Directed writing and composition tasks for IGCSE English Language courses expect a lot from their students. Tasks usually consist of:
A response to stimulus extracts included in the exam.
A composition task that requires descriptive and narrative skills.
The first point would require an understanding of text types and conventions, form and register: ‘write an email from the viewpoint of…’ or, anachronistically, ‘write a letter to…’ A short guide is included to help students structure their ideas, usually a list of bullet points and that’s it, they’re off.
The second task might offer a series of open-ended titles that students are expected to hang a piece of writing off, ‘write a story with the title, The Choice’ or ‘Describe an isolated place’. Nice and broad - sometimes too broad. Both questions would be assessed on the quality of their content (ideas) as well as style and accuracy (register and SPaG).
Given the wrong set of circumstances and lack of preparation, this paper can be an absolute nightmare, especially as the timing (usually 2 hours) does not allow for lengthy planning or drafting. Worse still, there are always going to be occasions where students open the paper, see the briefs and have moments of utter blankness as no ideas come to the fore… Those broad prompts again.
Prioritising writing is something that many with an English curriculum responsibility will struggle with, especially as the skills that are primarily assessed for Language and Literature at IGCSE level tend to be weighted toward inference, analysis and text comparison. In a worst case scenario, it can become a one-size-fits-all shoehorning of a week or two of ‘writing practice’ into a half term that teachers find uninspiring to deliver and students wonder why they’ve suddenly switched gear from analysing sonnets to describing an image of a bustling city at street level.
Over several annual iterations, we have had successes with the latest version of our curriculum where shorter writing activities are woven throughout units focused on core literature texts. Seeing writer’s methods in context and then applying them. Examples at IGCSE level may look something like this:
Exercises that ask students to write short descriptions of a setting having first looked at examples of Steinbeck’s craft in ‘Of Mice and Men’
Experimenting with narrative form (analepsis, prolepsis, cliffhanger etc) and characterisation having explored Priestley’s structural methods in An Inspector Calls.
These examples require a foundational knowledge of techniques and how they are deployed, which are covered at Key Stage 3. We work to promote connections between ideas and texts through thematic units based around larger, conceptual ideas; for example, in Year 7 texts are framed around ‘Identity’ which build towards ‘Conflict’ in Year 8 and ‘Self and Society’ in Year 9.
It takes time, but students begin to start making connections to wider patterns, deepen their interpretations of texts and appreciate literature as part of a wider conversation. Anthony Cockerill writes brilliantly about this in his blog and the influences of a thematic and conceptual curriculum can be seen in more established forms with the International Baccalaureate.
Within this framework, we have begun to focus on sentence construction. Using slow writing techniques and paying close attention to the quality of each sentence really pays off as students begin to appreciate how punctuation and sentence lengths are deployed to effect.
Aside from this, embedding writing from personal experience - not just in terms of stories that one might have but by using life experiences to add depth to writing. Basing character or setting descriptions on real people and places or trying to embellish characters with quirks of personality makes them more convincing. Modelling this is obviously crucial.
For narrative tasks, further essential skills that we explicitly cover include:
Effective characterisation and avoiding the ‘Mary Sue’ trope. Give them flaws and defects, make them relatable.
Avoid gore. Butchery is not compelling.
Beginning in media res. Experiment with non-chronological order.
The more successful descriptive pieces tend to include:
A range of sensory language
Unusual perspectives - macro or micro within the scene, and approaches for this.
Describing from personal experience.
Maintaining an objective viewpoint. Some students struggle to separate the narrative from the descriptive, and an explicit awareness of perspective tends to help.
Encouraging students to keep a bank of their drafts and periodically referring back to them is a useful way of emphasising the crafting process of writing. This can be scaffolded through reflection activities that require students to edit or rewrite sections of their drafts and then discussing their decision making processes.
At our Tes Store we have a range of targeted writing activities that would work as part of a larger scheme or as discrete revision activities.
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