S3 Revision Pack

S3 Revision Pack

The Writing Paper

You will have one hour and fifteen minutes to complete the Writing paper, however remember that by the time you have read through all the questions and chosen one, you will have nearer an hour.

Tips:

1.  Take your time when choosing questions – your answer will only be good if you choose the question which is best for you.

2.  Make sure your essay ANSWERS THE QUESTION. You will fail if it does not.

3.  Avoid questions which ask you to write GIVE YOUR VIEW or DISCUSS or questions which ask you to WRITE A LETTER OR A NEWSPAPER OR MAGAZINE ARTICLE as it is much harder to get a high mark with these types of tasks.

4.  Questions you CAN answer:

First of all, a PERSONAL ESSAY, if written well, is the most likely essay to enable you to achieve a Credit mark, so it is advisable to make this your first choice. Questions which ask you to look at a picture and WRITE IN ANY WAY YOU CHOOSE are also acceptable, because it means that – as long as you can write an essay which relates to the picture on the page – then you can write a personal essay or a short story for this question.

Furthermore, you can answer a question which asks you to write a SHORT STORY. However, these questions are harder to achieve a Credit mark for as you need to ensure that you are able to create SETTING, CHARACTER AND PLOT, which is often very difficult to do. Unless you have achieved a grade 1 for at least one previous story you have written, I would avoid writing a short story in the exam. It is much easier to get a Credit mark with a personal essay, particularly if you usually achieve grade 3s for your stories.

Finally, you can answer the questions (usually on the back page) which ask you to DESCRIBE THE SCENE. These questions ask you to write a descriptive piece and should only be attempted if you are confident at using descriptive language and language techniques (similes, sentence structure etc) and feel you can WRITE AT LENGTH in this genre.

5.  Finally, remember not all questions should be taken literally (at face value). They can often have a metaphorical or second meaning. For example, a question which asks you to write a personal essay about a time when you felt you had no escape does not necessarily mean you have to write about a time when you were physically trapped and couldn’t escape; you could write about a time when you felt emotionally trapped, as though you couldn’t escape – for example, a time when you felt depressed and felt like you would never feel better again. This would be okay to write about because you perhaps felt like there was no escape from the depression.

6.  Before you go into the exam, you should have a ‘bank’ of experiences or story ideas which you can write about. You should have practised writing these essays at home or in school. This is really important because it means that you will have a clearer idea of what to write and in what order and it also means that you will probably make less mistakes. Remember though, that your essay MUST ANSWER THE QUESTION. Writing about an experience which does not answer the question will mean you might fail, and you certainly cannot achieve Credit if your essay is irrelevant to the task.

7.  Finally, detail and description when writing a personal essay or short story is important, and will also help you to write more. Make sure that you have a ‘bank’ of similes and metaphors that you can use before you go into the exam. You should memorise these and use them, if appropriate, when you are writing your essays. It is much easier to think of similes and metaphors when you have time to sit and think. You will not have the time to do this in an exam.

What to Include in a Personal Essay

1.  The most important thing about a personal essay is REFLECTION. Without this, you are unlikely to achieve a high mark. Remember, you need to reflect throughout your entire essay (so in every couple of paragraphs or so). You can do this by:

-  Discussing your feelings about the experience now and comparing them to how you felt then

-  Considering whether the experience may have changed you as a person in some way (are you less selfish? Are your beliefs about things different? Are you more mature? Do you treat people differently?). Remember to explain why the experience has changed you (this is very important).

-  Discussing whether the experience has made you think about other wider issues, perhaps if you are writing about illness or death you could consider it on a larger scale: thinking about the loss of life in Japan after the earthquake might make you consider your own experiences of illness and death in a different light.

2.  You must also ensure you are able to write about your thoughts and feelings sensitively (thoughtfully). This means that you should try to describe how you felt in some depth. In order to do this you should try to go beyond just saying ‘I was nervous’ or ‘I was upset.’ Instead, write about how you ACTED as well as how you felt and try and use some SIMILES AND METAPHORS to help you express your feelings.

E.g. When I found out I had won the competition I suddenly found that my mouth had gone dry and it was difficult to swallow. A huge grin swept across my face like the trail left by a jet plane, soaring across a perfect blue sky. I simply couldn’t believe I had won. Thoughts went flying through my head, like, ‘there must be a mistake because it couldn’t possibly be me.’ But it was. I was so happy I felt like a bird, sailing high above everyone else on my way to bigger and better things.

3.  Details and description is also important. You need to set the scene for your reader. Remember, you are able to picture what things looked like, but without decent description, your examiner won’t be able to. Use similes, metaphors and describing words to help describe what things looked like.

E.g. It was a calm, beautiful day and the yellow sun was high in the sky, beating down its rays of light onto us all below. It was my first day at high school and I was really nervous. Even walking up to the school just gave me a feeling of utter dread in my stomach. As I walked up the path, I stared at the tall, majestic building, with its cold grey bricks and empty windows and wished I could just go home.

4. STRUCTURE. Personal essays must have a beginning, middle and end. Your introduction is important: just by reading your introduction, your examiner should have a good idea as to what your reflection is. You need to state what you have learned from the experience in your introduction.

E.g. It has been five years now since the day that I first realised what terrible things people in this world can do but I remember it like it was yesterday. I was just ten years old and I didn’t think very deeply about anything, but somehow I suppose I assumed that, deep down, most people were good. However, that outlook soon changed when I met Jonny.

Writing a Short Story

The first thing to remember when you are writing a short story is that you will be marked on three things: setting, plot and character.

In the Writing paper there are two types of short story questions: one will give you a title and the other will give you an opening. The important thing is that your story is relevant to the title or to the opening. If your title is ‘Happiness’, then your story must include a character that is happy. This needs to be an important part of your story, otherwise why would you name your story such? If Matt Groening had named ‘The Simpsons’ as ‘The Flanders’’, then it wouldn’t be relevant. Similarly, if you have a short story opening that starts off with a car crash but you then go on to write a story about colonising Mars then your story will not be relevant to the task.

SETTING

- Often pupils forget to develop setting fully, but you cannot achieve a Credit mark without it. You need to set the scene for your reader so that they can imagine just what everything looks like. Your first paragraph is important, as it usually describes the setting:

E.g. It was only mid afternoon, but heavy storm clouds swirled and tossed under the bruised sky and the screaming wind slashed through the sky, whipping the winter trees’ bare branches and threatening to tear down chimneys and rip gates off their hinges.

- When you are describing setting, you need to remember to describe the FIVE SENSES: SIGHT, SOUND, TASTE, TOUCH AND SMELL. This is because we experience all these senses in real life, so if you are to create an effective setting, you need to make your reader imagine the five senses.

- N.B. Setting is for your whole story, not just the first paragraph. You need to fully describe how things looked THROUGHOUT your story.

CHARACTER

Creating effective characters is difficult however you need to remember that you should give your character personality as well as describing their appearance. However, remember that in order to get credit, you must SHOW, NOT TELL. For example, a passage like this simply tells the reader about a character:

‘John was fifteen years old and had turned to alcohol because he hated his home life so much he just wanted to escape from it.’

However, this passage shows the reader:

‘ John sat in the park with his friends. His messy hair sat tousled on the top of his head and his face, although handsome, was peppered with pimples and spots. He held a cigarette in one hand in the manner of one who is trying to look at ease; instead he looked awkward and stiff, miles away from the ‘cool’ poise he was aiming for. In the other hand he held a bottle of cheap alcohol, which was almost empty, and each time one of those terrible memories of home forced its way through the cracks in his mind, he took a huge swig from the bottle, swallowing loudly and trying to squash the feeling of revulsion which followed.’

In the second passage, the writer’s word choice describes what John is doing whereas the first passage simply tells us what he is doing. In both passages we understand why John is drinking, but passage two is much more stylish and allows us to picture it much better.

SECONDLY, your character must change or develop, just as real people do. This means that your character must have either:

·  Matured by the end of the story

·  Have changed in some way

·  Have come to a realisation by the end of the story

·  Have different views/act differently at the end than they did at the start.

PLOT

The first thing you need to remember is that your plot must be realitstic. Avoid the supernatural, sci-fi, fantasy and events in general which would be unlikely to happen in real life.

·  Your plot should have a beginning, which will ‘set the scene’: establish setting, introduce character(s) and set the foundations which will lead up to your ‘main event’.

·  There should be rising action, in which one – or perhaps two – little things will happen (this could be something the character does or sees, a discussion the character has or a series of thoughts he/she has). The rising action should lead directly up to the main ‘event’.

·  All of this should lead up to the main event (the climax or turning point). This is when something important should – usually – happen to your character.

·  After this the action should ‘fall’ which means you need to describe the ‘aftermath’ of this event. This is usually when your character should have a moment of realisation, or when you should show that they have matured or have changed.

·  You should end your story with a memorable line or paragraph. Usually this should be when you impart your final message to the reader (the theme of your story).