Write a story (true or imaginary) entitled 'The Longest Summer'. Write approximately 400 words.

What this task is testing

This is the narrative option, worth 30 marks: 20 for AO4, which rewards imaginative and controlled storytelling adapted to form and reader, and 10 for AO5, which rewards organisation, vocabulary, sentence variety and technical accuracy. They are marked separately, so an inventive plot in unpunctuated sentences and a flawless but empty piece both lose in different columns. The guide length is about 400 words, which is roughly one scene, not a chronicle. The title must govern the story: the piece has to earn the words The Longest Summer by the end.

Reading the title

The comparative longest is the instruction. It signals endurance and slowness, so a story of continuous incident works against its own title. Longest can mean measured heat that will not break, or it can mean a summer that felt endless because of what was being waited for. Either reading is creditable, and the strongest pieces make the length felt in the pacing rather than announced in the first line.

What earns credit

• A period of extreme weather that tests someone. The pressure may fall on one character, a family or a whole community, and the story is stronger when the heat causes a decision rather than simply providing a backdrop.
• A clear narrative shape. An opening situation, a turning point and a resolution, or a deliberate refusal to resolve. Within 400 words the turning point should arrive at roughly the two thirds mark, so that the consequences have room.
• Atmosphere through selected sensory detail. Two or three precise details outperform a paragraph of continuous description: the tar softening at the kerb, water in the pipe running warm, the particular sound of a fan that has run for six weeks. Selection is the skill being rewarded, not accumulation.
• Character revealed through action and dialogue under pressure. A short exchange in which two people avoid saying the real thing tells the reader more than a paragraph explaining that tempers were short.
• Deliberate handling of time. The title invites a slow accumulation followed by a sudden event. A sequence of short flat sentences covering weeks, then a single long paragraph covering ten minutes, makes the reader feel the shift without any comment from the narrator.
• An ending that reflects on what the summer changed. Reflection can be an image or a small altered detail rather than a statement of the moral. A gesture at the end that echoes something from the opening is the most economical way to close.

Shaping approximately 400 words

Aim for one location, at most three characters and a time span the reader can hold. Open inside the situation rather than with a paragraph of scene setting, since 400 words cannot afford an approach run. Reserve the last fifty words for the ending, and write them before you write the middle if that helps you aim at them.

AO4 (20 marks), for communication and adaptation to purpose, form and audience

• Level 1 (1-4 marks): the response is thin or drifts from the task, with little sense of the chosen mode.
• Level 2 (5-8 marks): the task is addressed in a straightforward way, with some appropriate material and an uneven hold on the mode.
• Level 3 (9-12 marks): the task is clearly addressed, the mode is sustained and the content is developed with some detail.
• Level 4 (13-16 marks): a convincing and well developed response, with material selected for effect and a consistent voice.
• Level 5 (17-20 marks): a compelling and sophisticated response, with original handling of the task and sustained control of effect on the reader.

AO5 (10 marks), for organisation, vocabulary, sentence variety and accuracy

• Level 1 (1-2 marks): little structure, very limited vocabulary and errors that impede meaning.
• Level 2 (3-4 marks): simple sequencing, plain vocabulary and frequent errors, though the meaning is usually clear.
• Level 3 (5-6 marks): a clear structure, some varied vocabulary and sentence forms, with errors that do not obscure meaning.
• Level 4 (7-8 marks): purposeful paragraphing, precise vocabulary and controlled variety of sentence structure, with few errors.
• Level 5 (9-10 marks): assured shaping of the whole piece, ambitious and accurate vocabulary and a wide range of sentence structures used for effect.

Where responses lose marks

The commonest weakness is a diary of the whole holiday, a summary in which the writer reports that we went to the beach and then we visited our cousins and it was very hot. It covers three months and nothing happens in any of them, so AO4 stays low despite the accuracy of the sentences. The second is unrelenting description: four hundred words of sun and dust with no character and no event. The third is an ending grafted on when the words run out, most often a character waking up or a sudden storm that solves everything, which throws away the control the earlier writing has built.

Examination takeaway

Let the title dictate the pacing. A story called The Longest Summer should feel long in its middle and quick at its crisis, and if the reader can sense that shape without being told, the highest AO4 bands are within reach.