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IGCSE · Cambridge (CIE) · 0408

Crocodiles · earnings, friendship and promises tested by survival

Distinguish the shopkeeper’s proposal from guaranteed security · Read Sufi’s solidarity and limits without idealising the street · Examine ethical contradictions the narrator acknowledges

Section SET-2026-3 · 2026 · Paper 3 · In the Sea There are Crocodiles

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

  • Distinguish the shopkeeper’s proposal from guaranteed security
  • Read Sufi’s solidarity and limits without idealising the street
  • Examine ethical contradictions the narrator acknowledges

Crocodiles · a wider choice with new costs

  • 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.

Work one can choose to question

Read the offer, departure from the samavat and eventual sleeping arrangement, reader pp.27–35.

  1. 1. How does the change of work expand choice without completing a rescue?

    Compare after trying

    The shopkeeper distinguishes gratitude from liking the work and offers independent earnings. That exchange opens a question which the child has not fully allowed himself to ask. Rahim’s less hostile than expected response also complicates the adult relationships.

    The smaller share and lack of immediate shelter, followed by a shop whose key remains with its owner, keep the new freedom qualified. I read the change as a real movement in agency, but not a guarantee that money alone can provide safety, equality or unrestricted movement.

    Why this response fits

    • Use the actual changing terms, not an invented equal partnership.
    • Distinguish earnings, sleeping space and control of access.

A teller who admits contradiction

Read the fight, friendship, acknowledged selling deception and later retaliation, reader pp.31–36.

  1. 1. How does the account resist making survival a story of a perfectly obedient hero?

    Compare after trying

    The narrator acknowledges conduct in the bazaar that conflicts with the promise against cheating. Friendship changes the balance in the confrontation without preventing injury, and the later retaliation cannot be described as no violence at all.

    These admissions do not remove the pressures or the kindnesses on which survival depends. They make judgement more demanding: I can respond to the restricted choices and still recognise that the account does not claim every action is justified or every instruction perfectly followed.

    Why this response fits

    • Use the narrator’s acknowledgement rather than invent a flawless character.
    • Keep sympathy and ethical judgement in the same response.

A new choice still carries unequal terms

Osta sahib asks whether Enaiat likes the work, not merely whether he is grateful to have it. The distinction opens a possibility which the child’s first answer misses. The proposed share of profit gives him money of his own but leaves him with the smaller part and no immediate sleeping place. When he explains his decision to Rahim, the response is less hostile than he expected. Such details complicate an easy division of adults into total villains and perfect saviours. A changed arrangement can expand agency while leaving important needs unmet.

The street offers company without becoming safe

The theft and confrontation introduce the Hazara boys and Sufi, whose friendship makes returning to the old arrangement less attractive. The group’s presence changes the balance of a conflict, but it does not prevent Enaiat from being hurt. Shared food and humour supply another form of belonging alongside precarious sleep and unwanted selling. The motorbike episode also complicates Sufi’s quiet nickname. Analyse the tone’s capacity to include comic memory without making injury, poverty or danger into a harmless adventure.

A promise is tested rather than automatically fulfilled

The narrator acknowledges selling tricks that conflict with his mother’s instruction against cheating. The later stone thrown after a shopkeeper’s attack also makes a claim of perfect nonviolence untenable, even though he distinguishes damaging property from intending to hit the man. The teaching should not endorse those actions or turn survival pressure into a simple moral exemption. Osta sahib eventually offers clean sleeping space but keeps the key, so improved shelter still limits movement. The scenes ask how choices are made within pressure, not whether a child can be divided neatly into an entirely innocent or entirely guilty type.

Sources for this lesson

Pause and explain

Does the shopkeeper’s offer immediately give Enaiat both an equal profit share and his own keys to safe housing?

Put the idea to work

Worked example

Improve “He follows every promise without ever compromising”.

Show the worked solution
  1. Use the narrator’s own recognition about the selling tricks.
  2. Keep the later retaliation distinct from a claim that no violent response occurs.

Answer The account invites ethical judgement by exposing pressure and contradiction rather than supplying a flawless hero.

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

Why does osta sahib correct the first answer about liking the job?

Give me a hint

Separate gratitude for having work from satisfaction with it.

Compare my reasoning
  1. The child initially answers a different question.
  2. The correction makes another kind of judgement possible.

The exchange reveals how dependence can narrow what a person thinks they are allowed to ask of work.

Look for these in your work

  • Track the correction
  • Explain its effect on choice
2 · Independent

How does Sufi complicate the account of working in the bazaar?

Give me a hint

Use friendship beside continued hardship.

Compare my reasoning
  1. Shared food and support create attachment.
  2. Selling and sleeping remain uncomfortable and precarious.

Belonging can make a difficult life more bearable without converting it into safety.

Look for these in your work

  • Use countervailing details
  • Avoid a perfect-rescue story
3 · Transfer

Qualify a claim that hardship makes all conduct morally simple.

Give me a hint

Use the teller’s own acknowledgement of a broken instruction.

Compare my reasoning
  1. Pressure shapes the available choices.
  2. The narrator still recognises a conflict with the promise.

The account can invite sympathy while leaving ethical judgement active.

Look for these in your work

  • Explain pressure
  • Retain acknowledged responsibility

Common mistakes

  • Do not say the original stolen gum is recovered; the account ends the fight with a different item retained.
  • Do not present remembered sales tricks or retaliatory violence as instructions for a learner to copy.
Recall without your notes

What can you explain now?

Does the shopkeeper’s offer immediately give Enaiat both an equal profit share and his own keys to safe housing?

Compare with the explanation

No; he receives the smaller share, first lacks shelter, and later sleeps in a locked shop without the keys.

Money, shelter and freedom of movement change at different times and on different terms.

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

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Make it stick

Does the shopkeeper’s offer immediately give Enaiat both an equal profit share and his own keys to safe housing?

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.

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