Writing: Structure, Task Fulfilment and Control
What this domain tests
You will produce extended Chinese writing - often an imaginative or persuasive piece, sometimes a letter, speech or article. Marks come from task fulfilment, structure, range and accuracy of language, and appropriateness of register.
Concepts you must control
- Task fulfilment first. Underline the audience, purpose, format and any required content points. A brilliant essay that ignores the prompt loses heavily.
- Genre signals. A speech opens with 各位老师、同学 and closes with 谢谢大家; a letter has 亲爱的…… and 此致/敬礼; an article may use a headline and subheadings.
- Paragraph logic. Each paragraph: topic sentence (观点), support (例子/理由), link (因此/由此可见).
- Range. Deliberately deploy complex structures you control: 不仅……而且, 与其……不如, 之所以……是因为, 假设句 (如果……就), and varied sentence length.
- Register. Formal writing avoids 挺, 特别棒, 超级; persuasive writing may use rhetorical questions (难道我们不应该……吗？).
Traps that appear
- Neglecting the format - writing an essay when a speech was required.
- Ignoring one bullet of the prompt, which caps the task-fulfilment mark.
- Over-ambition: attempting idioms (成语) you half-know and producing errors. Accuracy beats flair.
- Thin endings - a conclusion that merely repeats the introduction.
Worked rule of thumb
Spend five minutes planning: write the required content points in a list, assign one paragraph to each, and draft a one-line thesis. Then write. Reserve five minutes to check: 的/得/地, measure words, 了/过/着, and subject–verb order. A clean, well-organised 400-character piece outscores a sprawling 600-character one with structural gaps.
Sentence-level check
Read each sentence aloud mentally. If a clause has no subject and the meaning is unclear, add one (我们, 这种做法) rather than hoping the reader infers it.