Tutor Question
Dear Mr Salles,
Would you please have a look at my tuition student's descriptive writing? I am her concerned tutor. Her class teacher, however, is just full of praise for everything she writes.
I have been trying to advise Jenny to introduce some background information to give her writing more cohesion.
I have also tried to encourage her to introduce a motif, use a circular structure etc.
She tends to prefer to write whatever comes into her mind, but I am concerned that this will result in a lower grade in her IGCSE. Should I be stricter at the risk of affecting her creativity?
Jenny was simply given the open title "A Party" in the hope that she would try writing in a more upbeat, positive way, as most of her writing tends to be gloomy. This piece is a typical example - uncorrected by me.
Yours sincerely,
Marie Bakar
My Thoughts
We live in interesting times. There are so many ways in which we have polar opposite views about the same things. Gender, sex, the rights of women, politics, Brexit, climate emergencies, the role of the NHS, I could go on and on about the divisions in our society, where good people have completely opposing views to each other.
English teaching is one of those areas of conflict - at least for me.
So, let me lay out my bias here. I believe the point of studying English language is:
To make students as brilliant at writing as possible
To help students love the creativity of writing as a way to think about themselves and the world around them
To help students get top grades
This ranking is important.
If students are brilliant at writing, but don’t love it, or being creative, they will still succeed in life. They will probably thrive. If they later change their view, they will be able to love writing because they will already be very good at it.
Yet, if I teach students to love being creative, but their writing is no good, that is a disaster for me. They will have all the motivation to write, but not the skills to write well. They will write disappointing stuff. So, ‘love’ has to come second.
If my students are just brilliant writers, or if they are both brilliant and love writing, but don’t get a grade 8 or 9 at GCSE because of this, fine. A grade 7 is a passport to any further qualification.
But a GCSE in English language is only that. In 2 years it will be dimly remembered. In 5 years it will be utterly irrelevant. But being a brilliant writer is a gift for life - so many aspects of your professional life will depend on it.
That said, as tutors or teachers, we also desperately want our students to get the best grades possible.
So, to your questions:
Does cohesion matter? Yes - the best words, in the best order, so that the writing fully makes sense is essential.
Does a motif matter? No. It will make the writing interesting. More importantly, it is an easy way to give a description structure. But it is not essential - as long as the student has other ways of making their writing interesting, or have a structure.
Does a circular structure matter? No. The advantages are the same as a motif. But the caveat is also true - writing can be interesting without it, as long as the student has a different way to structure it.
Should we let students write whatever comes into their minds? Yes, and no. If there were no GCSE exam, the answer would be obvious. Yes. Write whatever is in your mind.
Then - this is where we would earn both our money and joy as teachers - we would teach how to redraft. How to take the first idea, carve it, polish it, redraft it so that it becomes something special.
The exam doesn’t allow that. But, I think our teaching still should. This is the only way we can improve what comes into their minds in the first place. The more students redraft, the better instincts they will have on their first effort.
As an insurance, I would recommend having some story plots to hand - memorised - that students can adapt in the exam. I would also practise writing from these, so students can easily write in the exam.
When I sat the GCSE Edexcel 2.0 in November 2023, I did rehearse the plots, but not the writing. However, that was because I wanted to see if the exam was a pure test of English.
Does the tone of the writing matter? No. True, most teenagers tend towards the gloomy, and most will include death. This often makes their writing tedious, unrealistic and predictable.
But, can students write about gloom and death in interesting and unpredictable ways? Yes - the Twilight series once ruled. The Hunger Games also ruled!
Jenny’s Story
A party
In the soapy glow of an autumn sun immersed in a cauldron of mist, I stepped into the cathedral. Twinkling speckles of light winked at me from the stained glass windows, casting the white packaging of the hall into an ocean of soft pastel colours. Like a swarm of butterflies, neon banners, coruscating plastic rainbows and bobbing balloons seemed to flutter lightly in the wake of the mellow breeze flowing in from the open set of doors behind me.
Gingerly, I clicked the creaking cedar doors shut; I tapped lightly over to the maroon felt covered speaker in a discreet corner. One step. One squeak from my shoes. I closed my eyes, and took a deep breath. Quieter, I murmured to myself (after all even one echo was enough to draw attention). Training my eyes to the white beams of the cathedral ceiling, ascending to the radiant ball of light in the middle of the ceiling like moths to a flame. I groped for the on button ingrained in the felt exterior of the speaker – peculiarly vibrating underneath my fingers. It might have been magic; it might have just been the twitching of my fingertips.
All at once, noise descended on the hall like a swarm of locusts invading every corner. To my left, to my right, countless figures – blurred at the edges as if I were looking through a screen of water - sprouted from the blank, beige of the marble floor. Life erupted across the empty cathedral hall, lifting up the quivering decorations as if an invisible barrier had suddenly expanded.
Inexplicably, the punch bowl in the corner, which I had placed only a few hours earlier, still sat alone, an island amongst a sea of chaos.
The more shadows that passed it, the more the deep magenta potion of punch appeared to freeze. I imagined time had blown a little bubble over that little table, corralling gazes of the party participants away from the bowl of punch as much as it maintained that stillness of the surface of the punch. I imagined that if I were to touch the surface of the grape punch, instead of sending waves of motion across the liquid, instead my finger would slide over it. I imagined the bowl of punch was an ice lake of purple-tinted water, immersed in the charms of winter.
Scraps of paper shadows - almost puppet-like - twirled all around the white hall. A white box of echoing sounds, laughter and colours, the white walls of the hall once again seemed to be wrapping paper, packaging the odd scene instead of the cathedral.
A woman in a white lace dress brushed past me. Out of nowhere, she seemed to stand up straight, raising her hands to her cheeks and turning around to look at me.
Amidst the din of music, voices and tapping shoes, her voice seemed flimsy, weak - an ant caught up in a tornado.
“Oh, I haven’t seen you where before,” the figure seemed to exclaim, “But you’re so young. It’s a pity.”
Light palpitated across my vision, as my world tilted. In a whirl of black lace, I skated across the marble floor in a few quick steps.
I watched as my green eyes - framed with a scraggy braid of chestnut brown hair - stared into the stark red of the lady’s eyes.
Shivering, I intertwined my rosy, red palm with the pale, chalk-white palm the lady offered me. A last present.
“Take me to my sister,” I breathed, as I pursed my lips, lifted my head and let the cold tickle me as it infected me.
In all but a second, all the colour around me drained - paint from a cup - until all that was left was black and white.
Perfect for a party for ghosts.
AQA Marking
Although this was written for IGCSE, it would work just as well as a response to an AQA question.
What would it get?
An examiner could award it a grade 9 - many of the descriptions are fantastic.
They could also award it a grade 8 - some of the descriptions are confusing or unconvincing.
In reality, AQA examiners don’t seem to ask for writing to be convincing (even though “compelling and convincing” are how they summarise grade 8 and 9 writing in the mark scheme).
So, for me it is a grade 8. I would expect it to score grade 9 in the exam.
But, if it were my student, I would be disappointed. Jenny is capable, with a little teaching, of so much more. I know exactly where you are coming from, Marie.
IGCSE Mark Scheme
Level 6, 14-16 Marks
General
Content is complex,
Engaging and effective.
Structure is secure, well balanced and carefully managed for deliberate effect.
Specific – descriptive
Many well-defined and developed ideas and images
create a convincing overall picture with
varieties of focus.
Specific – narrative
The plot is well-defined and strongly developed with
features of fiction writing such as description, characterisation
and effective climax,
and convincing details.
This is a much better mark scheme to apply than the AQA one. For AQA students - if you do the things in this mark scheme, you will get top grades.
My Marking
Before we delve into the ‘why’ of my thinking, let’s just take each section.
General
Content is complex, Yes
Engaging and effective. No
Structure is secure, well balanced and carefully managed for deliberate effect. No
Specific – descriptive
Many well-defined and developed ideas and images Yes
create a convincing overall picture with No
varieties of focus. Yes
Specific – narrative
The plot is well-defined and strongly developed with No
features of fiction writing such as description, characterisation Yes
and effective climax, Probably, so Yes
and convincing details. Sometimes, so No
Paid subscribers get the story again, but with my reasons and comments after each paragraph.
Let Me Tell You the Why
In the soapy glow of an autumn sun immersed in a cauldron of mist, I stepped into the cathedral. Twinkling speckles of light winked at me from the stained glass windows, casting the white packaging of the hall into an ocean of soft pastel colours.
The soapy glow is brilliant - I see the sun as a bubble at dawn or sunset, close to the horizon. It also feels cold, or tepid, like water after the heat has been lost. Perfect.
A cauldron of mist will work with the supernatural theme. But it just doesn’t fit with the soapy glow - they are from two different genres of story. You can’t keep both. There is some hint of ‘heard it before’ about this one - so I am sticking with soapy glow.
Wait, what hall? Where am I? How is it full of packaging? Am I in a warehouse? I thought you said I was in a cathedral? This is the opposite of the soapy glow - that made me see the sun in a new way. But I will never see the cathedral as white packaging! It may be that Jenny has never been inside a cathedral of course.
Like that.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Mr Salles Teaches English to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.