Read the following text, which is a review of a memoir.

Mark scheme

Marking points from the official mark scheme (Feb/Mar 2024). The mark or mark type is shown in brackets.

1. [25] Mark according to the levels of response marking criteria in Table C.
2. [25] Additional guidance: The analysis should address the style, form, genre, structure and language of the text (including specific and relevant references), explaining how they create meaning in relation to audience andpurpose.
3. [25] The comments below are illustrative and are not intended to be exhaustive. Candidates may make other valid comments that should be credited.
4. [25] Candidates may organise their response in any appropriate way. They are not required to focus onform, structure and language in separate sections.
5. [25] Responses might analyse the following Form: the typical text conventions used in the review; the ways in which the purpose affects the content and style of the text; the ways in which the review appeals to its intended audience, e.g. through the tone and register used in the text; any other relevant aspects of the text's form.
6. [25] Responses might analyse the following Structure: the use of a title to introduce the review, and a pun in the title – A whale of a journey; the way in which the opening paragraph clearly establishes the facts behind the subject of the book – mother whales dived deep to hunt for squid; the way in which the text is structured to evaluate the highlights of the book and to include personal information about the writer - painful custody dispute with her son's father; the lack of chronological structure, as indicated by the inclusion of the personal information in the middle of the review; the way in which discourse markers and anaphoric references are used in the text for cohesion and to develop the review; the way in which the concluding paragraph is structured to suggest the key question that has dominated response to Cunningham's book, and to convey the writer's overall opinion of the book – What could she hope to gain by taking her two-year-old on such a long journey...?; any other relevant structural features in the text.
7. [25] Responses might analyse the following Language: the way in which facts and details taken from the book being reviewed are used by the writer – the whales that migrate from Baja California to the Arctic; close-knit groups called pods; the effect of the use of positive adjectives and list of three to describe Cunningham's book a striking, brave and often lyrical book; the use of a lexical field concerned with water and creatures living in it – sperm whales in the Sargasso and Caribbean seas, 'allomothers', caring for the calf at the water's surface, Pods, human as well as cetacean, travel up the Pacific coast; the effect of connecting the humans and whales on their journey – whale and human cultures seem to converge, eroding the gap, like the whales they pursue, inseparable from their literary quarry, whales act as stepping-stones, bridges to human relationships; the effect of other triads or lists – Depleted, insolvent and isolated; the effect of the language of mythology and story-telling – the male-dominated narratives, Inuit mythology, heroic pair, a reckless, near-mystical pursuit of an imagined being; the effect of the metaphors – provides a key thread in the book, a wealth of fascinating ethnographic material, catapult her further into debt; the connotations of the phrase simmers, tantalisingly in the final paragraph; the effect of the interrogative sentence to begin the final paragraph; any other relevant language features used in the text.