Mark Scheme

Both questions are marked out of 30 using the bands below. Reward close, personal engagement and precise analysis of the writer's methods, always anchored in evidence. Any valid interpretation supported from the text is credited.

Band 5 (25–30): Perceptive, sophisticated analysis; a convincing, exploratory personal response; sensitive analysis of language, structure and form with precise, well-integrated references. Band 4 (19–24): Thoughtful, developed response; sound analysis of methods and their effects with apt references. Band 3 (13–18): Clear understanding; a coherent response with relevant references; clear comment on methods. Band 2 (7–12): Some understanding; a general response with some reference; awareness of but little comment on methods. Band 1 (1–6): Simple, limited comments; few references; little awareness of methods.

Indicative content — Question 1 ("Allotment")

Candidates might explore:

• An undemonstrative father / love shown not spoken: "He did not say I love you. / He said, Water these. Mind the frost." — love expressed through practical instruction and shared work.
• The central metaphor: the father "grew his silence in straight rows" — silence made into something cultivated, ordered, even nurturing; gardening as a language.
• The speaker's development: from a child "who wanted words" to an adult who understands "his love was never in the saying / but here — in the beans, the bees, the ordered growth."
• Structure: the shift at "Now he is gone" moves from memory to present tending; the speaker "kneeling where he knelt" shows inheritance and continuity.
• The final image: "the full baskets left, like sentences, at my door" — the simile equates the harvest with unspoken words/love, resolving the poem's tension between speech and action.
• Form: the ordered stanzas mirror the "straight rows" and "ordered growth" the poem admires.

Indicative content — Question 2 ("The Clock-Winder")

Candidates might explore:

• Character: Mr Ferreira's dedication and quiet pride — "sixty years", the clock "had never once been wrong"; his humility ("hardly anyone knew his name").
• The clock as symbol: of his purpose and identity; the town's whole life "turned to the rhythm he kept ticking", so losing it is losing his place in the world.
• The contrast old/new: the "smooth, effortless, uncaring tick of a thing that needed no one" — the electric clock's efficiency emphasises that he is no longer needed; "borrowed time" hints at loss.
• Structure: dedication → replacement (the letter and the small clock) → the poignant final Sunday when habit brings him to the tower "before he remembered."
• The ending's pathos: the town "did not notice that anything at all had changed" — his lifetime of service is invisible; the quiet, unshowy prose mirrors his dignity.
• Credit response to loss, obsolescence and the value of unseen work.

Sample Answers with Examiner Commentary

Question 1 — Sample Answers

Grade A response (extract). "The poet presents a father whose love is expressed through actions rather than words, and a speaker who only comes to understand this after his death. From the start, the father is associated with silence, but the striking metaphor 'My father grew his silence in straight rows' turns that silence into something cultivated and purposeful rather than cold — as if his quietness were itself a crop he tended with care. The contrast at the heart of the poem is made explicit when the speaker admits 'He did not say I love you. / He said, Water these. Mind the frost.' Here the blunt, practical imperatives stand in for affection: the instructions to protect the seedlings are, in fact, expressions of love and of a wish to teach and protect.

The poem turns on the line 'Now he is gone', which moves from childhood memory to the adult speaker 'kneeling where he knelt, in the same black earth.' This image of inheritance shows the speaker literally taking his father's place and, in doing so, finally understanding him: 'his love was never in the saying / but here — in the beans, the bees, the ordered growth.' The final simile, in which the 'full baskets' of harvest are 'left, like sentences, at my door', is deeply moving, because it equates the vegetables with the words the father never spoke — his love was a language after all, just not one made of speech. The poem's own ordered stanzas mirror the 'straight rows' and 'ordered growth' it admires, so that form and meaning grow together."

Mark: 28/30 (Band 5). Examiner commentary: A perceptive, exploratory response that traces the poem's central movement — from the child who 'wanted words' to the adult who understands love in action — and roots every point in precise analysis. The candidate reads the key metaphor ('grew his silence in straight rows') and the closing simile ('like sentences') sensitively, showing how they resolve the tension between speech and action, and links form to meaning by noting how the ordered stanzas echo the 'straight rows'. Genuine personal engagement and integrated quotation place it firmly in the top band.

Grade C response (extract). "The poem is about a man and his dad who grew vegetables. The dad didn't really talk much and 'did not say I love you' but told him to 'Water these. Mind the frost.' instead. This shows he cared in his own way. At the end the dad has died and the speaker does the garden himself and realises his dad did love him, shown 'in the beans, the bees, the ordered growth.' The poet uses a metaphor 'grew his silence in straight rows' which is about him being quiet."

Mark: 15/30 (Band 3). Examiner commentary: The candidate clearly understands the poem's central idea — a quiet father whose love showed in actions, understood by the speaker after his death — and selects apt quotations. However, the references are explained rather than analysed: the metaphor 'grew his silence in straight rows' is spotted and glossed as 'being quiet' without exploring how it makes silence something cultivated and caring, and the ending is understood but not analysed (for example the simile 'like sentences'). To reach Bands 4–5, each quotation needs developed analysis of the effect of the writer's method, plus some comment on structure or form.

Question 2 — Sample Answers

Grade A response (extract). "The writer presents Mr Ferreira as a humble, deeply dedicated man whose entire identity is bound up in a task the town takes for granted. The opening emphasises his devotion — 'sixty years', ninety-seven steps 'every Sunday', a clock that 'had never once been wrong' — yet undercuts it with the poignant detail that 'hardly anyone knew his name', so that his lifetime of service is quietly invisible. The clock becomes a symbol of his purpose: the writer tells us the 'whole slow business of the town... had turned to the rhythm he kept ticking', which makes clear that in keeping the clock he was, in a sense, keeping the town itself going.

His feelings about losing this role are conveyed through a powerful contrast between the old and the new. He 'could not bear' the 'smooth, effortless, uncaring tick of a thing that needed no one' — the adjectives pile up to show that what wounds him is not the new clock's failure but its very perfection, because it proves he is no longer needed. The structure drives home the pathos: out of 'a habit sixty years deep' he walks to the tower 'before he remembered', and stands looking up at hands that 'moved now without him, keeping their perfect, borrowed time.' The phrase 'borrowed time' hints at his own obsolescence and mortality. The devastating final line — the town 'did not notice that anything at all had changed' — makes his loss complete and unseen, and the quiet, unshowy prose mirrors the dignity of a man who never asked to be noticed."

Mark: 27/30 (Band 5). Examiner commentary: A sophisticated response that reads the clock symbolically and sustains that reading throughout. The candidate analyses specific methods and their effects — the undercutting detail that no one knew his name, the accumulation of adjectives in the 'uncaring tick', the structural use of ingrained habit, and the resonant 'borrowed time' — and connects them to the themes of obsolescence and unseen service. The perceptive comment on how the plain prose mirrors his dignity, and the strong personal response to the final line, secure a mark near the top of the band.