PKG

WRITING TASK

THE WRITING TASK

In the Writing Task you have to write about 600 words of continuous prose.

You are provided with a variety of stimulus material (visual and written) grouped around a theme/issue/topic/concept.

THE WRITING TASK

You should focus on the theme and select one or two pieces of stimulus material for ideas and then write in any genre (form or style of writing) you like, other than poetry.

Your response can be an essay, a story, a script, a letter, a report, or anything else that seems appropriate to your focus.

GENRE

The responses sampled this year and in the past raise concerns about students’ understanding of “genre”. Some responses were composed formulaically around the (supposed) structural components of a genre (often printed, dutifully, as a heading to the response).

QSA 2008 Retrospective

A BETTER APPROACH

In contrast to this approach, skilled writing focuses on a message, not on filling out or following a predetermined form. Skilled writers make language choices appropriate for the context, purpose and audience.

QSA 2008 Retrospective

CONSIDER TONE

When writing one must consider tone towards:

1. Subject

The Exorcist is a menace, the most shocking major movie I have ever seen. Never before have I witnesses such a flagrant combination of perverse sex, brutal violence and abused religion

Ralph R Greenson, M.D.

TONE

2. Reader

Just as Parliament and the Courts are captured by the rich, so is the Church. The average parson does not teach honesty and equality in the village school: he teaches deference to the merely rich, and calls that loyalty and religion.

George Bernard Shaw

TONE

3. Self

When I was a boy in school, reading my Latin texts with one finger on the word and one finger in the Notes, I did not get much fun out of it. Anyway they made us read the wrong sort of authors, respectable authors like Cicero and Livy and the dull parts of Virgil.

Sean O’Faolain

SPECIAL TIPS

Always have a purpose in mind before you write. Keep your focus directly related to the stimulus material.

Write in clear, effective prose.

Ensure that your central idea is clear and is soundly developed from start to finish.

Then add the polish and make it error-free.

AN UNEDITED RESPONSE

AN EDITED RESPONSE

CRITERIA AND STANDARDS

Central Idea

Vocabulary

Responsiveness

Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling

Structuring and Sequencing

Length

CENTRAL IDEA

...clarity and development of the idea was lacking. This was particularly evident in scripts where students used four or more stimulus items....

The result was that many students wrote very generally about shapes, but neglected to develop a specific argument or thesis.QSA 2006 Retrospective

CENTRAL IDEA: THINGS TO REMEMBER

Limit the number of stimulus items to one or two.

Make sure that you just don’t write about something: develop something

It is critical that you plan

VOCABULARY

It is more appropriate to choose simple words for effect than to use complex vocabulary in an unwieldy manner and interfere with the meaning....

QSA 2006

Retrospective

VOCABULARY: THINGS TO REMEMBER

Avoid “overwriting”

Avoid overly simple terms such as “lots” or “a lot” written as one word

Avoid repetition

e.g. The use of the word “fantastic” again and again and again and again.

EXAMPLE OF UNINTENTIONAL REPETITION

There are lots of excellent shapes at the gallery. Inside, there are lots of excellent paintings. My favourite is an excellent one by Picasso. This man was an excellent painter of paintings. Lots of paintings were there, but one particular painting, Nude in a Garden, uses lots of excellent shapes. It’s a really excellent painting.

A BETTER PIECE OF WRITING?

There are many extraordinary shapes at the gallery. It contains countless first-class artworks. My favourite is a superb one by Picasso. This man was a genius, an excellent creator of original artwork. One particular painting, Nude in a Garden, uses a large number of original outlines. Now that’s what I call art.

GRAMMAR, PUNCTUATION AND SPELLING

It was disappointing to see how often scripts were pulled down by their grades in this criterion, especially when it seemed to be through the lack of redrafting and checking of scripts.

QSA 2006 Retrospective

GPS: THINGS TO REMEMBER

Grammar is more important than punctuation and poor spelling attracts least penalty

Proof read

WHOLE ESSAYS ARE BEING WRITTEN IN CAPITAL LETTERS!

“Don’t use direct speech if you can’t punctuate,” yelled the frustrated teacher.

HOW TO USE DIRECT SPEECH

Correct

“Here is the latest circle,” said Mr. Round.

Incorrect

“Here is the latest circle”, said Mr. Round.

HOW TO USE THE APOSTROPHE

Contraction

“it’s” for “it is”

Possessive

“the bike’s chain” singular“the bikes’ chains” plural

THERE/THEIR/THEY’RE

The circle is over there

This is their circle

They’re drawing a circle

http://www.chompchomp.com/hotpotatoes/wordchoice02.htm

THE COLON

Introduces a specification

The first principle from which Hitler started was a value judgement: the masses are utterly contemptible.

Aldous Huxley

The first part generalises, the second is more specific

THE COLON

Introduces a list

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics

Benjamin Disraeli

THE COLON

Usually the specific follows the general

A once defeated demagogue trying for a comeback, he tried what other demagogues abroad had found a useful instrument: terror.

Wallace Stenger

THE COLON

However, the general can follow the specific

Teaching: the act which precedes insanity.

Paul Gough

Notice in all these examples that it is not necessary that the construction following (or preceding) the colon be a complete clause.

THE SEMI-COLON

This has two functions:

1. To separate independent clauses

The cry was for economic reform; the administration settled for a handful palliatives.

Thurman Arnold

THE SEMI-COLON

2. To distinguish the items/ideas in a list.

There were other factors too: the deadly tedium of small-town life, where any change was a relief; the nature of current Protestant theology, rooted in Fundamentalism and hot with bigotry; and, not least, a native American moralistic blood lust that is half historical determinism, and half Freud.

Robert Coughlin

THE SEMI-COLON

Remember, dodge the “run-on” sentence where the semi-colon is omitted.

It was late, we went home.

It was late we went home.

It was late; we went home.

It was late, so we went home.

STRUCTURING AND SEQUENCING

The macro level of ordering – the order in which ideas are sequenced by logic or time or space: it is the order by which sentences and paragraphs are arranged and linked.

STRUCTURING AND SEQUENCING: THINGS TO REMEMBER

Paragraphing/sequencing and variety of sentences

Link paragraphs with cohesive ties (e.g. furthermore, firstly, secondly, later in the day)

Once again: planning is critical

Ability to use flashback, dual narrative successfully.

USE OF SHORT SENTENCES

Show understanding of recurrence and variety when writing.

Example 1:

The Art Cinema is a movie theatre in Hartford. Its speciality is showing uncensored films. The theatre is rated quite high as to the movies it shows. The movies are considered to be good art.

Does this writer understand recurrence and variety?

USE OF SHORT SENTENCES

Example 2:

The Smith disclosures shocked President Harding not into political housecleaning but into personal reform. The White House poker parties were abandoned. He told his intimates that he was “off liquor”. Nan Britton, his mistress, had already been banished to Europe. His nerve was shaken. He lost his taste for revelry. The plans for the Alaska trip were radically revised. Instead of an itinerant whoopee, it was now to be a serious political mission.

Samuel Hopkins Adams

Does this writer understand recurrence and variety?

SENTENCE VARIATION

The simplest kind of variation is changing sentence length and pattern:

We took a hair-raising taxi tide into the city. The rush hour traffic of Bombay is a nightmare – not from dementia, as in Tokyo, not from exuberance, as in Rome; not from malice, as in Paris; it is a chaos rooted in years of practiced confusion, absent-mindedness, selfishness, inertia and an incomplete understanding of mechanics. There are no discernible rules.

James Cameron

SENTENCE VARIATIONS

Writers sometimes give paragraphs a “short-long-short” structure:

Always, from the very first sight of it, she hated the cottage. She loathed the plain square red-brick box, its blue slate roof, the squalid confusion of currant bushes, black hen coops, falling fences and apple trees in sprawling decay that passed for a garden, the muddy pond at the foot of it and the three withered willows sticking nakedly up from the water, like grey arms caught and fossilised in the act of drowning. Above all she hated the quiet clenching cold.

LENGTH

Do not write short under any circumstances

Do not “tell” the marker that it is the incorrect length.

WORD LENGTH about right

500–750 words

too long

750–1000 words

too short

400–500 words

far too long

Over 1000 words

far too short

Under 400 words