Paper 1

• Compulsory paper — everyone sitting First Language English takes Paper 1. Then you either sit Paper 2 submit a coursework portfolio.
• 2 hours long, worth 80 marks total — split 65 marks reading / 15 marks writing.
• You get an insert with three texts (A, B, C), all on a similar topic.
• 4 compulsory questions — Q1, Q2 and Q3 are broken into sub-parts.
• There are only two Assessment Objectives (AO1 reading, AO2 writing), each worth 50% of your grade — and each has 5 sub-skills.
• Cambridge suggests spending 15 minutes just reading before you write anything.

How the 2 hours breaks down

Think of Paper 1 like a relay race with four legs, and reading the texts is your warm-up lap. You're not marked on the warm-up, but skip it and you'll stumble through every leg after it. Cambridge deliberately builds 15 "free" minutes into the 2 hours for exactly this reason — use them. Skimming all three texts first means that by the time you reach Question 4, you already know roughly what Text C says, instead of meeting it cold with only 30 minutes left.

Question 1 (a–f) — Comprehension

Text A 20 marks

A series of short-answer questions testing whether you understood Text A. Some parts test the obvious, stated meaning (explicit); others test what's implied but not directly said (implicit) — think of it as the difference between what a text and what it .

Question 2 (a) — Summary, & (b) — Short-answer

Text B 15 + 5 marks

2(a) asks you to write a summary of no more than 120 words based on Text B — worth 15 marks, split 10 for reading (finding the right content) and 5 for writing (expressing it clearly and concisely). 2(b) is a shorter, separate short-answer question using details from Text B, worth 5 marks.

A summary is not a shortened copy-paste — it's a selection and compression task. Imagine explaining the key points of Text B to a friend who has 10 seconds to listen: you'd naturally drop the examples, the repetition, and the flowery language, and keep only the essential facts or ideas.

Question 3 (a–c) & (d) — Language

Text C 10 + 10 marks

3(a–c) asks you to explain language used in Text C (10 marks) — usually identifying what specific words or phrases mean or suggest. 3(d) steps it up: you must analyse the language in 200–250 words (10 marks), which means going further than "what it means" into "why the writer chose it and what effect it has on the reader."

The jump from to is the single biggest skill jump in this question. Explaining is describing the paint colour; analysing is explaining why the artist chose that exact shade to make you feel a certain way.

Question 4 — Extended Response to Reading

Text C 20 marks

Write 250–300 words responding to Text C in one of these text types: letter, report, journal, speech, interview, or article. Worth 20 marks, split evenly: 10 for reading (using and adapting content from Text C accurately) and 10 for writing (producing convincing, well-structured writing in the chosen form).

This question tests both halves of the course at once — you must genuinely understand Text C well enough to draw ideas and details from it, you must reshape those ideas convincingly into a completely different format, with the right tone, structure, and register for that form.

AO1 — Read and respond in different ways to different types of text

Worth 50% of your overall grade. Broken into five reading sub-skills:

Notice how these map onto the questions: R1/R2 → Question 1, R5 → Question 2's summary, R4 → Question 3's language analysis, R3 → Question 4's use of evidence.

AO2 — Write accurately and effectively, using Standard English appropriately

Also worth 50% of your overall grade. Broken into five writing sub-skills: