Using lines 30 to 39, identify two measures the council has taken to reduce heat in the city.

What this question tests

An AO1 retrieval question worth 2 marks, one for each of two separate measures. The stem restricts you to lines 30 to 39, the paragraph headed as an account of what has been tried. Two marks means two distinct actions, not one action described twice.

Answers that earn the marks (1 mark each for any two)

• Reflective white paint on public roofs. Since 2021 the council has "painted the roofs of eleven schools and four bus depots in a reflective white coating", which lowers the surface temperature of the slate.
• Planting drought-tolerant trees on the eastern roads. It has "planted six thousand semi-mature trees along the eastern access roads", choosing species that survive dry conditions rather than the limes that died.
• Free cooling centres in summer. It has "opened nine air-conditioned libraries and sports halls as free cooling centres through July and August".
• New building rules. It has "rewritten the building code" so that new flats cannot be approved without "cross-ventilation and external shading on its west-facing windows".

The rewritten building code and the new requirement for cross-ventilation and shading are two sides of the same reform, so the safest pair is drawn from two different sentences of the paragraph. That leaves an examiner in no doubt that two separate measures have been identified.

Reading the window

This paragraph is deliberately built as a list of achievements: four sentences, each opening with a verb of action, "painted", "planted", "opened", "rewritten". Counting the verbs is the fastest reliable way to separate the measures. The numbers attached to each, eleven schools, six thousand trees, nine buildings, are useful evidence but are not themselves the measure, so an answer that says only six thousand has not named an action and cannot be credited.

How the marks are commonly lost

The most damaging error is answering from the paragraph that follows. Lines 40 onwards are the writer's judgement on these measures, that the paint does nothing for the flats above the eastern shops, that six thousand trees is a start on a deficit of sixty thousand, that the cooling centres close at night when the danger is highest. That material is criticism of the measures and lies outside the stated window, so it earns nothing here however well expressed. A second error is offering the fix the writer recommends at the end of the article, pale roofs, deep eaves, shutters and night ventilation, as though the council had already carried it out. Those are proposals, not measures taken.

Examination point

For a two-mark retrieval, write two short numbered points rather than a paragraph. Separate points are easier to credit separately, and they force you to check that you really have found two different things.