Writing and Composition
Writing and Composition asks for sustained prose written for a named purpose, audience and format: an argumentative or discursive essay, a narrative or descriptive piece, and often a shorter functional text such as a letter to an editor, an article or a speech. Marks divide between content and organisation on one side and accuracy and range on the other, so a stylish piece without a defensible thesis stalls mid-band.
Build the argument before the sentences
- Thesis: one sentence the whole piece exists to defend; every paragraph advances, qualifies or concedes it.
- Register: a speech allows direct address and rhetorical questions; a letter to an editor is formal but may be pointed; an article needs hook, development, resolution.
- Paragraph shape: topic sentence (claim) → concrete evidence or example → analysis of why it supports the claim → link onward.
- Cohesion: pronouns, synonyms and connectives carrying across sentences; avoid chains of short declaratives.
- Range: place one deliberately complex sentence and one deliberately short one on each page rather than sustaining a single rhythm.
Worked example
Prompt: write an article arguing that school should start later. Weak opening: "School starts too early. Students are tired. This is bad." Revised: "At 7:40 every morning, a fifteen-year-old is asked to make a decision that neuroscientists say her brain is not ready for: get up." The thesis then concedes and reframes: "Later start times are not a comfort for lazy teenagers; they are the cheapest academic intervention available, and the objections rest on habit rather than evidence." The hook dramatises the claim, the thesis names the counter-argument before dismissing it, and the paragraph sets up evidence instead of merely asserting that something is bad.
Traps that cost marks
- Telling a story when the task demands an argument, or bolting a moral onto the end of a narrative.
- "In this essay I will discuss…" openings that spend words without claiming anything.
- One-clause concessions that read as weakness rather than balance.
- Register slips: contractions and slang in a formal letter, Latinate padding in a speech.
- Description built on adjectives ("beautiful", "amazing") rather than sensory specifics and precise verbs.