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Peer Reviews
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Quality of writing
The Quality of Written Communication is quite poor, too. There is no discernible structure; the answer is one huge paragraph and follows little cohesive thread. The spelling is relatively good though, with little or no compromising mistakes made. The grammar is adequate, though comma splice and a misuse of punctuation can lead to a sentence not reading right. To ensure this does not happen, candidates must structure their answers correctly and read and re-read their sentences to ensure clarity of written expression.
Level of analysis
There is sound evidence of a knowledge of a range of rhetorical devices used by this candidate to explain their addiction, but the result of so many question directed in a Second Person address is that the reader ends up being quizzed by the writer and learns nothing. There is no mention of the science behind the smoking or a successful attempt to rationalise smoking as an uncontrollable habit. Instead, the candidate assumes the attitude of someone who is not considering any other point of view (even the law to some extent) and so the answer does not appeal to the reader and will make most want to put the article down. There needs to be an appreciation of the science behind smoking; of the reasons why someone is addicted, so to give the impression that the addiction is out of the candidate's hands. You could also argue that they shoot themselves in the foot by playing the system and admitted that they smoke - this can work with highly skilled candidates willing to subordinate themselves to the addiction of smoking, but to candidates who come across and rudely stubborn, this does not work to as good effect as it could.
Response to question
This is a Writing to Explain task. As such, the candidate does well to attempt to explain their addiction to smoking, but very little appears to be done to actually explain why. I don't think the word nicotine has been used at all. Because of this, it is hard to grade the response much higher the a high D/low C grade because for the most part, this answer is simply very ignorant and doesn't explain anything. Sure, there are plenty of rhetorical devices used to make the reader think, but the language and attitude adopted is not the kind that will make the reader want to read on. As this is a key aspect of any "Writing to" task, the candidate's answer scores lowly.
