Skills for Life Writing Entry 1-3 – Narrative/description/letter
Task Description
What do the candidates have to do?
The candidates have to write a narrative/description/letter .The number of words depends on level and the nature of the task, typically 30 to 50 at Entry 1, 60 to 90 at Entry 2 and 120 to 150 at Entry 3.
How do the candidates know what to write?
The task gives the candidates a reason to write, tells them who they are writing to and tells them what they need to include. This is often done using bullet points.
What is the purpose of this type of question?
All assessment focuses – Text, Word and Sentence – are covered by this task. This type of question chiefly assesses Text features – the candidates' ability to communicate information effectively to a particular audience – as well as Sentence features, though Word features are also assessed.
How is the candidates' writing marked?
Their writing is marked by trained markers using a task-specific markscheme. The length of the task plus its importance in real life means that it usually carries the most marks. The Text is likely to be allocated most marks (usually 6), although Sentence features may carry the same number of marks in the longer tasks. Typically, 3 marks will be allocated for Word features.
Understanding the Task
To understand better how candidates need to approach this task, it may help you to do the activity yourself and analyse what you had to do to find the right answer.
Look at the sample letter task on page 4 of this Skills for Life Writing Entry 3 sample paper. Complete the task, thinking about how you are doing it.
Things to consider
Now look at these questions about how you approached the task and consider your answers.
- What did you do first?
- Did you write a rough draft of your answer first, before putting it on the answer sheet?
- What did you have to keep in mind while you were writing?
- What would be the problem with writing very long answers?
- What would be the problem with writing very short answers?