A travel magazine is running a series of articles called The Hardest Thing I Have Done. Write an article for the series about a time when you had to keep go...

Notes for examiners

This is a transactional writing task worth 45 marks, split 27 for AO4 (communicating and adapting form, tone and register to purpose and audience) and 18 for AO5 (organisation, vocabulary, sentence variety and technical accuracy). The purpose is to interest and engage the readers of a travel magazine by recounting a demanding personal experience and then reflecting on it. The audience is general adult readers who are interested in places and in the people who go to them, so they will accept discomfort and self-criticism but not self-pity. The form is a magazine article: a title, a strong opening, developed paragraphs and a considered close, written in the first person.

What separates a strong script from a weak one is whether the difficulty is dramatised or merely asserted. A candidate who writes that the conditions were terrible has told the reader a conclusion; a candidate who gives the weight of a pack in the ninth hour, or the sound of wet boots being pulled on before dawn, has made the reader feel it. Any experience is creditable, invented or real, and the examiner does not check it for truth. What cannot earn credit is a script that never becomes an article: an untitled piece of continuous narrative with no shaping for a magazine readership is limited on AO4 however fluent it is.

What a strong response does with each bullet

• Where you were and why you were there. Fix a place, a season and a reason inside the opening paragraph, so the reader has a stake before conditions worsen. A concrete reason works harder than an adventure for its own sake: a harvest that had to be brought in, a relative to reach, a permit that expired the next day.
• What made the conditions so hard. Build the difficulty gradually rather than announcing it. One measurable detail per paragraph, cold, hunger, weight, wet, noise, altitude, thirst, lets the reader feel conditions closing in. The strongest scripts also let something small become intolerable, which is truer than a single catastrophe.
• How you and others behaved. At least one other person should be present clearly enough for the reader to care what they do. Behaviour that hindered counts as much as behaviour that helped, and a candidate who admits their own bad temper usually gains rather than loses, because it reads as honest.
• What you understood afterwards. Reflection must grow out of the incident that has just been narrated. A general statement about the human spirit tacked on at the end is the commonest way a competent script fails to reach the top bands. The reflection should be something the writer could only have learned there.
• Any other points you wish to make. This is where the form can be exploited: a title that earns attention, a subheading, a return to the opening image at the close, humour or understatement, and deliberate variation of sentence length so that short sentences fall at the moments of crisis.

Assessment: AO4, 27 marks, purpose, audience, form, tone and register

• Level 1, 1 to 5 marks. Very little sense of why the piece is being written or for whom. The article form is barely visible, the register wanders between diary and school essay, and the material is thin or unfinished.
• Level 2, 6 to 11 marks. Some grasp of the task. The piece is recognisably an account of a hard experience, but the difficulty is stated rather than shown, the ideas repeat, and the voice slips in and out of a magazine register. The move from Level 1 is that a reader can now tell what the article is about.
• Level 3, 12 to 17 marks. Purpose and audience are clearly addressed. The article conventions are used competently, with a title and a shaped opening, the experience is developed with relevant detail, and the register holds for most of the piece. The move from Level 2 is selection: the candidate has chosen which moments to spend words on.
• Level 4, 18 to 22 marks. Consistent and convincing address to an adult readership. The form is handled confidently, the ordeal is built rather than reported, other people are used to carry meaning, and the tone is controlled even at the worst moment. The move from Level 3 is that the reader is being managed: interest is created and sustained deliberately.
• Level 5, 23 to 27 marks. Assured and sustained writing that shapes the reader's response. The article form is exploited, not merely obeyed, the reflection is earned by the narrative, and the register is judged precisely for a reader who has not been there. The move from Level 4 is originality of angle and the confidence to leave things understated.

Assessment: AO5, 18 marks, organisation, paragraphing, vocabulary, sentence variety and technical accuracy

• Level 1, 1 to 3 marks. Little structure and paragraphing that is absent or random. Vocabulary is very limited and errors are frequent enough to obscure meaning.
• Level 2, 4 to 7 marks. Some overall shape and simple paragraphing. Vocabulary and sentence forms are limited, and errors are noticeable, though meaning is usually clear. The move from Level 1 is that paragraph breaks now fall at changes of time or place.
• Level 3, 8 to 11 marks. A clear beginning, middle and end with paragraphs that help the reader. Vocabulary is appropriate, some sentence forms are varied, and errors do not impede understanding. The move from Level 2 is control of tense and consistent first person.
• Level 4, 12 to 15 marks. Well organised and cohesive, with paragraphs used deliberately to slow or quicken the account. Vocabulary is precise, sentence lengths are varied for effect, and spelling, punctuation and grammar are largely secure. The move from Level 3 is that the punctuation is now doing work, particularly in controlling pace.
• Level 5, 16 to 18 marks. Tightly organised and fluent. Paragraphing shapes the experience, vocabulary is ambitious and exact rather than merely long, sentence variety is clearly deliberate, and technical accuracy is high across a demanding piece of writing. The move from Level 4 is sustained accuracy at that level of ambition.

Examination takeaway

Plan the five or six paragraphs before writing, and give each one a single job: the reason for being there, the first warning, the worst hour, the other person, the aftermath. Then check that at least three of those paragraphs contain a physical detail an outsider could not have guessed. On this task the title and the last sentence are worth disproportionate credit, because they are the two places where the examiner sees whether the candidate understood that this is an article and not a diary.