IGCSE English 0500: Relevant vs Irrelevant Evidence. Robotics Passage

Read the passage, then answer the questions that follow.

Mia's team had six minutes left on the clock when the robot's arm jammed for the third time. Regionals were being held in the sports hall of a school two hours from home, and the automated grading system would not pause for repairs once a match began. Her teammate Dembe crouched by the control box, running his finger along the connection where a wire had come loose during transport, while Mia scrolled through the code on her laptop, checking whether the gripping motor's calibration had reset itself, as it sometimes did after the device powered down overnight.

Their coach, Mr Osei, had warned them in the minibus that morning that nerves, not code, usually decided close matches, a comment Mia had found unhelpful at the time. The team had spent the previous month rewriting the pathfinding routine so the robot could navigate around the low barriers on the course without stalling, and that part, at least, was working perfectly in every test run; the arm fault was new, and nobody had seen it before.

Dembe found the loose wire and pressed the connector firmly back into its socket, and the diagnostic light on the control box turned from red to green. There was no time left to run a full test, so Mia simply reloaded the last saved calibration file and hoped it would hold. When their turn came, the robot crossed the course, lifted the block cleanly on the first attempt, and set it down inside the target zone with four seconds to spare. Afterwards, in the corridor, Dembe admitted he had been so focused on the wire that he had completely forgotten to check whether the battery pack was still fully charged.

Focus for this task: what went wrong just before Mia's team's match, and how the problem was fixed.

(a) Select and briefly explain, using evidence from the passage, TWO relevant details that answer this focus. [4]

(b) One student's answer to this focus also included the detail about Mr Osei's comment in the minibus that morning. Explain why this detail is NOT relevant evidence for this particular focus, even though it genuinely appears in the passage. [2]

(c) Using ONE short, precisely embedded quotation, write a single sentence that uses evidence from the passage to support the point that the fix was successful. [2]

Assessment focus

This question separates three closely related evidence skills: (a) selecting details that genuinely answer a stated focus, (b) explaining why a plausible-looking detail is nevertheless irrelevant to that same focus, and (c) embedding a single precise quotation grammatically inside the candidate’s own sentence.

Part (a): Selecting relevant evidence

The focus is narrow, “what went wrong… and how the problem was fixed”, so only details about the arm fault and its repair count, not the wider story of the match. Creditable relevant details:

The cause: “a wire had come loose during transport”, which jammed the robot’s arm.
The fix: Dembe “pressed the connector firmly back into its socket,” confirmed by “the diagnostic light on the control box turned from red to green.”
(Also acceptable) Mia’s precaution of reloading “the last saved calibration file” before the match, since this is part of preparing the fix for the run itself.

Mark scheme, up to 4 marks: 2 marks for each relevant detail selected and briefly explained (1 for correct identification, 1 for a supporting reference/quotation), to a maximum of two details.

Part (b): Explaining irrelevance

A detail can be entirely true and still fail to answer a specific focus. Mr Osei’s comment about nerves is:

Made before the arm fault occurred, so it cannot describe “what went wrong.”
General advice about competitive psychology, not a description of a mechanical problem or its repair.

Mark scheme. Up to 2 marks: 1 mark for recognising the comment is about a different subject (nerves/psychology, not the mechanical fault), 1 mark for recognising it comes before the problem described in the focus and so cannot be evidence of “what went wrong” or “how it was fixed.”

Part (c): Embedding a quotation for a specific point

A strong answer selects a genuinely short phrase, not a whole sentence, and integrates it as part of a single grammatical sentence rather than appending it after a full stop, for example:

The fix clearly worked, since the robot went on to complete its run and set the block down “with four seconds to spare.”

Mark scheme. Up to 2 marks: 1 mark for a quotation that is short (a precise phrase, not a full sentence), accurate, and genuinely evidences success (not simply any sentence from the passage), 1 mark for correct embedding (grammatically fluent, quotation marks used, no unexplained quotation dropped in isolation).

Common pitfalls specific to this text

Candidates frequently bring in Dembe’s admission about the battery pack as if it were part of “what went wrong,” when the passage makes clear the battery was never actually a problem in this match. Only something he forgot to check, which is a different, unrealised risk rather than an actual fault.
Some candidates quote the whole final sentence of the passage for part (c) rather than the specific clause that best demonstrates success, losing marks for imprecise selection even where embedding is technically correct.