AQA GCSE English Language Paper 2: Practise Exam Paper -
Travel + Exploration
Here’s a full example paper created for AQA GCSE English Language Paper 2 (Writers’
Viewpoints and Perspectives). The overall topic is ‘Travel and Exploration’, so think
about how both writers connect to that theme. Text A is a nonfiction piece of travel
writing in letter form on the subject of visiting Japan for the first time — written by
Isabella Bird, a famous Victorian explorer and naturalist. Text B is also nonfiction - a
diary entry by Captain Scott, who travelled to the Antarctic and attempted to be the
first man to reach the South Pole. I created the exam-style questions below based on
the wording of official AQA Exam papers. You could use an official AQA mark scheme
from a previous year to mark your answers.
TEXT A: ISABELLA BIRD’S LETTERS
Introduction
Isabella Bird (1831–1904) was an English explorer, writer and photographer. She is
known for her ‘bright, descriptive letters’ which document her travels all around the
world. The letter below documents her first impressions of Japan, and seeing Mount
Fuji (Fujisan) for the first time.
LETTER 1: FIRST VIEW OF JAPAN
Eighteen days of unintermitted rolling over “desolate rainy seas” brought the “City of
Tokyo'' early yesterday morning to Cape King, and by noon we were steaming up the
Gulf of Yedo, quite near the shore. The day was soft and grey with a little faint blue
sky, and, though the coast of Japan is much more prepossessing than most coasts,
there were no startling surprises either of colour or form. Broken wooden ridges,
deeply cleft, rise from the water’s edge, grey, deep-roofed villages cluster about the
, mouths of the ravines, and terraces of rice cultivation, bright with the greenness of
English lawns, run up to a great height among the dark masses of upland forest. The
populousness of the coast is very impressive, and the gulf everywhere was equally
populated with fishing-boats, of which we passed not only hundreds, but thousands,
in five hours. The coast and sea were pale, and the boats were pale too, their hulls
being unpainted wood, and their sails pure white duck. Now and then a high-sterned
junk drifted by like a phantom galley,
Then we slackened speed to avoid exterminating a fleet of triangular-looking
fishing-boats with white square sails, and so on through the grayness and dumbness
hour after hour.
For long I looked in vain for Fujisan, and failed to see it, though I heard ecstasies all
over the deck, till, accidentally looking heavenwards instead of earthwards, I saw far
above any possibility of height, as one would have thought, a huge, truncated cone
of pure snow, 13,080 feet above the sea, from which it sweeps upwards in a glorious
curve, very wan, against a very pale blue sky, with its base and intervening country
veiled in a pale grey mist. It was a wonderful vision, and shortly, as a vision,
vanished… I never saw a mountain rise in such lonely majesty, with nothing near or
far to detract from its height and grandeur. No wonder that it is a sacred mountain,
and so dear to the Japanese that their art is never weary of representing it…
The air and water alike motionless, the mist was still and pale, grey clouds lay
restfully on a bluish sky, the reflections of the white sails of the fishing-boats
scarcely quivered; it was all so pale, wan, and ghastly, that the turbulence of
crumpled foam which we left behind us, and our noisy, throbbing progress, seemed a
boisterous intrusion upon sleeping Asia. The gulf narrowed, the forest-crested hills,
the terraced ravines, the picturesque grey villages, the quiet beach life, and the pale
blue masses of the mountains of the interior, became more visible. Fuji retired into
the mist in which he enfolds his grandeur for most of the summer…
Travel + Exploration
Here’s a full example paper created for AQA GCSE English Language Paper 2 (Writers’
Viewpoints and Perspectives). The overall topic is ‘Travel and Exploration’, so think
about how both writers connect to that theme. Text A is a nonfiction piece of travel
writing in letter form on the subject of visiting Japan for the first time — written by
Isabella Bird, a famous Victorian explorer and naturalist. Text B is also nonfiction - a
diary entry by Captain Scott, who travelled to the Antarctic and attempted to be the
first man to reach the South Pole. I created the exam-style questions below based on
the wording of official AQA Exam papers. You could use an official AQA mark scheme
from a previous year to mark your answers.
TEXT A: ISABELLA BIRD’S LETTERS
Introduction
Isabella Bird (1831–1904) was an English explorer, writer and photographer. She is
known for her ‘bright, descriptive letters’ which document her travels all around the
world. The letter below documents her first impressions of Japan, and seeing Mount
Fuji (Fujisan) for the first time.
LETTER 1: FIRST VIEW OF JAPAN
Eighteen days of unintermitted rolling over “desolate rainy seas” brought the “City of
Tokyo'' early yesterday morning to Cape King, and by noon we were steaming up the
Gulf of Yedo, quite near the shore. The day was soft and grey with a little faint blue
sky, and, though the coast of Japan is much more prepossessing than most coasts,
there were no startling surprises either of colour or form. Broken wooden ridges,
deeply cleft, rise from the water’s edge, grey, deep-roofed villages cluster about the
, mouths of the ravines, and terraces of rice cultivation, bright with the greenness of
English lawns, run up to a great height among the dark masses of upland forest. The
populousness of the coast is very impressive, and the gulf everywhere was equally
populated with fishing-boats, of which we passed not only hundreds, but thousands,
in five hours. The coast and sea were pale, and the boats were pale too, their hulls
being unpainted wood, and their sails pure white duck. Now and then a high-sterned
junk drifted by like a phantom galley,
Then we slackened speed to avoid exterminating a fleet of triangular-looking
fishing-boats with white square sails, and so on through the grayness and dumbness
hour after hour.
For long I looked in vain for Fujisan, and failed to see it, though I heard ecstasies all
over the deck, till, accidentally looking heavenwards instead of earthwards, I saw far
above any possibility of height, as one would have thought, a huge, truncated cone
of pure snow, 13,080 feet above the sea, from which it sweeps upwards in a glorious
curve, very wan, against a very pale blue sky, with its base and intervening country
veiled in a pale grey mist. It was a wonderful vision, and shortly, as a vision,
vanished… I never saw a mountain rise in such lonely majesty, with nothing near or
far to detract from its height and grandeur. No wonder that it is a sacred mountain,
and so dear to the Japanese that their art is never weary of representing it…
The air and water alike motionless, the mist was still and pale, grey clouds lay
restfully on a bluish sky, the reflections of the white sails of the fishing-boats
scarcely quivered; it was all so pale, wan, and ghastly, that the turbulence of
crumpled foam which we left behind us, and our noisy, throbbing progress, seemed a
boisterous intrusion upon sleeping Asia. The gulf narrowed, the forest-crested hills,
the terraced ravines, the picturesque grey villages, the quiet beach life, and the pale
blue masses of the mountains of the interior, became more visible. Fuji retired into
the mist in which he enfolds his grandeur for most of the summer…
