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GCSE: Writing to Inform, Explain and Describe

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Writing to inform

  1. 1 Give factual information and use a formal style.
  2. 2 Use straightforward language to convey essential information. Your audience could be anyone.
  3. 3 Use the present tense, write in short clear sentences, address the reader as 'you'. Use connectives and technical terms.
  4. 4 Break up your writing with diagrams, illustrations, images and subheadings.
  5. 5 You can give more information (eg: why and what you find interesting) and the genre could ask you to give instructions, write recipes, give directions or write manuals.

Writing to explain

  1. 1 Establish who you are writing to and why you are writing.
  2. 2 Genre – Explaining data, giving a speech or explaining how a mechanism works.
  3. 3 Purpose – To be clear, to show meaning and to make something clearer.
  4. 4 Write in the third person, use either past or present tenses, use clear factual language.
  5. 5 Give a balanced view and use connectives of comparison (whereas, though, while, unless, however).

Writing to describe

  1. 1 Your thoughts and feelings are important.
  2. 2 Genre – Writing a story, describe a scene, writing a diary entry.
  3. 3 Purpose is to build an image in the reader's mind.
  4. 4 Use adjectives and adverbs, similes, metaphors and all five senses ( touch, smell, taste, sight, sound).

  • Marked by Teachers essays 61
  • Peer Reviewed essays 37

  1. Retelling Little Red Riding Hood with a Malaysian twist

    • Word count: 1338

  2. The horrors of the aged house still hound me

    • Word count: 507

  3. English short story-The place was lifeless and quiet; you couldnt hear a sound until a man emerged from the dark and made his way to the large rocks beneath the waterfall.

    • Word count: 1094

  4. Write a story about a person who lost all his possession while helping other people.

    • Word count: 658

  5. Infected - creative writing. Even the dim-witted early men predicted that human intemperance would eventually lead to their own extinction

    • Word count: 832

  6. Identity. Tugging my bag onto the shoulder of my ironed blue uniform, I set off towards the crime scene.

    • Word count: 956

  7. The fog grabbed onto the freezing air, the snow slept on the houses

    All I can hear is the snow crunching beneath my feet as I dreadfully walk step by step over and over. I shouldn?t have done that I thought, all these thoughts circled my head, over and over ?why did I do it?? I cried, I felt a chill go down my spine as my voice rasped through the dark, cold and empty night.

    • Word count: 401

  8. Speech about Gaming PC's

    A graphic card has lots of processors that send data to one chip to another. These chips start to heat up, so a cooling fan is attached to these cards, so the chips stay cool and process at super speeds. If a game is played using an old graphics card, then the games starts to lag, and you don?t get smooth game play. This means the graphics card starts to go under pressure and it can?t handle all the data that is sent through the chips.

    • Word count: 654

  9. Learning a Lesson. My irritation reached a fervor as I stood up to challenge him. Being only two years apart, we had competed at almost everything since childhood,

    Being only two years apart, we had competed at almost everything since childhood, be it Yu-Gi-Oh matches in our primary years to playing tennis and basketball matches in our adolescent years. Though he was older, I had a size advantage and possessed the aggressiveness that accompanies a younger sibling?s temperament. ?Why do you care? Not everyone is a math genius like you.? He simply said, ?You can do better.? My brother was considered a math prodigy at our high school.

    • Word count: 652

  10. Story with language analysis. Katie helped Eduardo down the stairs. He was such an old bear that a lot of his stuffing had come out,

    The plush bear [h]had belonged to her father, and before that, to her grandmother as it has been passed down from one generation to the next. [i]Originally, he had been called "Eduardo"? but when her father was little, he found it hard to say ?Edgardo?, so he called his teddy ?Eduardo?[j]. As Katie liked that name and thought the name really suited him considering that he was a cuddly, affectionate and adorable teddy bear[k]. Katie leaned forward and whispered very quietly [l]to the bear, ?Eduardo![m] Where are you going?? Eduardo stopped halfway drowsily to the bedroom door and followed her voice.

    • Word count: 1067

  11. English Language - story of disappointment

    Would you like that?? Robert completely ignored his mother's question and poured cereal and milk into a bowl. ?Robert, please don't ignore me. Ya know, you're not the only one suffering here; I've been depressed too since your father...? Robert's mother uttered but Robert cut in before she could finish her sentence. ?Don?t speak of him.? Robert ordered ?Don't speak of that Degenerate in this house!? Robert punched the table and his mother flinched. ?Robert! Calm down!? his mother plead, tearing up.

    • Word count: 1041

  12. Dear Diary - creative writing set in the Great Depression

    Maybe we shall become millionaires overnight or maybe we shall become a family without a home to go to. As Anne was crying, I went downstairs to tell ma and father. When I was walking down the stairs, I heard ma crying her heart out and even crying more than Anne! I peeped through the hole in the door. I saw father tell ma that the society is becoming more competitive to the job market- so this is why father can?t get a job. I know have realised that there was no chance of father getting a job due to the amount of unemployment that were looking for work.

    • Word count: 1647

  13. A Narrative of when I was particularly nervous

    This is it. This is really happening. The windows shrieks as it recedes into the door. A forceful blast of cold, winter air slams into my drenched face, sending beads of cold sweat that were settling on my water flying into the car seat, and soaking into the warm, depressed fabric. I look ahead and see endless rows of red, piercing flares ahead of our car. Yes! There?s been a pile up. My saviour. I sigh a heavy breath of relief as the sweat dries off my coated palms and shimmering face.

    • Word count: 489

  14. Description of a City - Tokyo

    To the right, I could see the emperor?s home in the middle of a park?s lake, the Imperial Palace. I was enjoying the silence until the driver bombarded me with questions in a language I had merely heard in anime shows I occasionally saw on TV when I was a child. He wouldn?t stop talking until I arrived at my destination, even though I didn?t say a single word in reply.

    • Word count: 462

  15. Narrative writing -Mountain story controlled assesment

    ?It?s completely fine let?s keep going? replied Bryan calmly. I unconvinced trusted him so we carried on. It had not been even 10 minutes; we started to feel the earth tremble as if an earthquake had struck. Suddenly, tons of snow began to flooding down towards us; I bellowed at the top my voice: ?Avalanche, run Bryan? Terrified we scurried like two beetles searching for food, the only difference being was that we were looking for shelter. Regardless of how hard we tried to escape the wrath we were soon caught by the lightning pace of the snow.

    • Word count: 812

  16. Dystopian writing. Imagine a world without emotion. A world where there is no colour.

    You see long ago my community was so happy and joyous; everyone was full of contentment. Towns were so full of passion and were ever so exuberant. But then World War 4 struck, and the Chancellor decided to get rid of colour and emotion because it made people feel different and that?s what caused conflict between one another. Society now is made to avoid conflict, war and hatred. But in all honesty, I?ve never felt this melancholy. I turned on the television, only to see the Chancellor staring right back at me. This evil, cold blooded creature changed everything for us I thought to myself whilst staring into his diabolical eyes.

    • Word count: 642

  17. Social media influences on communications in English.

    The use of the spelling '2Nite' implies a level of informality suggesting that the messages are between two friends. There is also an assumption that the recipient will easily be able to decode the message. Not only do these techniques significantly reduce the number of characters per text, but reflect a very informal use of language which is almost exactly how the conversation would be spoken. Despite the brevity of the message and the abbreviations it uses, the conversation is short, direct, light-hearted and casual - exactly how it would be if the speakers were face-to-face.

    • Word count: 1129

  18. The Hunter. Protecting the townspeople gave him a sense of responsibility he never had before. - Creative Writing

    With the lack of activity going on around him he took a glance at the two objects down at his side. A can of beans that looked like they had been crushed by a car, and the second item, something a lot more deadly than a can of beans. ?Both will come in handy? he muttered to himself. It had been a slow day. How long had he been out there? Five, six hours? It was impossible to tell. He had no way of telling the time except for the sun which was thoroughly concealed by the harsh looking grey clouds.

    • Word count: 1521

  19. English Language GCSE Creative Writing- The Manor - Scary Opening

    My childhood years in which I used to believe such things seemed to be a distant memory, despite in reality only being a few years prior. A lot had changed since then; I had grown up too fast, and the horrific tragedies that had fallen upon me had aged me beyond my years. I had been anxiously awaiting the arrival at the manor since embarking upon the long journey at the first glimmer of morning sun. I had never been to or even seen this manor that my parents had allegedly written to me in their will along with a Bible passage written next to the official agreement; fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

    • Word count: 1092

  20. Creative writing - write about a time you panicked

    The sun was beginning to set now, casting a grey and orange tone over the skline. It signalled that I had to be home now, otherwise my parents would begin to suspect where I was and what I was doing. I ran home and slammed the door on way in, throwing the school bag at the bottom of the stairs and running up to my room without communicating with my parents. These episodes of bullying had gone on for days now and thoughts of suicide had begun to come into my head. It would be much better if I did commit suicide, I would be free from all the pain.

    • Word count: 764
20 essays
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Conclusion analysis

Good conclusions usually refer back to the question or title and address it directly - for example by using key words from the title.
How well do you think these conclusions address the title or question? Answering these questions should help you find out.

  1. Do they use key words from the title or question?
  2. Do they answer the question directly?
  3. Can you work out the question or title just by reading the conclusion?

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Peer reviewed

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