The final hour
The night was dark; I could barely see shadows moving through the trees. I chose a thick thorny bush, to entwine, in the pursuit to escape. It was a tryst between faith and me, who would survive. The thorny bush, the dried leaves and the entire battlefield was in the clutches of fire. This was a scene from hell. The relentless flames had ended not only peace and tranquility, but also the lives of many. It had changed the destiny of the generations to come. They would have had to live with the history of the time, where mankind had committed the most heinous crime. I shut my eyes, to detach myself from the massacre. I could not reach out to them, neither could they to me. Animals, we all were, savage and without ethics. Yet a tear rolled down, for my friends, but in joy, for they were free now, free from this hell.
There was rampant and piercing gunfire opened by the enemy; there was a forceful flow of lethal bullets. The gunpowder smelt fresh out of a factory, and reeked of danger. The bullets were ripping through the air and were difficult to dodge. One bullet brushed past my shoulder sending a shiver down my spine, blood rushing down to my toes. Death was nearer than ever; I knew I would breathe my last. My palms were sweaty despite the cold; I could feel numbness all over. I bit my lip to awaken my senses. Was it just a few hours back that I was in my bunker…
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Peer Reviews
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Quality of writing
The Quality of Written Communication (QWC) is very poor. Comma splice riddles this answer and prevents the candidate scoring any higher than a C/D borderline. "Taking a step forward, I sensed an enemy, before he could gun me down, I slaughtered him down" is simply not acceptable at GCSE level, nor are any grammatical inconsistencies. Spelling-wise, this candidate does make a good effort any the majority of their answer is spelt with relative ease, even with the tricky vocabulary, but the punctuation is extremely poor with comma splice, a misuse of full stops, semi-colons and apostrophes. This must be addressed if the candidate is to succeed in written tasks because if they cannot express their answer clearly and adhere to the standards of English writing, then regardless of the quality of their answer, the examiner will lower the marks because of the poor QWC.
Level of analysis
The Level of Description here is good, though it often bogs down the narrative and by the end examiners are left wondering what has actually happened during this piece of writing - has anything developed? Also, the ineffectual use of some adjectives makes for ambiguous descriptions where the image in the readers' heads is hard to shape and piece together (e.g. phrases like "Now, while nearing him towards death, I too sensed death") and the result is quite a confusing piece of writing from a candidate who clearly knows a lot of words but fails to construct them into a good piece of description. The use of short vs. long sentences is good, and shows that the candidate knows how to create some tension in writing. The candidate did quite miss a trick when they placed lots of long clauses in one sentence though, separated by commas. Not only is it grammatically incorrect, it could've served better purpose if separated by full stops, resembling the rhythm of a beating heart. This is the kind of description that GCSE candidates must write into their answers if they are to achieve high grades - emotive language that is both coherent and effective and conjuring up and image of genuine threat. It's all fine enough if the candidate wishes to describe first-hand what is going on around them, but the best writing to stir up the readers' emotions is writing that talks about what the protagonist is feeling on the inside - how their innards feel; how fast their heart is beating; the sweat oozing for their pores and dripping down their temples, etc., etc. This attention to detail is what examiners love to see, and all candidate should try and integrate some of it into their answer, rather than just trying to shock the reader by describing an open battlefield because, like most open battlefields - it becomes impossible to document everything hat goes on and the writing just doesn't live up to the real experience.
Response to question
This is an essay response to a Writing to Describe task, most probably orientated around being caught in the Second World War due to the presence of the Nazi Party. The candidates ability to describe is well-explored through this answer, though a lot of the time their answer can prove clunky with odd bits of dialogue having their flow disrupted by a bad choice of adjective (e.g. - "I thrived forward"). Whilst it is very important to show an adeptness with the English language in Writing to Describe tasks with a variety of lexes, candidate must be aware of the full definition and gravity of the words they use. Words like "pounding" and "piercing" are not a very conventional synonymous pair of adjectives, not least for describing the voice of an Army general ("pounding" might describe the typical voice, but "piercing", not so much).
