Written Production: Task, Format, Then Language
Written Production is where you write your own text - usually around 200–250 words - in response to a prompt that names a situation, an audience and a purpose. Typical tasks are an email or letter, an opinion text, a news-style report, a narrative, or an informative text based on a short reading. Marks are split between content (did you do the task and develop ideas), organization and language, so a simple, well-controlled text beats an ambitious, broken one.
Before you write: five minutes of planning
- Underline the task requirements. Prompts usually contain two to four bullets ("explain what happened", "give two reasons", "suggest a solution"); every one must appear in your text.
- Identify the audience and the register: a principal, newspaper readers, or a friend.
- Choose the format and sketch four paragraphs: opening, two body ideas, closing.
Formats to know cold
- Informal email: greeting ("Hi Sam,"), short paragraphs, sign-off ("Talk soon, Alex"). No address block, no date line.
- Formal letter: your address, the date, the recipient's title and name, "Dear Ms. Roy:", "Yours sincerely," and your full name.
- Opinion text: position in the first paragraph, one reason plus one specific example per body paragraph, a brief counterargument, position restated at the end.
- News report: headline, a lead sentence answering who, what, when and where, then details in the past tense.
Worked example
Prompt: "Your school is considering banning phones during lunch. Write a letter to the principal giving your opinion."
Weak paragraph: "Phones are bad and students don't talk anymore. So I think you should ban them because it's better."
Strong paragraph: "I believe phones should stay in lockers during lunch. When my class ate together last term without phones, we actually talked and organized a soccer game. A ban would make that the normal lunchtime experience rather than a rare one."
Reasoning: the strong version opens with a clear position sentence, adds one reason, one concrete example and a concluding link, and controls modality ("would make") instead of stacking vague opinions.
Traps
- Leaving out one of the prompt's bullets - a direct content penalty.
- Wrong register ("Hey dude" addressed to a principal).
- Copying the prompt sentence as your introduction.
- Tense drift in narratives: start in the past and stay there.
- No time left to check verb endings, plurals and apostrophes.