Explain how the writer presents his grandfather in lines 13 to 24.

This question tests reading for information and reading for the writer's methods together (R1 and R3). 'Explain how the writer presents' asks for the constructed portrait, not the man himself, so every point should attach a piece of the text to the impression it creates. The mark scheme has three tiers and they correspond to three different kinds of sentence you can write.

1 to 2 marks: isolated detail

The grandfather kept a small boat tied at the landing stage (line 13) and rowed the writer out past the last of the reeds (line 14). True, relevant, and worth very little on its own, because it reports rather than explains.

3 to 5 marks: explanation with support

He is presented as a patient teacher. The evidence is his behaviour at the sound of the curlew: 'He would stop rowing whenever he heard it, resting the oars across his knees, and tell me to listen properly' (lines 22 to 24). Notice what the sentence gives you. The rowing stops, which means the errand is interrupted for the lesson; the oars are rested rather than shipped, which means the pause is habitual and unhurried; and 'listen properly' implies that the boy's ordinary listening was not enough. The modal 'would' marks all of this as repeated practice, not a single evening. That is how you turn a detail into an explanation: read the small choices inside the sentence.

6 to 7 marks: developed interpretation

The top band wants the grandfather's function in the passage, not only his character. He is the writer's route into the marsh's meaning. As a child the writer 'had believed the curlew's call was the sound of the marsh itself, speaking in a language only the birds and my grandfather understood' (lines 20 to 21). The claim there is remarkable: the grandfather is placed inside the same category as the birds, a native speaker of the place. That is why the man and the landscape cannot be separated in memory later in the passage, and it is why his absence will be felt as a form of the marsh's own change. An answer that reaches this point has stopped describing a kindly relative and started explaining a technique.

Where marks are lost

The commonest cap is affection substituting for analysis. 'The writer clearly loved his grandfather and this shows he was a good man' has no textual anchor and no comment on presentation. Quote short and comment long; a six-word quotation followed by three sentences of analysis outperforms a four-line quotation followed by one.