Writing and Text Production (Textproduktion / Schreiben)
What is assessed
Writing is the productive core of the exam: an analysis essay plus at least one choice task (comment, letter to the editor, article, blog post, speech manuscript, email, review). Markers assess task realisation (text type, role, addressee, purpose), structure and argumentation, cohesion and range, accuracy and register - not how strongly you feel about the topic.
Read the prompt like a contract
Identify four things before writing: the text type (comment? letter? article with headline?), your role and addressee, the purpose (inform, persuade, evaluate), and the length plus any requirement to refer to the given material.
Architecture
- Introduction: a short hook (figure, question, brief scenario) plus a contestable thesis in one or two sentences. No lengthy summary.
- Body: one idea per paragraph. Topic sentence → evidence or example → explanation → link (PEEL). Concede, then refute: Admittedly ... Yet ....
- Conclusion: consequence, appeal or outlook. No new argument, no mere repetition.
- Register consistency:
Dear Editor,...Yours sincerely,if the name is known,Yours faithfully,if not; no contractions in a formal letter, contractions acceptable in a blog post.
Worked example
Prompt: your borough plans to ban private cars from the town centre; write a comment for the school magazine.
Thesis: The ban is the right step, but without affordable buses and safe cycle lanes it will punish exactly those residents it is meant to protect.
Paragraph: Consider the people who work shifts at the hospital. (topic) A ban would leave them dependent on a bus network that stops running at 22:00. (evidence) For a nurse finishing at midnight, a cleaner alternative simply does not exist yet. (explanation) Accessibility is therefore not an argument against the ban but a condition for it. (link)
Contrast: Cars are bad for the environment and should be banned. - a bare assertion: no evidence, no development, no link, no marks for argument.
Traps that cost marks
- Wrong text type: an essay where a letter was required.
- No thesis, or a thesis nobody could disagree with.
- Listing points instead of developing two or three.
- Ignoring the source material in a task that says to refer to it, or copying whole phrases from it.
- Overlong introduction, missing conclusion, word count far off the requirement.
- Mixing informal address into a formal text, or In my opinion I think.
- Unsupported generalisations about society used in place of evidence from the material.