of themselves and their ancestors. There are few complaints about injustice, because time seems to bring redress. Character is very much a product of the leisurely repeating seasons. The quietly iterated rituals of the narrative match those of pre- colonial tribal life. The God of Small Things AO1 and AO2 The non-linear handling of time in The God of Small Things both compresses and transcends history, spreading its gaze over the diversity of post-colonial India, at ease neither with its present and its past. Narrative seems subordinate to these larger sociological movements, and becomes intriguingly fragmented by them. This also blocks focus on any one character for very long, though Baby Kochamma’s larger-than-life presence draws the reader’s attention in a number of time-frames. The jagged impact of the characterisation is augmented by Roy’s frequent changes of register and her insistent literary language. On the other hand Rahel’s developing understanding of the novel’s events as focaliser tends to offer a binding presence. In some ways, typical of post-modern fiction, assembling the novel’s disjointed events and elusive H474/03 Mark Scheme June 2023 23 Question Response Marks Guidance characterisation in coherent order mirrors the complex cultural problems the text embodies. AO3 The timeframe is one of the major ways of exploring and exposing the lives of the characters. They are caught between 1969, when the twins are separated, and 1993, when they are reunited; this has the effect of concentrating a complex story upon these two figures, who provide the main narrative path to the ending. The significance of the twins’ incest, and its dark consequences, is signalled early in the novel, but it is only at the end that we catch up with the ‘lovers’ in those challenging moments of irresistible impulse and unqualified bliss. Atonement AO1 and AO2 The novel’s narrative is structured in an apparently linear manner: historical sequences from 1935 and 1940, then a largely ‘invented’ wish-fulfilment section from later in World War Two and a coda from the present day (1999). The book’s complexity derives from the way Briony (the novelist) remains in control throughout the novel (which is in an important sense not about actual events but the responsibilities of the writer of fiction). This means that her attitude to all the key characters is constantly shifting, though there is little indulgence throughout of the Marshalls, a family whose arrogance and entitlement is based on the production of chocolate. The narrative voice is keen to bring out the innocence and victimhood of H474/03 Mark Scheme June 2023 24 Question Response Marks Guidance her sister Cecilia, and the lower class Oxbridge graduate she falls for, Robbie. But the novelist and therefore her novel is never sure, right up to the end, whether making ‘atonement’ for the sufferings you have caused in a work of fiction has any real value. These paradoxes lead to satisfying and teasing metafictional complexity. Briony presents the novel’s wartime scenes with tense realism, contrasting with the comparative lushness and self-indulgence of the opening section, where she often incorporates passages of her own adolescent prose. The novel’s structure is probably more significant in its revelation of the novelist’s personality than any of the other characters. AO3 The sexual experimentation and class tensions of the novel’s rather leisurely opening signal that this is also a book about the vanished interwar years, and the effect of that damaged idyll on its characters, two of whom are brutally misjudged and cruelly consumed by events. In some ways McEwan is nodding at the tradition of English fiction (L.P. Hartley, Waugh’s A Handful of Dust) that shows a whole ‘Gothic world coming to grief’. The Namesake AO1 and AO2 Lahiri offers the reader a journey narrative and a transcontinental bildungsroman, focused almost wholly on the vicissitudes of a relatively unglamorous hero, but reflecting on two generations of life H474/03 Mark Scheme June 2023 25 Question Response Marks Guidance in America, where the need to keep in touch with Bengali roots is constantly smoothed over by the immediacy of American society, commercialism and cultural change from the late sixties to the millennium. There is a strong biographical format, almost like an eighteenth-century novel, with the (deeply divided) hero as focaliser. Free indirect discourse splices in the (more conservative) opinions of the parents. Gogol’s anxieties about his name form a series of rites of passage that structure the book, intermittently highlighting a metanarrative derived from ‘The Overcoat’ by the Russian author Gogol, who is also the hero’s ‘Namesake’. The narrative is written in a colourlessly lucid prose, suitable to its America of tenure-track academia and white goods. AO3 The narrative unfolds against a sometimes muffled background of American history, from Vietnam (via a little parental backstory) through drugs and free love to the Millennium. Though ostensibly a novel about high achievers, concentration is on family ties rather than professional interests. Indian culture is often viewed as disconcertingly distant (even irrecoverable) from the prospect of the novel’s American ‘world’. H474/03 Mark Scheme June 2023 26 Section B – Writing as a reader The weightings for the assessment objectives are: Narrative writing: AO5 7% AO2 2% 9% Commentary: AO1 4% AO2 3% 7% Total: 16% In Section B Narrative writing the dominant assessment objective is AO5 Demonstrate expertise and creativity in the use of English to communicate in different ways. Answers should also demonstrate understanding of how meanings are shaped in their original writing (AO2). A response that does not address one of the two assessment objectives targeted cannot achieve all of the marks in the given level. In Section B Commentary the dominant assessment objective is AO1 Apply concepts and methods from integrated linguistic and literary study as appropriate, using associated terminology and coherent written expression. Answers will also be assessed for AO2 Analyse ways in which meanings are shaped in texts. A response that does not address one of the two assessment objectives targeted cannot achieve all of the marks in the given level. Narrative writing Level 6: 18–16 marks AO5 Flair, originality and a high degree of control demonstrated in the use of English to communicate in different ways. AO2 Excellent, fully developed and detailed demonstration of ways in which meanings are shaped in texts. Level 5: 15–13 marks AO5 Control and creativity demonstrated in the use of English to communicate in different ways. AO2 Clear and well developed demonstration of ways in which meanings are shaped in texts. H474/03 Mark Scheme June 2023 27 Level 4: 12–10 marks AO5 Competence and engaging effects demonstrated in the use of English to communicate in different ways. AO2 Competent demonstration of ways in which meanings are shaped in texts. Level 3: 9–7 marks AO5 Some accuracy and attempt to create effects demonstrated in the use of English to communicate in different ways. AO2 Some demonstration of ways in which meanings are shaped in texts. Level 2: 6–4marks AO5 Limited accuracy and some attempt to create effects demonstrated in the use of English to communicate in different ways. AO2 Some limited demonstration of ways in which meanings are shaped in texts. Level 1: 3–1 marks AO5 Little accuracy and little attempt to create effects demonstrated in the use of English to communicate in different ways. AO2 Very little demonstration of ways in which meanings are shaped in texts. 0 marks: no response or response not worthy of credit. H474/03 Mark Scheme June 2023 28 Commentary Level 6: 14–13 marks AO1 Excellent application of relevant concepts and methods from integrated linguistic and literary study as appropriate. Consistently coherent and fluent written expression and apt and consistent use of terminology relevant to the task and texts. AO2 Excellent, fully developed and detailed critical analysis of ways in which meanings are shaped in texts. Level 5: 12–10 marks AO1 Secure application of relevant concepts and methods from integrated linguistic and literary study as appropriate. Consistently clear written expression and appropriate use of terminology relevant to the task and texts. AO2 Clear and well developed critical analysis of ways in which meanings are shaped in texts. Level 4: 9–7 marks AO1 Competent application of relevant concepts and methods from integrated linguistic and literary study as appropriate. Generally clear written expression and mainly appropriate use of terminology relevant to the task and texts. AO2 Competent analysis of ways in which meanings are shaped in texts. Level 3: 6–5 marks AO1 Some application of relevant concepts and methods selected appropriately from integrated linguistic and literary study. Generally clear written expression with occasional inconsistencies and some appropriate use of terminology relevant to the task and texts. AO2 Some analysis of ways in which meanings are shaped in texts. H474/03 Mark Scheme June 2023 29 Level 2: 4–3 marks AO1 Limited attempt to apply relevant concepts and methods from integrated linguistic and literary study appropriately. Some inconsistent written expression and limited use of associated terminology relevant to the task and texts. AO2 Limited analysis of ways in which meanings are shaped in texts. Level 1: 2–1 marks AO1 Very little attempt to apply relevant concepts and methods from integrated linguistic and literary study appropriately. Inconsistent written expression and little use of terminology relevant to the task and texts. AO2 Very little analysis of ways in which meanings are shaped in texts. 0 marks: no response or response not worthy of credit. H474/03 Mark Scheme June 2023 30 Question Response Marks Guidance 3a Choose one of the storylines opposite to develop as the opening of a narrative. You should make your own choices about the story’s starting point and linguistic techniques. A higher level response (levels 4 to 6) will: AO5 Demonstrate expertise and creativity in its use of English to create an effective opening to a narrative that shows a high degree of control over the techniques that have been chosen. AO2 Demonstrate a sophisticated awareness of the ways in which meanings are shaped in narrative texts. A lower level response (levels 1 to 3) will: AO5 Show some ability to shape the opening to a narrative, drawing on some techniques that go beyond basic storytelling. AO2 Show some awareness of the ways in which meanings are shaped in narrative texts. 18 Candidates will use a range of different narrative techniques, drawn from their study of narrative texts for Section 1 in order to create the opening of a narrative of their own. They may draw selectively on techniques such as dialogue, description, evocation of setting and imagery and will choose a particular narrative voice, point of view, way of handling time and prose style. They will make their own choices to create an effective opening to a narrative. Note: Candidates are writing the opening to a narrative, and can start at any point, using any one of the bullet points as the beginning of their story. They are not expected to write the full story. Candidates who do not satisfy the examiner that they have engaged with the storyline arc implied by the prompts will not be able to achieve a mark higher than Level 2 for Question 3a. H474/03 Mark Scheme June 2023 31 Question Response Marks Guidance 3b Outline the key narrative and linguistic techniques you have used in your writing for Question 3a. You should write approximately 250 words. A higher level response (levels 4 to 6) will: AO1 Apply concepts and methods from the study of narrative techniques, using relevant terminology and coherent written expression to convincingly show how techniques have been used in the Question 3 response. AO2 Effectively and convincingly analyse ways in which meanings are shaped in the Question 3 narrative writing response. A lower level response (levels 1 to 3) will: AO1 Identify some concepts and methods from the study of narrative techniques, using some terminology and clear written expression. AO2 Describe some ways in which meanings have been shaped in the Question 3 narrative writing response. 14 Candidates will be expected to explain and analyse the narrative techniques they have used in their own creative writing for Question 3a. They will not be expected to write about connections between their writing and the text studied for Section A but rather to write about the narrative concepts and techniques they have adopted to answer Q3a. Responses which have not satisfied the examiner that they have engaged with the storyline arc implied in Question 3a will be self-penalising in terms of achievement for Question 3b. In these instances, commentaries will not be able to achieve a mark higher than Level 2 for Question 3b given that they will not be able to satisfactorily analyse the ways meanings have been shaped in terms of the given storyline arc. H474/03 Mark Scheme June 2023 32 Appendix 1 Assessment Objective weightings are given as percentages. Assessment Objectives Grid Narrative text Question AO1% AO2% AO3% AO4% AO5% Total% 1 5 6 5 0 0 16% Totals 5% 6% 5% 0% 0% 16% Original writing Question AO1% AO2% AO3% AO4% AO5% Total% 2 0 2 0 0 7 9% 3 0 2 0 0 7 9% Totals 0% 2% 0% 0% 7% 9% Commentary Question AO1% AO2% AO3% AO4% AO5% Total% 4 4 3 0 0 0 7% Totals 4% 3% 0% 0% 0% 7% Need to get in touch? If you ever have any questions about OCR qualifications or services (including administration, logistics and teaching) please feel free to get in touch with our customer support centre. Call us on 01223 553998 Alternatively, you can email us on support@ocr.org.uk For more information visit ocr.org.uk/qualifications/resource-finder ocr.org.uk Twitter/ocrexams /ocrexams /company/ocr /ocrexams OCR is part of Cambridge University Press & Assessment, a department of the University of Cambridge. 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