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IGCSE · Cambridge (CIE) · 0408

Crocodiles · arriving in Italy and being understood

Compare imagined bodily control with the actual landing · Analyse misunderstandings without turning people into national stereotypes · Trace how particular acts of help make a place seem inhabitable

Cambridge IGCSE World Literature 0408 · 2025-P3-CROCODILES / 2025-P3-A / 2025-P3-B / SET-2025-3 / SET-2026-3 / SET-2027-3
Exam scope and assessment notes

0408 preparation for exam year(s) 2025, 2026, 2027. The assessment changes in 2028; follow the component and selected texts for your year. Original StudyForA teaching for the 2025–2027 Paper 3 option In the Sea There Are Crocodiles, by Fabio Geda, translated by Howard Curtis. Twenty-eight lessons teach the Author’s Note and all six country chapters, with passage, whole-book essay, voice and retrieval workshops. All three complete 2025–2027 selected-work entries link this whole-book teaching pathway. Reading completion, qualified teacher assessment and calibrated full papers are not certified by these self-review exercises. Read the entire unabridged centre-selected book; lessons and models do not replace it. The public reader is a reflowed 133-page version; its page numbers are locators, not certified centre-edition pagination. Use your copy for exact wording, typography and paragraph breaks. The protected book is linked, not reproduced here. Questions and models are original self-review and do not award Cambridge marks or grades. Other well-supported readings can be valid. Qualified literature-teacher review and calibrated full papers remain unfinished. In 2025–2027, Paper 3 is closed book: 90 minutes, one extract response and one whole-text essay, 25 marks each. This book is not a 2028–2030 Paper 3 option. It is excluded from 2025–2027 coursework because it is on those years’ Paper 3 lists; private candidates cannot enter 0408. The lessons analyse a narrative of past experience, not present-day travel, legal or personal-safety advice.

Before you begin

  • Read the Author’s Note and the named chapter scenes in the centre’s complete Howard Curtis translation. Use the linked reader’s text version if needed; its page numbering differs from print editions.
  • Distinguish the experiencing child, the later narrating Enaiat, Fabio’s conversational questions and the authorial/translation process. Reconstructed dialogue is not a certified recording.
  • Read all six country chapters before the whole-book workshops. Teaching availability does not certify individual reading, mastery or an official assessment result.

Work on paper. Try each question before revealing help, and explain why your method works.

Quick readiness check

What should support a claim about a literary text?

What you will learn

  • Compare imagined bodily control with the actual landing
  • Analyse misunderstandings without turning people into national stereotypes
  • Trace how particular acts of help make a place seem inhabitable

Crocodiles · a country encountered through people

  • Read the named scenes in the complete centre-selected book or the linked public reading before answering. The protected book is not reproduced here.
  • Reader page numbers identify this web version only. Use chapter and scene locators when working with another edition.
  • Write your own developed response before opening the model. Use brief accurate evidence from your copy; paraphrase plainly when exact wording is uncertain.

Original whole-book teaching and self-review, not official Cambridge questions, marks, coursework or a calibrated full paper. The lessons and models do not replace reading the complete centre-selected book or qualified assessment.

The action the body cannot rehearse

Read the crane, landing and first help, reader pp.116–117.

  1. 1. How does the opening of Italy continue the book’s complicated picture of agency?

    Compare after trying

    Enaiat rehearses an effective escape, but unexpected machinery and exhausted legs interrupt the imagined plan. The comparison between intention and action prevents the episode from becoming a display of effortless control.

    The workers do not enact the pursuit he fears, and strangers later provide help. He still makes decisions, yet his progress depends on responses he cannot command. I read agency here as active but bodily limited and relational.

    Why this response fits

    • Connect the imagined and actual actions.
    • Retain assistance rather than attributing every outcome to individual skill.

What makes somewhere worth staying?

Read the cyclists, boy, train misunderstanding and conversation about settling, reader pp.117–119.

  1. 1. How do these encounters make Italy a possible home without proving it is a perfect place?

    Compare after trying

    The strangers’ actions answer immediate needs even when their language or knowledge is limited. The train misunderstanding adds impatience and comedy, then permits a small connection when the destination is understood.

    The later conversation qualifies the initial sense of paradise: settling is connected with treatment and not wanting to leave, rather than perfection. I find the place made attractive through particular relationships, while queues for food and the search for a friend keep uncertainty visible.

    Why this response fits

    • Use more than one kind of encounter.
    • Distinguish personal hope from a universal judgement about a country.

A rehearsed escape meets an exhausted body

Italy opens inside the same uncertainty which closes Greece. Enaiat rehearses an agile departure, but a crane interrupts the expected movement and his cramped body cannot perform the landing he imagined. The workers’ surprise and one man’s encouragement differ from the pursuit he fears. A sign finally identifies Venice, but knowing the country does not supply language, relationships or a home. The gap between rehearsal and action continues the book’s resistance to an effortlessly competent hero. Assistance enters through people whose roles and motives are not all fully known.

Limited knowledge travels in both directions

The cyclists name famous footballers and the Taliban as shorthand for countries. The exchange makes unequal and reductive knowledge visible without making the strangers only hostile: they also stop, ask about need and give money. A boy then supplies food, washing, clothes and a ticket. The narrator imagines a kinship between this boy and the Greek woman through similar kindness, not through evidence that they are literally related. On the train, the misunderstanding between Rome and rum produces anger, a drink and finally recognition. The comic exchange does not prove that language barriers have disappeared.

A possible home is judged through treatment

The sight of Venice briefly prompts an expansive hope about all Italy. Later, the conversation with Fabio offers a more qualified account of settling: no place is perfect, but not wanting to leave is connected with how one is treated. Practical gifts and small acts of patience become evidence for a possibility rather than a scientific sample of a nation. Arrival in Rome still brings queues for food and the search for someone known. Keep gratitude particular, and do not use eventual settlement to erase confusion, poverty or the help on which movement continues to depend.

Sources for this lesson

Pause and explain

Does the Rome/rum episode end with the fellow passenger reporting Enaiat to police?

Put the idea to work

Worked example

Improve “The boy in Venice is certainly the Greek woman’s relative”.

Show the worked solution
  1. The narrator links their actions through an imagined resemblance.
  2. No family connection is established.

Answer The connection is a way of thinking about transmitted kindness, not a verified genealogy.

Try a topic test

Choose Easy, Normal or Difficult. Save your answers and open worked review after finishing.

Test this topic →

From guided practice to a new situation

Write your answer and reasoning first. Use a hint only if you are stuck. The model solution is for self-checking; your written work is not automatically marked.

1 · Guided

How does the landing qualify competence?

Give me a hint

Set the rehearsed movement beside bodily exhaustion.

Compare my reasoning
  1. He imagines a controlled jump and escape.
  2. His legs cannot carry out that plan.

The contrast preserves agency while showing how the journey limits what intention can achieve.

Look for these in your work

  • Use the contrast
  • Avoid a flawless hero
2 · Independent

What does the football exchange expose?

Give me a hint

Keep the cyclists’ help alongside the shorthand.

Compare my reasoning
  1. The speakers recognise countries through a few public associations.
  2. The strangers nevertheless notice a need and assist.

Partial knowledge can be reductive without making each person’s whole response identical to the stereotype.

Look for these in your work

  • Distinguish knowledge and action
  • Avoid a national generalisation
3 · Transfer

How does the Rome/rum misunderstanding develop?

Give me a hint

Trace fear, mistake and eventual clarification.

Compare my reasoning
  1. The passenger first responds to a different request.
  2. Repetition finally produces understanding and reassurance.

Comedy comes from unequal interpretations, while the corrected exchange makes practical communication possible.

Look for these in your work

  • Trace the sequence
  • Do not invent a police outcome

Common mistakes

  • Do not make the crane escape as physically controlled as the rehearsal.
  • Do not equate one stranger’s knowledge of the Taliban with an endorsed claim that all Afghans are Taliban.
Recall without your notes

What can you explain now?

Does the Rome/rum episode end with the fellow passenger reporting Enaiat to police?

Compare with the explanation

No; the misunderstanding is resolved and they travel to Rome together.

The fear of what a stranger might do must be distinguished from the narrated action.

After trying it yourself, choose your next review. This is your self-assessment.

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Make it stick

Does the Rome/rum episode end with the fellow passenger reporting Enaiat to police?

If you needed the solution, close it and solve the problem again from a blank page. A correct answer is stronger when you can explain the reason for each step.

Keep learning World Literature

Course scope and assessment

238 original lessons provide 714 guided, independent and transfer tasks, plus 431 reading-tracker and long-response prompts. Twenty skill and route entries, three year-specific Cherry Orchard entries, two Anowa entries, three Crocodiles entries, one 2027 Little Foxes entry, two year-specific Volume 1 poetry entries, one historical 2025 Volume 2 poetry entry and three year-specific Volume 2 story entries link teaching. Anowa has ten lessons through the Prologue and all three phases, with thirty staged tasks and ten original developed responses. Complete primary reading locators support analysis of the contested community frame, partnership, enslavement, the children, remembered dream, separation and ending. The protected play is linked rather than reproduced; editorial BECE material is not reused. Both eligible 2025–2026 Anowa rows link the whole-play pathway. Twenty-eight lessons teach the Author’s Note and all six country chapters of In the Sea There Are Crocodiles, with eighty-four staged tasks and sixty original developed responses. Four workshops teach passage analysis, whole-book argument, layered voice and retrieval/revision. All three complete 2025–2027 book entries link the whole-book pathway; the existing supplemental route remains available without adding another counted requirement. The public reflowed reading is linked rather than reproduced, with edition limits explicit. Twenty-two Little Foxes lessons teach all three acts for 2027, with sixty-six staged tasks and forty-eight original developed responses. Hospitality, silenced voices, the mill, financial negotiation, the proposed marriage, Horace’s return and refusal, the bonds, Birdie’s disclosure, withheld help, the final bargain and Alexandra’s decision are taught through actual stage directions and dialogue locators. Four workshops develop passage analysis, whole-play argument, stagecraft and corrective retrieval. SET-2027-2 links the full sequence; the existing supplemental route remains available without inflating counted requirements. The protected acting script is linked rather than reproduced; exact centre-edition wording and revisions must be checked. The Cherry Orchard has an 18-lesson whole-text sequence with five actual Julius West excerpts and three argument models. The 2026–2027 poetry option has teaching for all fourteen members, three complete public-domain poems and close-reading, comparison and retrieval workshops. Twenty-four lessons teach all ten 2026–2028 Stories of Ourselves Volume 2 members, with named reading and writing sequences and evidence, passage-context, essay and ten-member retrieval workshops. Two complete public-domain narratives, nineteen actual prose extracts and Katie’s complete twenty-line poem within Besant’s prose story support close reading and whole-story writing. The Shrinking Shoe follows the original 1895 prose and its five sections; the embedded poem is not a Paper 2 set poem. All three eligible ten-story selection rows link the complete pathway. Wodehouse and Woolf use brief quotations and original commentary with complete reading sources; their full texts are not reproduced here. Twelve lessons teach twelve compulsory 2028–2030 Volume 3 poems, with thirty-six staged tasks and twenty-four developed-response prompts. The Dutt and Kingsley excerpts and Cissoko’s exact translation still need verified reading and teaching; full-selection workshops remain unfinished, so all three complete poetry rows remain unlinked. Fourteen lessons teach seven 2029–2030 Volume 3 stories with thirty-five developed-response prompts. Twelve actual older primary excerpts support four stories; Achebe, Desai and Danticat use original commentary with complete primary reading links rather than reproducing their protected texts. A separate partial-member pathway supports The Necklace, The Model Millionaire, Sultana’s Dream, The Interlopers, The Sacrificial Egg, Sale and New York Day Women without linking either complete ten-story row. The three other members and full-selection workshops remain unfinished. Read the full centre-selected works and protected anthology; check edition differences, including Weissenhorn’s older Necklace translation. The historical 2025 poetry pathway teaches all fourteen members through eighteen lessons, fifty-four staged tasks and fifty-one developed-response models. Three complete public-domain poems remain printed with line breaks; eleven protected poems use complete primary reading links and original commentary. Four workshops teach close analysis, whole-poem argument, preparation comparisons and specific retrieval of all fourteen members. The complete SET-2025-5 option links this sequence; the historical supplemental route remains without increasing counted requirements. Archival Cambridge and WJEC papers supply primary poems, not reused questions or later-year assessment rules. Centre-edition differences remain explicit. Forty-six lessons provide original teaching and practice for nine historical 2025 story members: The Doll’s House, The Gold Watch, A Visit, A Walk to the Jetty, In the Mountains, Mrs. Sen’s, Promenade, The Plantation and The Paper Menagerie. Together they provide one hundred and thirty-eight staged tasks and one hundred and one developed-response models. A Visit uses complete primary reading visually checked across printed pages 306–310. Promenade follows the complete seven-page narrative on printed pages 416–422; its four lessons trace bodily control, wordless meetings, the interrupted circuit and changed final walk. Mrs. Sen’s has six lessons through the complete story, with eighteen staged tasks and thirteen developed-response models. Teaching follows the collection scan from its unnumbered opening through printed p.135, with food, letters, recordings, separate journeys and the changed final care arrangement. The Plantation has five lessons, fifteen staged tasks and eleven developed-response models through all four numbered sections, visually checked against printed pages 423–429 through the final dawn bird-call. In the Mountains has seven lessons, twenty-one staged tasks and fifteen developed-response models through the final invitation to eat. The complete publisher transcription supports scene-based reading; automated-text errors and subscription access remain explicit, and original printed pages were not visually verified. A Walk to the Jetty has seven lessons, twenty-one staged tasks and fifteen developed-response models through the complete six-page retype’s final berth. Reader annotations and the appended question are separate; the complete publisher version has wording differences, so exact quotations require the approved edition. The centre edition remains required for exact quotations. The protected stories are linked, not reproduced. The partial member pathway is supplemental; Words and full-selection workshops remain unfinished, so SET-2025-6 stays unlinked. Fifteen year-specific prescribed-work entries remain unfinished; complete centre-selected coursework reading also needs substantive text-specific teaching. The 51-entry map is a StudyForA preparation map, not official numbered syllabus sections or a percentage of student mastery. Written practice is self-checked and is not officially marked. Full timed papers and qualified literature-teacher assessment remain unfinished. Fictional exercises are labelled separately from actual excerpts; alternative well-supported readings can be valid. Centre-authenticated coursework and Cambridge moderation are separate from self-check practice.

StudyForA · Learn with understanding

Original teaching content and links to official sources. Check your exam year and qualification before using a resource.