Silas Marner exam question — Edexcel GCSE English Literature 1ET0
Edexcel GCSE English Literature · 1ET0
Silas Marner exam question
What you need to know
How Edexcel's 19th-century novel question works: part (a) on a printed extract and part (b) on the novel elsewhere, 20 marks each, and the assessment objective each part rewards.
How to plan and write both parts, using Silas Marner as the worked example, with model answers and commentary.
A two-part question set out as Pearson sets it, with its wording and marks.
Paper 2 Section A: one two-part question on the novel studied, closed book, with about 55 minutes for both parts out of the paper's 2 hours 15 minutes.
Part (a), 20 marks: how Eliot uses language, form and structure in the printed extract (AO2), writing about the extract alone.
Part (b), 20 marks: a personal, critical response on a character, theme, setting or event elsewhere in the novel, with references and paraphrase from memory (AO1); context is not assessed in this section, and language analysis earns nothing extra in part (b).
The worked example: the June 2025 question, part (a) on the Chapter 16 conversation in which Eppie tells Silas that Aaron wants to marry her, and part (b) on how loneliness is explored elsewhere in the novel.
Model answers to both parts, with the extract printed, and moments across the novel for part (b), such as 'he invited no comer to step across his door-sill', 'Silas spent his Christmas-day in loneliness', 'it’s a lone thing—and I’m a lone thing' and 'the little child had come to link him once more with the whole world'.
The level the model answer would reach and why, with a Grade 5 and a Grade 8 paragraph side by side.
