Books are dead. Argue for or against this point of view.

Review of essay

Rating: 5 star(s)

Response to the question

This is an absolutely outstanding essay. Backed up with tonnes of statistical facts (helping to solidify the objectivity of the article and also indicate to the examiner there is evidence of external, independent research that has been conducted to achieve these figures) and spots of humour, this is a sensitively-written and well-expressed argument for the perpetuity of literature, new and old. Where the candidate makes a fair and wise compromise between those who agree and those who disagree by presenting a secondary point of view ("Conversely, one may say that technology is overriding the traditional paperback"), they show evidence of a capability to confront opposing views head-on and rational work around them, without the need to resort to outright ranting or a shameful ignorance of something so obviously challenging to that which they are discussing.

The structure is brilliant, introducing the topic without resorting to tried-and-tested methods or question regurgitation, they get stuck right in and hit home hard with important facts straight from the off. From therein, there is a sound structural integrity that sees the candidate deal with important points about the importance of books, providing evidence for this argument in the form of sales figures of popular series and the demand for book shops all over the country. Then concerning the counter-argument is where the candidate earns even more marks, deftly approaching an opposing view and working their way around it.

Level of analysis

The Level of Analysis here is brilliant. The candidate shows skills of up to an A* grade for GCSE easily. There is an adept use of language and an obvious understanding of how to use it to precisely shape what we want to say. The candidate comes across as objective, rather than subjective - very important for effective arguments - and they even drop in humour, dismissing the more ridiculous books like auto-biographies from Z-List celebrities - a notion we can all agree with. The argument techniques featured include a wide variety of rhetorical questions, statistics, syntactic parallelisms, repetition voice of the expert and many more, all unifying together seamlessly in this essay, which neither feels awkward nor forced - just true.

Quality of writing

The Quality of Written Communication is fantastic. There is such a deft use of English that it's hard to believe this is the work of a GCSE candidate. There is plenty of indication of an ability to understand and use complex words and apply them to effective analysis to pinpoint the exact meaning intended, and the constantly shifting grammar syntaxes help the candidate show the examiner the ease at which they can vary sentence length to ensure their essays remain interesting and thoroughly engaging.