Skills for Life Writing Entry 1-3 – Note or message (including email)
Task Description
What do the candidates have to do?
The candidates have to write a communicative note or message (including email) of between 20 and 80 words, depending on level.
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 gives them a number of content points that need to be included.
What is the purpose of this type of question?
This type of question chiefly assesses Text features – the candidates' ability to communicate a message effectively to a particular audience. Word and Sentence features are also assessed in this type of task, unless it is an email, when Word features are not assessed.
How is the candidates' writing marked?
Their writing is marked by trained markers using a task-specific markscheme. Because the Text element is important here it has been allocated 6 marks, with 3 for Sentence and none for Word (see above).
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 email task on page 3 of this Skills for Life Writing Entry 2 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 underline when you read the instructions?
- How did you begin and end your email?
- What functional features did you include?
- Which grammatical features did you include?