AQA
A-level
ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
Paper 1 Telling Stories
Wednesday 24 May 2023 Afternoon Time allowed: 3 hours
Materials
For this paper you must have:
• an AQA 12-page answer book
• a copy of the set texts you have studied for Section B and Section C. These texts must not be
annotated and must not contain additional notes or materials.
Instructions
• Use black ink or black ball-point pen.
• Write the information required on the front of your answer book. The Paper Reference is 7707/1.
• There are three sections:
Section A: Remembered Places
Section B: Imagined Worlds
Section C: Poetic Voices
• Answer three questions in total: the question in Section A, one question from Section B and one
question from Section C.
• Do all rough work in your answer book. Cross through any work you do not want to be marked.
Information
• The maximum mark for this paper is 100.
• The marks for questions are shown in brackets.
• There are 40 marks for the question in Section A, 35 marks for the question in Section B and 25
marks for the question in Section C.
• You will be marked on your ability to:
– use good English
– organise information clearly
– use specialist vocabulary where appropriate.
Advice
It is recommended that you spend 70 minutes on Section A, 60 minutes on Section B and 50 minutes
on Section C.
IB/G/Jun23/E8 7707/1
, 2
Section A
Remembered Places
Answer Question 1 in this section.
Read Text A and Text B printed below and on pages 3 and 4.
Text A is an extract from Foreign Correspondent: Paris in the Sixties by Peter Lennon.
Text B is an extract from Visiting Paris by Mike and Sophia.
0 1 Compare and contrast how the writer of Text A and the speakers of Text B express their
ideas about their first experiences in Paris.
You should refer to both texts in your answer.
[40 marks]
Text A
Peter Lennon was an Irish journalist who moved to Paris and covered events from there for
The Guardian newspaper throughout the 1960s. Foreign Correspondent: Paris in the Sixties
is his account of leaving Ireland for Paris, and his reflections on his time there.
I was surprised to discover that the Eiffel Tower was on the Left
Bank and not straddling the Champs-Élysées, as I had somehow
imagined. I did not like the dryness of the Tuileries nor its rigid design.
I missed the lusciousness of our parks.
5 I was fascinated by Americans in Paris. They sat, family groups,
in cafés in a sort of trance. They seemed to be guarding their
Americanism like something precious: as if on one level it had to be
put on display and on another they were afraid it might be snatched
from them by the foreigners. Nationalities were gloriously identifiable
10 in those days before international homogenization of dress. As they
wandered from monument to museum I noticed they had a curious
disinclination to listen to one another: the women commented on
everything with a deadly, calculating enthusiasm; the men bestowed
a laconic benediction in ball-game Americanese on a Mona Lisa, a
15 Champs or a fillet steak.
Living an underfed over-excited existence, disorientated by the
absence of any familiar smugness, almost afraid amongst such strangeness,
I wanted to convey to someone a sense of what I was experiencing. Jokey
postcards home were not enough after the first two weeks, so I wrote, my
20 first literary letters, to Jack White.
I announced grandly that I was learning something about Paris
and about Europeans and ‘because I now have something to set up as
a comparison I am beginning to understand certain things about
Dublin and the Irish’.
25 It has been said [I wrote solemnly] that Paris does not belong to the
French but to the world. That is true in the sense that the world has
IB/G/Jun23/7707/1
, 3
moved in and claimed it, like a public claiming a national theatre.
Because of this, Paris, which is the stage, and the Parisians, who are
the actors, have inevitably absorbed something from their possessive
30 public – their vulgarity, their notion of what Paris should be. Paris
knows what is expected of it and can be depended on to produce
the trivial, vicious, depraved, dramatic or beautiful things which its
public demands. But it also has genuine splendour, a splendour of
artistic and intellectual achievement so much greater than the bizarre
35 displays of tourist ‘art’ and antics everyone is familiar with.
The real life of Paris is outside all this, among the genuine artists,
the students and scholars and the French families living a regular,
normal, slightly prudish life. It is the genuine animation, the sense
of ‘life’ which leaves the deepest impression on me. I have lived in
40 Ireland all my life reading about ‘life’, now for the first time I see
‘life’, cosmopolitan people playing the great game of life.
Turn over for Text B
Turn over ►
IB/G/Jun23/7707/1
A-level
ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
Paper 1 Telling Stories
Wednesday 24 May 2023 Afternoon Time allowed: 3 hours
Materials
For this paper you must have:
• an AQA 12-page answer book
• a copy of the set texts you have studied for Section B and Section C. These texts must not be
annotated and must not contain additional notes or materials.
Instructions
• Use black ink or black ball-point pen.
• Write the information required on the front of your answer book. The Paper Reference is 7707/1.
• There are three sections:
Section A: Remembered Places
Section B: Imagined Worlds
Section C: Poetic Voices
• Answer three questions in total: the question in Section A, one question from Section B and one
question from Section C.
• Do all rough work in your answer book. Cross through any work you do not want to be marked.
Information
• The maximum mark for this paper is 100.
• The marks for questions are shown in brackets.
• There are 40 marks for the question in Section A, 35 marks for the question in Section B and 25
marks for the question in Section C.
• You will be marked on your ability to:
– use good English
– organise information clearly
– use specialist vocabulary where appropriate.
Advice
It is recommended that you spend 70 minutes on Section A, 60 minutes on Section B and 50 minutes
on Section C.
IB/G/Jun23/E8 7707/1
, 2
Section A
Remembered Places
Answer Question 1 in this section.
Read Text A and Text B printed below and on pages 3 and 4.
Text A is an extract from Foreign Correspondent: Paris in the Sixties by Peter Lennon.
Text B is an extract from Visiting Paris by Mike and Sophia.
0 1 Compare and contrast how the writer of Text A and the speakers of Text B express their
ideas about their first experiences in Paris.
You should refer to both texts in your answer.
[40 marks]
Text A
Peter Lennon was an Irish journalist who moved to Paris and covered events from there for
The Guardian newspaper throughout the 1960s. Foreign Correspondent: Paris in the Sixties
is his account of leaving Ireland for Paris, and his reflections on his time there.
I was surprised to discover that the Eiffel Tower was on the Left
Bank and not straddling the Champs-Élysées, as I had somehow
imagined. I did not like the dryness of the Tuileries nor its rigid design.
I missed the lusciousness of our parks.
5 I was fascinated by Americans in Paris. They sat, family groups,
in cafés in a sort of trance. They seemed to be guarding their
Americanism like something precious: as if on one level it had to be
put on display and on another they were afraid it might be snatched
from them by the foreigners. Nationalities were gloriously identifiable
10 in those days before international homogenization of dress. As they
wandered from monument to museum I noticed they had a curious
disinclination to listen to one another: the women commented on
everything with a deadly, calculating enthusiasm; the men bestowed
a laconic benediction in ball-game Americanese on a Mona Lisa, a
15 Champs or a fillet steak.
Living an underfed over-excited existence, disorientated by the
absence of any familiar smugness, almost afraid amongst such strangeness,
I wanted to convey to someone a sense of what I was experiencing. Jokey
postcards home were not enough after the first two weeks, so I wrote, my
20 first literary letters, to Jack White.
I announced grandly that I was learning something about Paris
and about Europeans and ‘because I now have something to set up as
a comparison I am beginning to understand certain things about
Dublin and the Irish’.
25 It has been said [I wrote solemnly] that Paris does not belong to the
French but to the world. That is true in the sense that the world has
IB/G/Jun23/7707/1
, 3
moved in and claimed it, like a public claiming a national theatre.
Because of this, Paris, which is the stage, and the Parisians, who are
the actors, have inevitably absorbed something from their possessive
30 public – their vulgarity, their notion of what Paris should be. Paris
knows what is expected of it and can be depended on to produce
the trivial, vicious, depraved, dramatic or beautiful things which its
public demands. But it also has genuine splendour, a splendour of
artistic and intellectual achievement so much greater than the bizarre
35 displays of tourist ‘art’ and antics everyone is familiar with.
The real life of Paris is outside all this, among the genuine artists,
the students and scholars and the French families living a regular,
normal, slightly prudish life. It is the genuine animation, the sense
of ‘life’ which leaves the deepest impression on me. I have lived in
40 Ireland all my life reading about ‘life’, now for the first time I see
‘life’, cosmopolitan people playing the great game of life.
Turn over for Text B
Turn over ►
IB/G/Jun23/7707/1
