ACSI 2023 CT Paper 1 Marking Notes

2023 Common Test Paper 1 Marking Notes Note: These notes were adapted from the official marking notes used for the respective questions. They are meant to function as a GENERAL guide and should not be taken as exhaustive. 2023 Common Test Question 1 • Response should provide some elaboration on what is understood by ‘narrative voice’ , e.g. through style, tone, perspective, etc. and ‘sense of wonder’ , e.g. awe, amazement, excitement, anticipation, etc. • In stronger responses, candidates detailed how the narrative voice of the writer invites readers to actively participate in his journey and experiences to the North Pole through the first-person narrative perspective. The best responses included an appreciation of the brief but subtle shift when Templar addresses the readers from the second-person point of view in lines 9-10, when he tells the reader, “but this is about as far as you can get from a ‘standard’ summer holiday. ” In weaker responses, candidates did not answer the guiding question or showed some understanding of narrative voice but struggled to analyse it in detail. While rich evidence was selected, it was often treated in a superficial manner. • Also, in top responses, candidates showed sensitivity to how the narrative was told in an itinerary or diary-like fashion. There were some nuanced insights about how the narrative was told from an aerial point of view or bird’s eye view of the changing landscape while journeying by plane from Helsinki to Murmansk, which evoked Templar’s and readers’ sense of wonder with experiencing something new and unexpected at every turn of this adventure. • In strong responses, candidates detailed the writer’s excited tone of voice while marveling over the sights and sounds of the landscape through his accompanying em-dash punctuation and repetition of the words “vast” . There was some elegiac analysis on how the tricolon structure of “personal, perfect, polar moment” creates a sense of wholeness, completeness and a sense of tranquillity and fulfilment while the writer reflects about living in the moment “lying down flat in the snow” , physically separating himself from his travelling group. In weaker responses, candidates usually only commented on the writer’s enthusiasm in general and repeated points instead of moving onto a wide breadth of insights. • The best responses articulated the writer’s transformation in the narrator’s perspective from preconceived ideas of the North Pole as being a hostile, gloomy and lifeless/dull to the narrator’s sense of wonder at how the North Pole is one that

is teeming with life, beauty, movement and vibrance. This was usually accompanied by some analysis of the shift in the narrator’s tone of voice from a lively conversational tone that showed knowledge and confidence of the landscape to that of a more contemplative, meditative, reflective tone at the end of the experience. • There were a few excellent responses that sho