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) no more than 120 words 2(b)

selection and compression

Text C 10 + 10 marks

3(a–c)