Travel Writing
Monday 16th of December, 4 pm. I got out of the plane and walked down a glass tunnel, disappointed. During the whole trip, I was imagining that it would just paradise. A bright blue sky, exotic birds, multi-coloured pelicans, coconut trees everywhere and the pulchritudinous sea. I was wrong. The airport was at least ten miles away from any town and more than fifty miles away from the sea. The only thing that was true was the sky’s cyanosis and lividness and it kept my hopes up that I would soon be putting my feet in the Pacific Ocean. I could hear people talking in lots of different languages. In front of me was Asian group talking, with their ever shrinking cameras hanging from their necks, and behind me I could hear a French couple discussing what they were going to do for the rest of the day, their faces hidden under a map.
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Peer Reviews
Here's what a star student thought of this essay
Quality of writing
The Quality of Written Communication is accurate for the majority of the essay. There is no cause for concern with regard to spelling, grammar or punctuation. It is possible this candidate has checked their work for possible errors as very few appear in their final draft. This is a recommend exercise for anyone because if examiners are met with constant errors in QWC, then they will assume little care has been taken in the overall presentation and the candidate will receive a low QWC. It's an easy thing to avoid, so everyone should do it.
Level of analysis
The Level of Analysis isn't scored here, but the Level of Description is. Candidates need to learn to implement a number of descriptive language techniques into their work, ranging from similes and metaphors to personification and varying sentences structures in order to enforce imagery and create different tones to the text. As it stands, this essay goes overboard on the description in the first paragraph, with "pulchritudinous" perhaps being a bit misplaced as an adjective that isn't suited to this type of writing style. The rest of the answer falls rather flat, mentioning things that don't result to anything, such as the encounter with security checks and the walk to the hotel where the candidate "undid" their suitcase. These aren't very eventful and aren't described as if the candidate has any real feeling to them. There's a very stale "I said", "I felt", "I saw" structure to the candidate's sentences so I recommend this as a place to start - vary the sentence lengths and don't always begin with the same standard sentences introduction; if you vary your work, it instantly becomes more interesting.
Response to question
This candidate sets themselves a hard task in this travel writing piece, and to many extents they don't quite capture much of the emotion a true travel piece needs, and nor do they convincingly describe being high. A lot of the discourse is plain and ordinary - this may be deliberate as a result of the monotony of an airport design this is not made obvious. The candidate's tone varies very little, and even when supposedly describing a drug-induced high, the emotions are not conveyed to the reader. The candidate's start is fairly strong, but the creativity fizzles out and isn't helped by their apparent nonchalance and blase "but I was already starting to get high and couldn't be bothered to ask what was really in it". This just sounds like someone who is bored - candidate must shape there language not simply so they convey meaning, but also expression, emotion. Even when high this candidate writes with a restricting inhibition that makes the essay quite uninteresting. I recommend varying the language a bit, and perhaps injecting a little more humour into the last paragraph as right now, the first paragraph feels more invigorated.
