These answers are extracts from my latest guide, which features 29 exam answers to 10 past exam questions, all at different grades, all with my comments.
Because this is a Mr Salles guide, 15 of them are at grade 9!
13-15 Marks: Grade 5: What do you need?
Content
Generally clear
Tone, style and register are generally matched to purpose and audience
Vocabulary clearly chosen for effect and appropriate use of linguistic devices
Organisation
Usually effective use of structural features
Engaging, with a range of connected ideas
Usually coherent paragraphs with range of connectives
Content comes down to this mnemonic: MAD FATHERS CROCH. You’ll understand this as you read.
Response 1
Children’s lives are damaged by our addiction. Poor children are working in dreadful conditions because we are addicted to buying cheap clothes. As people, we must enable children to have a childhood. Our moral duty is to stop exploiting children, even if we end up paying for more expensive brands.
Some believe that such children make money to support their families. But how can they support their families when the awful conditions of work kill them?
Could you imagine being made to work for hardly any pay, being robbed of your human rights? Us as shoppers must think harder before buying these clothes sewn with the tiny hands of sick, exploited children and buy from the dozens of brands who don’t exploit children. These brands are easy to find so you have no reason to keep buying clothes stolen from these children’s arms.
Some might say they these brands are too expensive, even if they are morally better. However, this excuse is not valid, because there are alternatives. You can buy second hand clothes or just use the clothes you own now, and stop buying more to feed your addiction.
Published by Mr Washington
13 marks
194 words
Original 226 words
My Comments
I mark each answer using this checklist.
Content
Metaphor – feed your addiction, stolen from children’s arms
Anecdote - no
Direct Address – yes, uses ‘you’ and ‘we’
Facts – yes, about child workers and shops
Alliteration – not really, it occurs by accident, like the consonance of the first line
Triplets (Pattern of Three) – no, apart from the last sentence
Hyperbole - no
Emotive Language yes, ‘damaged, addiction, dreadful’ in the opening line. There is a lot of it.
Rhetorical Question - 1
Statistics – no
Contrasting pairs – exploiting v expensive, work v robbed, brands v alternative.
Repetition – ‘children’, ‘being’. But there isn’t a sense that this is really deliberate
Opinion – yes, about the morality, but not much else
Creating an Enemy – the dozens of brands who exploit children, that they steal from children
Humour - no
So there are 6 methods used well.
Organisation
Anecdote at the beginning - no
Counter argument – ‘some might say’ in the final paragraph
Call to action at the end – yes
Circular structure– no
Sentences repeating the same pattern – no
Paragraphs repeating the same pattern – no
Sentences starting with a different word – yes
A long, show off sentence - 1
3 of these methods are used well.
This checklist is everything you need. I use it to show how one answer is better than another. Let’s jump to Grade 7 to see what I mean.
Response 7
Planes. Trains. Automobiles. More emissions, more pollutants, more harmful particles attacking the lungs of the innocent. And it is all your fault. This planet needs you. Cases of asthma have tripled in the last decade. How?
It’s caused by the self-centred, money grabbing, thoughtless travellers endlessly criss-crossing our suffering planet. And for what? Social media posts which could easily have been photographed in their back yards.
A Cambridge study measuring CO2 exposure in the lungs of commuters found a staggering 5% increase in London, home to myriad airports than Birmingham with just one. How high must this exposure be before we demand a change? How many lives cut short before you prevent the destruction of our suffering planet?
The planet needs us. Will you stand by as it agonisingly bleeds to death, or will you ask for change?
Yes, people have desires. Some might argue that those with money to spare should be allowed their expensive holidays, but do you want a future where your grandchild walking out doors will need a mask to prevent suffocation or death because of what you do today?
In conclusion, I beg you to stop flying on long trips, or to plan any such journeys for our children’s sake. The planet needs you.
15 marks
184 words
Original 242 words
My Comments
Content
Metaphor – the bleeding, dying planet. The planet has needs.
Anecdote – the picture of the grandchild at the end
Direct Address – lots of your, you. Our.
Facts – pollutants affect lungs, but not many facts. Notice it is a short answer because of this.
Alliteration – pollutants, particles – but this is not a common method
Triplets (Pattern of Three) – Lots of it. Just look at the first line alone. Very impressive.
Hyperbole – yes, the death of the grandchild, and the planet
Emotive Language – you should spot this everywhere, in every sentence. Even facts come with emotive adjectives to describe them. Flooding your writing with emotive language is a grade 7 method – as long as it is appropriate.
Rhetorical Question – yes, there are at least 3 of these. This also seems to be a feature of grade 7.
Statistics – there are 2 and they are both believable.
Contrasting pairs – there are a lot of these, contrasting standing by and the resulting death of the planet
Repetition – this is another method grade 7 writers flood their writing with. More, how, will, you etc.
Opinion – yes, there are many opinions about how we are ruining the planet
Creating an Enemy – which means that we are presented convincingly as the enemy
Humour - no
13 of the 15 methods are done well. Several of them appear frequently. Flooding each sentence with several methods is the key here, almost cramming in as many as you can.
Organisation
Anecdote at the beginning – the travellers endlessly criss-crossing the planet just about qualifies.
Counter argument – a brief ‘some might argue’
Call to action at the end – definitely
Circular structure– yes, it goes straight back to the ‘planes’ of the first sentence, and the anecdote. The planet needs you is repeated.
Sentences repeating the same pattern – This is a strong feature, which happens automatically once you start repeating words – you find that they naturally (or deliberately) get repeated in 3s. This leads to sentences having 3 parts.
Paragraphs repeating the same pattern – there is a sense of this with the question and answer format the writer repeats. The first 3 1-word sentences. The repetition of the planet needs you at the beginning and end (which is also circular structure).
Sentences starting with a different word – this is interesting, as you can see the writer deliberately using the same word, but this repetition is effective. If the repetition was ‘the’ and ‘this’ etc, it wouldn’t be for an effect.
A long, show off sentence – 42 words in the sentence beginning ‘Some might’
So, all of these methods are used!
This is the first example of a proper show off sentence (previous examples just had to beat 24 words – 35+ or 40+ are much more ambitious targets.
Other features of organisation are:
Increased number of sentences with deliberately different lengths.
Looking for future consequences.
This year 55% of my viewers gained a grade 8 or 9. 21% on top of this gained a grade 7. I’d love even more students to do well. Please share this Substack and let’s help more students get great grades.
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Other Grade 9 Guides by Mr Salles
Language
The Mr Salles Guide to 100% at AQA GCSE English Language
The Mr Salles Guide to Awesome Story Writing
The Mr Salles Quick Guide to Awesome Description
The Mr Salles Ultimate Guide to Description
The Mr Salles Quick Guide to Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling
The Mr Salles Ultimate Guide to Persuasive Writing
The Mr Salles Guide to 100% in AQA GCSE English Language Paper 1 Q 2
The Mr Salles Guide to 100% in AQA GCSE English Language Paper 1 Q 3
The Mr Salles Guide to 100% in AQA GCSE English Language Paper 1 Q 4
The Mr Salles Guide to 100% in AQA GCSE English Language Paper 1 Q 5
The Mr Salles Guide to 100% in AQA GCSE English Language Paper 2 Q 2
The Mr Salles Guide to 100% in AQA GCSE English Language Paper 2 Q 3
The Mr Salles Guide to 100% in AQA GCSE English Language Paper 2 Q 4
Literature
The Mr Salles Guide to GCSE English Literature
Study Guide Mr Salles Analyses Jekyll and Hyde
The Mr Salles Ultimate Guide to Macbeth
The Mr Salles Guide to An Inspector Calls
The Mr Salles Ultimate Guide to A Christmas Carol
The Mr Salles Ultimate Guide to Romeo and Juliet
Mr Salles Power and Conflict Top Grade Essay Guide (AQA Anthology): 11 Grade 9 Exam Essays!
Books on Teaching
The Full English: How to be a brilliant English teacher
The Slightly Awesome Teacher: Using Edu-research to get brilliant results
The Unofficial Ofsted Survival Guide
Differentiate Your School: where every student learns more
Grade 9: Response 14
Dear Minister for Transport,
This letter is to inform you why we must ban cars from each town and city centre, because we should permit pedestrians and cyclists the freedom to travel safely. When you have digested this letter, I know you will tend towards this view of the argument and agree with me.
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