CIE IGCSE·📖 English Literature

CIE IGCSE English Literature — Unseen Paper

⏱ 75 minutes📊 50 marks📄 Unseen Paper

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ℹ️ About this paper: This is an exam-board-aligned practice paper written in the style of CIE IGCSE — not an official past paper. Use it for timed practice, then check against the mark scheme included below. For official past papers, see the exam board's website.

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CIE IGCSE English Literature — Paper (Unseen)

Total marks: 50 · Duration: 1 hour 15 minutes

Instructions to candidates

• Answer both questions: one on the poem and one on the prose extract. • Use black or dark blue pen. • The number of marks is given in brackets [ ] at the end of each question. • You should support your answer with close reference to the text, including brief quotations. • The total number of marks for this paper is 50. • Both texts are printed within the paper.

Section A — Poetry

Read the following poem carefully, then answer the question that follows.

The Empty House

The gate still swings, though no hand pushes it; the path is stitched with weeds where feet once ran. Behind the glass, a curtain, grey with dust, remembers, maybe, how the mornings began.

The kitchen holds its breath. A single chair sits crooked at the table, turned to speak to someone who has gone. The clock has stopped at some small hour, one Tuesday in the week.

And yet the house is not entirely still: a draught moves through it like a slow, cold guest, and in the empty rooms the echoes keep the shapes of voices, folded, laid to rest.

I stand outside and cannot make myself knock on a door that only ghosts will hear. The house looks back at me with all its eyes and asks me, silently, why I am here.

1. Explore the ways in which the poet vividly conveys a sense of loss and absence in the poem. Support your answer with close reference to the poem's language and imagery. [25]

Section B — Prose

Read the following extract carefully, then answer the question that follows.

In this passage, a young woman named Mara returns to the fishing village where she grew up, after many years away.

The bus set her down at the top of the hill and pulled away in a cough of blue smoke, and then there was only the wind and the long grey road unspooling down towards the sea. Mara stood a moment with her single bag, breathing. The air was exactly as she remembered — salt, and something green and rotting and alive beneath it — and the smell undid twenty years in a single breath.

She had promised herself she would feel nothing. She had rehearsed this arrival a hundred times in the city, over the noise of traffic and the hum of the office, and in every rehearsal she had walked down this road calm and unmoved, a visitor, a stranger. But the village had other plans. Every stone in the harbour wall knew her. The boats, fewer now and shabbier, nodded at their moorings as if they had been waiting.

She passed the shop where she had bought sweets as a child; a different name hung above the door, but the bell, she was certain, would still sound the same. She did not go in. Outside her mother's old house she stopped and looked up at the window that had been hers, and for a long moment she was twelve again, watching the harbour lights come on, aching to be gone.

Now here she was, come back, and she could not have said whether it was to bury something or to dig it up.

2. Explore the ways in which the writer powerfully conveys Mara's mixed feelings about returning to the village. Support your answer with close reference to the writer's language and methods. [25]

📋 Mark Scheme & Sample Answers

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Mark Scheme

General guidance (both questions)

Both questions are marked out of 25 using the same level descriptors. Reward candidates who:

develop a personal response to the text;
show understanding of meanings and deeper implications;
analyse the writer's use of language, imagery and other methods and their effects;
support points with well-chosen, integrated quotations.
Band 5 (21–25): sustained, perceptive, personal engagement; sophisticated analysis of language and its effects; assured, well-selected textual support.
Band 4 (16–20): clear personal response; careful analysis of language and effect; relevant, apt support.
Band 3 (11–15): reasonable understanding; some analysis of language, more explanation than exploration; some support.
Band 2 (6–10): some understanding, largely narrative/descriptive; limited reference to language.
Band 1 (1–5): simple, general comments; little textual support.
0: nothing worthy of credit.

Question 1 — Indicative content (poem)

Reward exploration of how loss and absence are conveyed, for example:

the personification of the house — the gate that "still swings, though no hand pushes it", the kitchen that "holds its breath", the house that "looks back at me with all its eyes" — making absence feel like a living presence;
images of neglect and time: "stitched with weeds", "grey with dust", the clock "stopped / at some small hour", fixing the moment of loss;
the single "crooked" chair "turned to speak / to someone who has gone" — a poignant image of the missing person;
the draught "like a slow, cold guest" and the "echoes" keeping "the shapes of voices" — absence given form;
the speaker's own hesitation and grief in the final stanza ("cannot make myself / knock"), and the unanswered question "why I am here";
form: the regular, quiet quatrains and the reflective tone. Credit any well-supported personal interpretation.

Question 2 — Indicative content (prose)

Reward exploration of Mara's mixed feelings, for example:

the tension between her intention and her reaction: she "had promised herself she would feel nothing" and "rehearsed this arrival a hundred times", yet "the smell undid twenty years in a single breath";
the personification of the village as knowing and expectant — "Every stone in the harbour wall knew her", the boats that "nodded... as if they had been waiting" — suggesting she cannot escape her past;
sensory detail (salt, "something green and rotting and alive") linking memory and place;
the pull of childhood: standing outside her old window she "was twelve again", "aching to be gone" — showing her earlier desire to leave contrasted with her return;
the ambiguous, resonant final sentence — she cannot say "whether it was to bury something or to dig it up" — capturing her divided feelings;
the restrained, controlled narrative voice. Credit any well-supported personal interpretation.

Sample Answers with Examiner Commentary

Question 1 — Sample Answers

Band 5 response (extract). "From the opening line, the poet makes absence feel unsettlingly alive. The gate that 'still swings, though no hand pushes it' suggests movement without a mover, as if the house is animated by the very people who are no longer there. This personification runs through the poem: the kitchen 'holds its breath', and by the end the house 'looks back at me with all its eyes'. By giving the house human qualities, the poet turns emptiness into a watching presence, so that absence is paradoxically the most powerful thing in the poem. The stopped clock, frozen 'at some small hour, one Tuesday in the week', fixes the moment loss entered the house, and the ordinariness of 'Tuesday' makes it more painful — grief arriving on a day like any other. Most moving is the 'single chair... turned to speak / to someone who has gone': the chair's posture holds the shape of a lost relationship, a conversation that can never finish."

Mark: 23/25. Examiner commentary: A perceptive, Band 5 response. The candidate develops a genuine personal reading — that absence becomes 'the most powerful thing in the poem' — and analyses specific methods (personification, the stopped clock, the poignant detail of the chair) with close, integrated quotation, always linking technique to effect. The comment on the ordinariness of 'Tuesday' shows the kind of sensitive, precise engagement that reaches the top band. Sustained and assured throughout.

Band 3 response (extract). "The poet shows loss in the poem in several ways. The house is empty and no one lives there anymore, which we can tell because there are 'weeds' on the path and the curtain is 'grey with dust'. This shows the house has not been looked after for a long time. There is also a chair that is 'turned to speak to someone who has gone', which shows that someone has died or left. At the end the speaker feels sad and cannot knock on the door. The poet uses personification when the house 'looks back'."

Mark: 13/25. Examiner commentary: A reasonable, Band 3 response that understands the poem is about an empty house and a sense of loss, and selects some relevant evidence (the weeds, the dust, the chair). However, the treatment is more explanatory than exploratory: the candidate says what the images 'show' but does not analyse how they create their effect in depth, and the identification of personification at the end is not developed. To move up, the answer needs closer analysis of language and a more personal, sustained engagement with the poem's effects.

Question 2 — Sample Answers

Band 5 response (extract). "The writer powerfully conveys Mara's mixed feelings through the gap between what she intends to feel and what she actually feels. She 'had promised herself she would feel nothing' and 'rehearsed this arrival a hundred times', yet the sensory detail of the air — 'salt, and something green and rotting and alive' — 'undid twenty years in a single breath'. The verb 'undid', as if her careful composure were a knot simply untied, shows how powerless she is against memory. The writer personifies the village to suggest it will not let her remain a 'stranger': 'Every stone in the harbour wall knew her', and the boats 'nodded at their moorings as if they had been waiting'. This makes her return feel almost fated. Her divided feelings are captured most sharply in the final sentence: she 'could not have said whether it was to bury something or to dig it up'. The two opposite images — burying and digging up — perfectly hold together her desire to lay the past to rest and her need to confront it."

Mark: 24/25. Examiner commentary: A perceptive, Band 5 response. The candidate builds a genuine personal reading around the central tension — intention versus involuntary feeling — and analyses the writer's methods precisely: the force of the verb 'undid', the personification of the knowing village, and, most impressively, the antithesis of 'bury' and 'dig up' in the final line. Quotations are integrated and every point is linked to effect. This is assured, sophisticated engagement of the highest order.

Band 3 response (extract). "Mara has mixed feelings about coming back. She said she would 'feel nothing' but then the smell of the sea reminds her of her childhood, so she does feel something after all. The writer shows the village is familiar because 'every stone in the harbour wall knew her'. She looks at her old window and remembers being twelve and wanting to leave. At the end she does not know if she came back 'to bury something or to dig it up', which shows she is confused about why she is there."

Mark: 14/25. Examiner commentary: A reasonable, Band 3 answer that clearly understands Mara's conflict — she expected to feel nothing but is moved by memory — and selects apt evidence, including the strong final image. However, the response tends to explain what the quotations 'show' rather than analyse how the writer creates the effect: for example, the force of 'undid', or why the personification of the village matters, or the significance of the opposing verbs 'bury' and 'dig up'. Closer analysis of language and a more developed personal response would lift it into the higher bands.

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