AQA English Language Paper 2 question 5 is the writing question in Paper 2.
It is a 40 mark question, with 24 marks awarded for a05, and 16 marks
awarded for a06 (show assessment objectives). Section B builds on Section A. In Section A you
were given two sources presenting viewpoints on a topic of theme, and you’ve answered
questions on how the writers presented those view-points. In section B, you have an opportunity
to present your own personal view-point. In this question, you’ll be presented with a
controversial statement, and asked to respond with your viewpoint. Let’s look at a typical question:
'School uniform is the number one most important factor in ensuring that students behave well
and achieve academic success at school'. Write a letter to your head teacher arguing
for or against the abolition of school uniform. Now it’s worth pointing out here that,
historically, most of the past live papers have given you the choice of agreeing or disagreeing
with the statement. However, there has been a statement where you’ve not been asked to agree
or disagree, but asked to explain your view on something. For example, the question was
something like this: ‘Most lessons are boring. Write a letter to your teacher explaining what
you think makes a good school lesson.’ So in that case, you couldn’t choose to agree or disagree,
but you still had the freedom to decide what to write about in what you decided
made a good school lesson. The question will always
set out a clear audience, purpose and form. Now form is an interesting one, because there is
a minimum expectation of what to include for each form, and other features you might include. For
the November 2022 resit we know the form you’ll be asked to write in is a letter. With a letter,
at a minimum it needs to be clear that you are sending a letter to someone - you might achieve
that through writing ‘Dear Mr Smith’ at the beginning. And you have to write in paragraphs
too. You can then take that all the way through to what we know of the letter form: address,
date, formal mode of address and an appropriate sign off like ‘yours sincerely / faithfully’.
You’ll also be given a specific purpose for your work. This could be worded as writing to explain,
instruct, advise, argue or persuade. There’s also a chance it could be worded as something different
again, but the key thing is that, whatever the wording of the question, you’re being asked to
present your viewpoint on a topic. The third thing is audience,
and this is something many students overlook. Now, one of the skills for high marks in this
question is to actually write an answer that is highly plausible, made up of convincing ideas.
Let me give you an example from a real exam a number of years ago to show you what I mean.
The question was ‘write a letter to your parents in which you persuade them to let you go on
holiday with a friend this summer.’ I was an examiner on this exam,
and I marked over 300 attempts at this question. Thinking about audience was so important with
this question, and I’ll tell you why. Most students realised that, with their
parents as their audience, they would need to persuade them of the benefits of the holiday
such as learning a new language, experiencing a new culture, and developing independence. These
students were thinking carefully about what their audience - their parents, would be persuaded by.
Some students did not think about this at all. They wrote about going to Ibiza,
staying out all night, getting drunk. And of course, these answers were not convincing. They
did not take into account who their audience was, and how they could best persuade that audience.
A tiny percentage of top mark students thought carefully about their audience and used that
connection with their parents to be subtle. They wrote things like ‘Dear mum and dad. I know I’ve
been moody during my exams, and you deserve a break. I know you want me to grow up to
be independent, and not reliant on you forever. Well here’s a solution to both of those issues:
let me go on holiday with a friend this summer. You see, the high mark skills of writing something
Highly plausible, enthralling, original and subtle are only likely to come if you think
carefully about your audience and how you can best present your viewpoint to them.
The Summer 2022 exam report pointed out how the best responses took one perspective and
followed it through to the end. Students need to provide an argument on one side or the other,
taking one perspective and following it through to the end, in a single identifiable argument.
You must not argue both sides. In fact, the November 2021 exam report pointed
out that flipping backwards and forwards, disagreeing then agreeing with different
parts of the statement in the question often ended up in an unclear argument.
What we’re looking for is a ‘coherent overarching idea’ in your letter, and that comes through
presenting a single identifiable line of argument. A lot of this comes down to the nature of the
exam paper itself: writers’ viewpoints and perspectives.
In section A you analyse how writers present their own viewpoints. In section B, question 5,
you present your OWN personal view-point on the topic. So that’s what you have to do.
You don’t have to present an unbiased viewpoint of all sides of the argument:
you have topresent your own viewpoint. And let’s pin this down in the mark-scheme for a second.
If an argument keeps shifting from one side to another, this is likely to be placed within
level 2 (half marks at best) described in the mark scheme as ‘some successful communication’.
Another thing to think about is your structure - less successful answers are made up of separate
ideas presented with no sense of sequencing. Better answers present a line of argument,
well structured. Perhaps you can have a cyclical structure,
where you begin and end with the same idea for emphasis. Perhaps you can begin simply and move
on to develop more complex ideas. Thinking about your structure is very important.
As with paper 1 question 5, 16 marks are awarded for technical accuracy. That means you need to
give yourself plenty of time to check, both as you are writing and also at the end.