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A-LevelEnglish LanguageReading: text analysis and comparison9093/12 · Feb/Mar 2022 · Q125 Marks

Read the following text, which is an extract from Michelle Obama's autobiography Becoming. I was about four when I decided I wanted to learn piano. Craig, who was in the first grade, was already making trips downstairs for weekly lessons on Robbie's upright and returning relatively unscathed. I figured I was ready. I was pretty convinced I already had learned piano, in fact, through straight-up osmosis – all those hours spent listening to other kids fumbling through their songs. The music was already in my head. I just wanted to go downstairs and demonstrate to my exacting great-aunt what a gifted girl I was, how it would take no effort at all for me to become her star student. Robbie's piano sat in a small square room at the rear of the house, close to a window that overlooked the backyard. She kept a potted plant in one corner and a folding table where students could fill out music work sheets in the other. During lessons, she sat straight spined in an upholstered high-back armchair, tapping out the beat with one finger, her head cocked as she listened keenly for each mistake. Was I afraid of Robbie? Not exactly, but there was a scariness to her; she represented a rigid kind of authority I hadn't yet encountered elsewhere. She demanded excellence from every kid who sat on her piano bench. I saw her as someone to win over, or maybe to somehow conquer. With her, it always felt like there was something to prove. At my first lesson, my legs dangled from the piano bench, too short to reach the floor. Robbie gave me my own elementary music workbook, which I was thrilled about, and showed me how to position my hands properly over the keys. 'All right, pay attention,' she said, scolding me before we'd even begun. 'Find middle C.' When you're little, a piano can look like it has a thousand keys. You're staring at an expanse of black and white that stretches farther than two small arms can reach. Middle C, I soon learned, was the anchoring point. It was the territorial line between where the right hand and the left hand traveled, between the treble and the bass clefs. If you could lay your thumb on middle C, everything else automatically fell into place. The keys on Robbie's piano had a subtle unevenness of color and shape, places where bits of the ivory had broken off over time, leaving them looking like a set of bad teeth. Helpfully, the middle C key had a full corner missing, a wedge about the size of my fingernail, which got me centred every time. It turned out I liked the piano. Sitting at it felt natural, like something I was meant to do. My family was loaded with musicians and music lovers, especially on my mother's side. I had an uncle who played in a professional band. Several of my aunts sang in church choirs. I had Robbie, who in addition to her choir and lessons directed something called the Operetta Workshop, a shoestring musical theater program for kids, which Craig and I attended every Saturday morning in the basement of her church. The musical center of my family, though, was my grandfather Shields, the carpenter, who was also Robbie's younger brother. He was a carefree, round-bellied man with an infectious laugh and a scraggly salt-and-pepper beard. When I was younger, he'd lived on the West Side of the city and Craig and I had referred to him as Westside. But he moved into our neighborhood the same year I started taking piano lessons, and we'd duly rechristened him Southside.

  1. (a)Imagine you are Michelle's great-aunt Robbie. You write a diary entry recording your thoughts and feelings after one of Michelle's weekly piano lessons. Write the text for your diary entry. Use 150–200 words.[10]
  2. (b)Compare your diary entry with the autobiographical extract, analysing form, structure and language.[15]

Mark scheme

Marking points from the official mark scheme (Feb/Mar 2022). The mark or mark type is shown in brackets.

  1. [10] (1a) form, audience, purpose, style, conventions, language and structure will be appropriately adapted to suit task
  2. [10] (1a) content may include Robbie's personal thoughts, feelings and reflections
  3. [10] (1a) tone will be used to have an impact on the reader and to create an effect.
  4. [15] (1b) (Form) the typical text conventions used in the original autobiographical extract and the candidate's own diary entry
  5. [15] (1b) (Form) the ways in which the different purposes affect the content and style of the two texts
  6. [15] (1b) (Form) the ways in which the autobiographical extract and diary entry appeal to their respective intended audiences, e.g. through the tone and register used in each text
  7. [15] (1b) (Form) any other relevant aspects of the form of the two texts
  8. [15] (1b) (Structure) beginning the extract with a reference to being four years old enables the writer to position the reader in a particular time/place
  9. [15] (1b) (Structure) the use of a chronological structure to suit the purpose of autobiographical writing
  10. [15] (1b) (Structure) the way in which paragraphs are sequenced to present the writer's growth and development (in terms of learning to play the piano)
  11. [15] (1b) (Structure) the way in which the text shifts focus from the narrator, to the aunt, the first piano lesson, and then to the piano itself
  12. [15] (1b) (Structure) the effect of including Robbie's direct speech in the fourth paragraph
  13. [15] (1b) (Structure) varying paragraph length and how this enables the writer to describe some memories in greater detail
  14. [15] (1b) (Structure) the way in which the final paragraph is used to contextualise the writer's natural interest in music, with the mention of her uncle, brother, maternal aunts and grandfather
  15. [15] (1b) (Structure) any other relevant structural features in the texts
  16. [15] (1b) (Language) the use of first-person pronouns enables the reader to see things from the writer's perspective
  17. [15] (1b) (Language) the question-and-answer sentence forms in the second paragraph create a chatty style and involve the reader in the text – Was I afraid of Robbie? Not exactly.
  18. [15] (1b) (Language) the connotations of vocabulary choices such as dangled
  19. [15] (1b) (Language) the use of colloquial vocabulary – kids, straight-up – lowers the register and adds to the informal, chatty style of the text
  20. [15] (1b) (Language) the connotations of words used to present Aunt Robbie's character – exacting, scolding, demanded, unscathed
  21. [15] (1b) (Language) the frequent use of long, complex sentences adds descriptive detail to entertain the reader
  22. [15] (1b) (Language) the use of a lexical field associated with music – piano, keys, Middle C, treble, bass clefs, musicians, band, choirs
  23. [15] (1b) (Language) the effect of the simile leaving them looking like a set of bad teeth
  24. [15] (1b) (Language) any other relevant language features used in the texts

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About this question

Topic
Reading: text analysis and comparison, A-Level English Language (syllabus 9093). Structured question, 25 marks.
Source
A-Level English Language, Feb/Mar 2022 Paper 1 Variant 2, question 1.

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