Ruthie Burrows,

Fresh Horizons English Tuition

LANGUAGE PAPER TWO

WORKING CONDITIONS
Language Paper Two 2

APPROACHING PAPER TWO

Reminders.

Q1: Do not highlight more than four answers.

Q2: This questions requires you to comment on

what is being inferred/implied. Be careful as the
question doesn't actually state this!

Q3: The language question.

Use PEEA. You could comment on sentence
forms, words and phrases used and language
techniques. Remember to comment on the
effect of these choices.

Q4:Your opinion/response to the text -Do you

agree/disagree?
Use PEEA. Make a plan. What is the writer’s
idea/point? How has the writer achieved this?
Think of this as question 2 and 3 combined.

Q5. You are exploring the writers' attitudes,

thoughts and feelings here and the methods
they use to portray these.
 Language Paper Two 3

THE EXTRACTS - SOURCE A

This is an extract from The New Yorker magazine, published in 2021, that describes
the long hours that many Americans work in return for low pay and poor conditions
of service.

1. Maria Fernandes died at the age of thirty-two while sleeping in her car in a Wawa
parking lot in New Jersey. It was the summer of 2014, and she worked low-wage jobs at
three different Dunkin’ Donuts, and slept in her Kia in between shifts, with the engine
running and a container of gasoline in the back, in case she ran out. In the locked car, still
5 wearing her white-and-brown Dunkin’ Donuts uniform, she died from gasoline and
exhaust fumes. A Rutgers professor called her ‘the real face of the recession.’ Fernandes
had been trying to sleep between shifts, but all kinds of workers were spending hours in
their cars, waiting for shifts. Within a year of Fernandes’s death, Elizabeth Warren and
other Senate and House Democrats reintroduced a bill called the Schedules That Work
10 Act; it would have required food service, retail, and warehouse companies to let
employees know about changes to their schedules at least two weeks in advance and
barred them from firing employees for asking for regular hours. ‘A single mom should
know if her hours have been cancelled before she arranges for day care and drives halfway
across town,’ Warren said, of the bill. ‘Someone who wants to go to school to try to get an
15. education should be able to request more predictable hours without getting fired, just
for asking. And a worker who is told to wait around on call for hours, with no guarantee of
actual work, should get something for his time.’ The bill never had any chance of passing.
It was reintroduced again in 2017 15 and in 2019. It has never even come up for a vote.

Americans work more hours than their counterparts in peer nations, including France and
20. Germany, and many work more than fifty hours a week. Real wages declined for the
rank and file in the nineteen-seventies, as did the percentage of Americans who belong to
unions, which may be a related development. One can argue that these post-industrial
developments mark a return to a pre-industrial order. The gig economy is a form of
vassalage. And even workers who don’t work for gig companies like Uber or TaskRabbit
25. now work like gig workers. Most jobs created between 2005 and 2015 were temporary
jobs. Four in five hourly retail workers in the United States have no reliable schedule from
one week to another. Instead, their schedules are often set by algorithms that aim to
maximize profits for investors by reducing breaks and pauses in service – the labour
equivalent of the just-in-time manufacturing system that was developed in the nineteen-
30 seventies in Japan, a country that coined a word for ‘death by overwork’ but whose
average employee today works fewer hours than his American counterpart.
Language Paper Two 4

THE EXTRACTS - SOURCE B

This is an extract from Reynolds Newspaper, published in 1888, that describes a strike
that took place at a matchstick factory in London. 1,500 workers were involved.

The girls employed in the match-making works of Bryant and May, Fairfield Road,
Bow, to the number of 1,500 ceased work on Thursday, and marched out of the
factory in two batches.

A variety of explanations has been given for the strike. One version is that the girls
5. were arbitrarily fined for trivial offences. Another that it was a protest against the
dismissal of two girls who were said to have given information to Mrs Besant about
the firm’s method of conducting their business. The manager of the works now
states that the strike was brought about by the summary dismissal of one girl. She
had been instructed by the overseer to fill boxes of matches in a particular way,
10 according as the machine cut them. He says there is nothing unusual in the
order, and that it is rendered necessary whenever the atmosphere is charged with
electricity. The girl refused to obey, and she was dismissed. Shortly afterwards, the
whole of her comrades in the wood match-making department, to the number of
about twelve hundred, walked out of the factory. In the afternoon about three
15. hundred more girls who are engaged in the wax match factory, altogether
independent of the other ‘shop’, also left their employment and joined the rest. The
girls say that this order to fill the boxes in a particular manner has nothing to do with
the elements, but is, in fact, an attempt on the part of their employers to extract
more work out of them by requiring two boxes to be filled instead of one at each
20. stroke of the cutting machine. The firm attributes it to outside influence. Nearly
all are paid by the piece. The Social Democratic Federal Association have taken up
the women’s cause warmly.

On Friday the girls on strike assembled early in the morning outside the gates,
picketed those who went in, and attempted to hold a series of meetings, but were
25 dispersed by about twenty policemen. Two men attempted to deliver addresses,
but were prevented by the police, and one was arrested and taken to Worship-street.
Attempts were also made to hold meetings on Mille-end-waste, but the crowds were
dispersed by the downpour of rain. In the evening, a meeting convened by the Social
Democratic Federation was held.
Language Paper Two 5

THE QUESTIONS
Section A: Reading
Answer all questions in this section.
You are advised to spend about 45 minutes on this section.

Q1 - highlight the four true statements - 4 marks - 5 minutes

1. She worked at three different Dunkin' Donuts.
2. The new bill required three weeks notice of shift changes.
3. Americans work more hours than France and Germany.
4. Wages declined in the 1980s.
5. Four in five workers have no weekly schedule.
6. Japanese work less average hours than Americans.
7. Algorithms seek to enhance break times for workers.

Q2 – 8 marks – 10 minutes
Write a summary showing the similarities and differences between the working conditions
described in both societies.

Q3 – 12 marks – 15 minutes
In source A, (lines 1-18), how does the writer use language to describe the reality of low-paid
workers.

Q4. – 16 marks – 20 minutes

Compare how the writers convey their attitudes to the treatment of workers.

turn over for question 5

Language Paper Two 6

THE QUESTIONS

Section B: Writing

You are advised to spend about 45 minutes on this section.

CHOOSE ONE OF THE TASKS BELOW (You will only be given one task in the exam).

05 “People who eat meat argue that it’s ‘natural’ for humans to consume animals. But is
this true or just an excuse to ignore the horrific ways in which animals are killed for food?”
Write an article for your school magazine in which you argue whether or not we should all
be vegetarian.

'Schools are outdated regarding compulsory wearing of uniform - students should be free to
express their individuality.' Write a speech for a staff meeting at your school in which you
argue for or against compulsory wearing of uniforms.

"Heavy users of social media are less happy and have more problems at school and home.”
Write a letter to your local newspaper, arguing whether or not you think this is true.

“Children learn more from their experiences outside school than they do from their lessons
inside.” Write a speech for your school Leavers’ Assembly to explain what you think makes a
good education.

40 marks
(24 content, 16 spag)
Language Paper Two 7

Q5 GRADE 9 MODEL ANSWER

Parents and teachers expect children to work far too hard at school and at home. Young people
should be allowed to have fun while they still can.
Write an article for a broadsheet newspaper in which you explain your point of view.

As a student myself, I understand the demands from pressuring parents and tyrannical teaching
standards. I understand the culture of targets – ‘setting and getting’ – revision, boosters, after school one to
ones. I know that these systems are in place to support and help me develop. I recognise that my
teacher’s only want to foster my good habits. So why is this all going so horribly wrong? Why are students
rejecting the support so freely offered?

The fact is – this is not support, it is a demand – an instruction.

Importantly, we must first recognise that a student is also a human. More importantly, this human being
has the same wants for their own success as the parents, teachers and mentors that encircle them like
birds of prey. The reality is, that support is not always supportive and young people have lost the ability to
self-manage. We are all working against one another and ultimately it is the student that loses out.
Almost a third of GCSE and A level students find that the constant pushing from both school and home
leaves them feeling drained and less motivated to revise and put in effort. The majority wanted more
independence when it comes to studying: studying because they want to, not because of being
overloaded with unrealistic expectations and pre-decided careers.

In recent years, the pressure and expectations has grown like a snowball tumbling down a hill: the further
it falls, the bigger it gets and the more of an impact it has at the end. But we must stop this snowball
before it falls too far down that hill and crashes with irreversible impacts on its victims; these victims are
our sons, our daughters and our students. Does a duty of care not extend into trying to ease the pressure
off our children? Why should we abuse this position of trust and use it to unintentionally degrade our
students’ mentality? What right do we have to steer them down the paths that we regret not taking?

The pressure and constant prodding is spreading around each school like an abnormal growth of cells, a
malignant tumour invading neighbouring tissue, poisoning organs until they’re unable to function on
their own. Is this what we want for our future generation? A country that has to be reminded to do things;
a country unable to think for itself? Because unless this unsettling tumour is treated NOW, it’s going to
continue to grow. And when we finally realise our fatal mistake, it will be too late.
Language Paper Two 8

THE MARK SCHEME - Q2

Language Paper Two 9

THE MARK SCHEME Q3

Language Paper Two 10

THE MARK SCHEME - Q4

Language Paper Two 11

THE MARK SCHEME - Q5