Write a story with the title: 'The Return'.

This is a Section B narrative task worth 40 marks, assessed on content and organisation together with vocabulary, sentence structure and technical accuracy (W1 to W4). The title is given and the piece must earn it.

What the task demands

'The Return' requires two states and a distance between them: something or someone that was away, and the moment of coming back. The story is not the journey, it is the encounter with what has changed in the interval. That is where every good version of this title concentrates, and a candidate who spends two pages travelling and one paragraph arriving has inverted the proportions.

Reaching Band 5 (33 to 40)

1. Restrict the scope. Forty marks does not mean a long plot. One returner, one place, one afternoon is enough, and the tight frame is what allows the ambitious vocabulary and controlled cohesion the top band asks for. Stories that span years almost always thin out into summary.
2. Let the change be specific and small. A rebuilt fence, a different name over a shop, a room repainted. Concrete alteration carries more feeling than a declared emotion, and it gives the ending something to land on.
3. Withhold, then release. Reveal why the character left late rather than early. Suspending that information is a structural choice, and structural choices are what 'cohesive and controlled throughout' rewards.
4. Vary sentences for effect, not for display. A short sentence at the threshold moment does more than three complex ones. Deliberate is the operative word in the band descriptor.
5. End on the image, not the moral. 'She understood that you can never really go home' is a closing that explains the story you have just told and reduces it. A final concrete detail, chosen so the reader draws the conclusion, is worth several marks.

What holds a piece in Band 3 (17 to 24)

The recognisable failures are an over-plotted opening in which several characters are introduced before anything happens; a twist ending, particularly the dream or the ghost, which replaces development with a reveal; unmarked or wrongly marked dialogue, which damages both organisation and accuracy; and the return itself being announced rather than dramatised.

Technical accuracy

Narrative writing loses accuracy marks in two predictable places: tense, which must stay consistent once chosen, and dialogue punctuation. If you use speech, punctuate a short exchange correctly rather than attempting a long one loosely.