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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 fair, but their are some instance were Standard English rules of grammar, spelling and punctuation are disregarded, such as "That's Half of the UK's teenage population!." The use of two punctuation points at the end of the sentence and the unnecessary capital letter "H" in the word "Half" will lower the candidate QWC mark if it is consistent enough to disrupt the flow of how the essay reads. Candidates must take care when writing, checking for grammar and typo errors like these and ensuring they do not filter into the final draft of the coursework.
Level of analysis
The Level of Analysis is fair but not perfect. Where it is good, the candidate utilises a variety of argumentative techniques as aforementioned in "Response to the Question", but on the other hand there is often too much of an emotive connection (e.g. "this disgusting habit" rather than something like "the unattractive habit") with the topic of smoking, meaning a lot fo what the writer has to say is heavily biased. Bias is something which is expected to feature, as all teenager magazines have opinions, as do teenagers, but that latter fact needs to be appreciated. Teenagers sometimes choose to smoke completely aware of the dangers of the addiction, and thus simply ranting your side of the argument whilst degrading the appearance and lifestyle of those that will read the article is not a good way to go. At the very least, candidates must consider a secondary point of view, such as acknowledging the addiction of smoking or the reasons why people turn to smoking in the first place, and then returning back to their own argument to try and rationally downplay the opposing view. Sensitivity is required, even in articles aimed at teenagers. Smoking addiction after all, is a sensitive subject for some.
Response to question
This essay is a Writing to Argue task, and whilst some elements of the essay are salvageable enough to be passed off as good criticism for smoking, others comes across as a pretty offensive rant, which is never a good way to go if you're looking to change opinions. There is a good use of some arguing techniques, like exaggeration, rhetorical questions, repetition, etc., but frequently the argument just capsizes into a personal attack on smoking. Some instances however are evidence of a good understanding of the question; the question clearly states the audience are teenagers and the article will be published in a teenager-oriented magazine and so some cruder, contemporary humour is allowed ("c'mon, if you look like Shrek, you chances of finding someone have just fallen (sic))", but again the offensive nature of the article may simply lead readers to ignore it rather than feel swayed into conforming with what the writer has to say. I would recommend a little more restraint should be exercised even considering the demographic of this essay, coercing readers with more universal humour not at the expense of the readers themselves before providing the more hard-hitting facts about the dangers of smoking.
