Common Module: Texts and Human Experiences (unseen texts)

Text — Night Shift at the Bakery (poem)

At four the street is still a held breath, the lamps still arguing with the dark. Inside, my father floods the room with light and wakes the dough like something that has slept

too long. His hands know more than he will say: the fold, the turn, the press of heel and palm, the weight that tells him when it's ready — forty years of mornings in his arms.

He never asks me if I want the trade. He only slides the tray across to me, and waits, the way the oven waits, for heat to change a thing into what it will be.

By six the city comes to buy its bread. They do not see the night it took to rise. I wrap each loaf. I keep his silence too, and feel it warm, and heavy, and alive.

Question (3 marks): How does the poet use imagery to represent the father's experience of work?

Text — Night Shift at the Bakery (poem)

At four the street is still a held breath, the lamps still arguing with the dark. Inside, my father floods the room with light and wakes the dough like something that has slept

too long. His hands know more than he will say: the fold, the turn, the press of heel and palm, the weight that tells him when it's ready — forty years of mornings in his arms.

He never asks me if I want the trade. He only slides the tray across to me, and waits, the way the oven waits, for heat to change a thing into what it will be.

By six the city comes to buy its bread. They do not see the night it took to rise. I wrap each loaf. I keep his silence too, and feel it warm, and heavy, and alive.

Question (4 marks): Explain how the final stanza conveys the relationship between the speaker and their father.

Text — Why I Still Write Letters (feature article extract)

My grandmother kept every letter she was ever sent. When she died, we found them in shoeboxes under her bed, held together with rubber bands that had gone soft with age. There were letters from a sister in Athens, from a soldier she never married, from me — aged seven, misspelling 'beautiful' three different ways on a single page.

I think about those boxes whenever my phone buzzes. I send dozens of messages a day. I could not tell you what any of them said last week. They are written to be read once and replaced; they arrive and they vanish, like footprints on wet sand.

A letter is different. It costs something: paper, a stamp, the walk to the post box, the patience to wait for an answer. That cost is the point. When you hold a letter, you are holding the time someone decided you were worth.

I am not arguing that we should give up our phones. I'm writing this on one. But once a month I sit down with a pen and write to someone I love, slowly, crossing things out. My handwriting is terrible. Nobody has complained.

Question (5 marks): How does the writer persuade the reader of the value of writing letters?