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Instruction
Instruction
Instruction
Question 1 Report
In lines 1 to 8, the writer describes things that the wind did to her family's house. Identify one of them.
This is an AO1 retrieval question worth 1 mark. It asks for one piece of information that is already stated on the page, inside a stated line window. No comment on the writer's craft is required and none is credited. The whole task is to locate, select and report accurately.
Any of these in the candidate's own words is fully creditable. A candidate who writes that the wind loosened the roofing and made it tick has retrieved the same detail as one who copies the phrase, and both score.
Lines 1 to 8 are organised for you. The writer announces in advance that the wind "did four things to our house without fail" and then gives those four things in four consecutive sentences, each beginning with the pronoun "It". Once you notice that signpost, the answer is simply the first of the four sentences you reach. The instruction is one of them, so a single effect, clearly expressed, is a complete answer.
The commonest loss is answering from outside the window. The father's nickname for the wind, the tenant "because it paid nothing and complained constantly", is memorable and sits only one line further on, but it lies at lines 9 to 10 and is not something the wind did to the house, so it earns nothing here. The second loss is vagueness: an answer such as the wind damaged the house names no detail and could have been written without reading the passage. The third is over-answering. Listing all four effects wastes time you need for the ten-mark and thirty-mark tasks later in the paper, and if one of the four is wrong an examiner cannot ignore it to reward the others.
When a stem says "Identify one", write one short sentence and move on. A lifted phrase is safe, a precise paraphrase is equally safe, and anything from beyond the stated lines is worth nothing however accurate it is about the passage as a whole.
Answer Details
This is an AO1 retrieval question worth 1 mark. It asks for one piece of information that is already stated on the page, inside a stated line window. No comment on the writer's craft is required and none is credited. The whole task is to locate, select and report accurately.
Any of these in the candidate's own words is fully creditable. A candidate who writes that the wind loosened the roofing and made it tick has retrieved the same detail as one who copies the phrase, and both score.
Lines 1 to 8 are organised for you. The writer announces in advance that the wind "did four things to our house without fail" and then gives those four things in four consecutive sentences, each beginning with the pronoun "It". Once you notice that signpost, the answer is simply the first of the four sentences you reach. The instruction is one of them, so a single effect, clearly expressed, is a complete answer.
The commonest loss is answering from outside the window. The father's nickname for the wind, the tenant "because it paid nothing and complained constantly", is memorable and sits only one line further on, but it lies at lines 9 to 10 and is not something the wind did to the house, so it earns nothing here. The second loss is vagueness: an answer such as the wind damaged the house names no detail and could have been written without reading the passage. The third is over-answering. Listing all four effects wastes time you need for the ten-mark and thirty-mark tasks later in the paper, and if one of the four is wrong an examiner cannot ignore it to reward the others.
When a stem says "Identify one", write one short sentence and move on. A lifted phrase is safe, a precise paraphrase is equally safe, and anything from beyond the stated lines is worth nothing however accurate it is about the passage as a whole.
Question 2 Report
In the section 'Reading the sky', the writer describes signs that a storm was on its way. State one of them.
An AO1 retrieval question worth 1 mark, scoped to a named section rather than to numbered lines. The skill is the same as for a line-window question: find the part of the text the stem points to, then take one clearly stated detail out of it.
Any one of these, in the candidate's own words, takes the mark. A candidate who writes that the radio buzzed with static has retrieved the same sign as one who quotes it.
The section opens by telling you what it contains: "There were signs, and every child in Villanueva could read them." A sentence like that is an instruction to the reader as much as a statement, and the details that follow it are the answer bank. Notice also that the signs are spread across the senses, sight in the light and the shadows, sound in the radio, smell in the wet stone, and behaviour in the goats. Picking any one of those strands gives you a clean, separate answer.
The most frequent error is choosing what happened after the signs rather than the signs themselves. The town packing itself away in ten minutes, the washing coming off the line and the shutters being wedged, is the response to the warning, not a warning that a storm was coming, so it does not answer the question asked. A second error is answering from Text One's opening instead, where the shutters rattle and the roof iron ticks. That material describes the wind on an ordinary afternoon and lies outside the named section. A third is writing a whole sentence of context and never naming a sign at all: the writer says that everybody knew what was coming reports the idea of the section without giving the detail the mark is for.
When the stem names a section rather than lines, find the heading first and read only underneath it. Everything you need for one mark will be there, and anything you remember from elsewhere in the passage is a distraction.
Answer Details
An AO1 retrieval question worth 1 mark, scoped to a named section rather than to numbered lines. The skill is the same as for a line-window question: find the part of the text the stem points to, then take one clearly stated detail out of it.
Any one of these, in the candidate's own words, takes the mark. A candidate who writes that the radio buzzed with static has retrieved the same sign as one who quotes it.
The section opens by telling you what it contains: "There were signs, and every child in Villanueva could read them." A sentence like that is an instruction to the reader as much as a statement, and the details that follow it are the answer bank. Notice also that the signs are spread across the senses, sight in the light and the shadows, sound in the radio, smell in the wet stone, and behaviour in the goats. Picking any one of those strands gives you a clean, separate answer.
The most frequent error is choosing what happened after the signs rather than the signs themselves. The town packing itself away in ten minutes, the washing coming off the line and the shutters being wedged, is the response to the warning, not a warning that a storm was coming, so it does not answer the question asked. A second error is answering from Text One's opening instead, where the shutters rattle and the roof iron ticks. That material describes the wind on an ordinary afternoon and lies outside the named section. A third is writing a whole sentence of context and never naming a sign at all: the writer says that everybody knew what was coming reports the idea of the section without giving the detail the mark is for.
When the stem names a section rather than lines, find the heading first and read only underneath it. Everything you need for one mark will be there, and anything you remember from elsewhere in the passage is a distraction.
Question 3 Report
How does the writer present the wind as part of everyday life in Villanueva? You should support your answer with close reference to the passage, including brief quotations.
This is the ten-mark AO2 task on Text One. It asks how the writer presents the wind as part of everyday life, so the subject of every sentence you write should be the writer and the verb should name a choice she has made. A summary of what the wind did in Villanueva, however accurate, answers a different question. The examiner is looking for named methods, well chosen short quotations, and a clear statement of the effect each method has on a reader.
Work through the extract in order rather than hunting for scattered devices. The piece has a shape: the wind is domesticated in the opening, then made practical, then read as a set of signs, then met with organised routine, and finally redefined at the end. Tracking that shape lets you write about structure as well as language, which is what separates the upper levels from the middle ones. Keep quotations to a few words each and put the effect immediately after the quotation, in the same sentence where you can.
A weak answer retells the extract: the wind damaged the house, the father made a joke, a roof blew off. It quotes long stretches without narrowing to the words that do the work, and it labels devices without saying what they achieve, so a sentence such as this is a simile stands alone with nothing after it. The most common ceiling on this question is treating the wind as the subject rather than the writing about the wind. A stronger answer keeps asking why she chose a clock, a tenant, a page, a pillar, and what each choice makes the reader feel about a family that lives with a wind every afternoon.
Answer Details
This is the ten-mark AO2 task on Text One. It asks how the writer presents the wind as part of everyday life, so the subject of every sentence you write should be the writer and the verb should name a choice she has made. A summary of what the wind did in Villanueva, however accurate, answers a different question. The examiner is looking for named methods, well chosen short quotations, and a clear statement of the effect each method has on a reader.
Work through the extract in order rather than hunting for scattered devices. The piece has a shape: the wind is domesticated in the opening, then made practical, then read as a set of signs, then met with organised routine, and finally redefined at the end. Tracking that shape lets you write about structure as well as language, which is what separates the upper levels from the middle ones. Keep quotations to a few words each and put the effect immediately after the quotation, in the same sentence where you can.
A weak answer retells the extract: the wind damaged the house, the father made a joke, a roof blew off. It quotes long stretches without narrowing to the words that do the work, and it labels devices without saying what they achieve, so a sentence such as this is a simile stands alone with nothing after it. The most common ceiling on this question is treating the wind as the subject rather than the writing about the wind. A stronger answer keeps asking why she chose a clock, a tenant, a page, a pillar, and what each choice makes the reader feel about a family that lives with a wind every afternoon.
Question 4 Report
How does the writer present the city's response to rising heat? You should support your answer with close reference to the passage, including brief quotations.
This is the ten-mark AO2 task on Text Two. It asks how the writer presents the city's response to rising heat, which covers both what Karvane has actually done and the attitude its people take. Every point should name a method, quote briefly, and say what the method does to a reader. A list of the council's measures with no comment on how they are written about will not climb out of the lower levels.
The article is argumentative, so its structure is its main method. It moves from a paradox, to evidence, to a redefinition of the problem, to a fair-minded concession, to the demolition of that concession, to a criticism of local speech, and finally to a remedy that is deliberately unexciting. Following that sequence lets you write about shape rather than collecting devices at random, and it gives you a natural place to comment on the pivots, which are where the writer does most of his work.
A weak answer becomes a summary of the heat problem: it is hot at night, the council has planted trees, more needs doing. It may quote the figures without noticing that the figures are a technique, or it may name features without effects, so that use of statistics sits on the page with nothing after it. The second common weakness is treating the concession paragraph as praise of the council and stopping there, missing that the writer builds it in order to knock it down. To reach the upper levels, comment on the order of the paragraphs, not only on their contents, and show how the plain sentences do the turning.
Answer Details
This is the ten-mark AO2 task on Text Two. It asks how the writer presents the city's response to rising heat, which covers both what Karvane has actually done and the attitude its people take. Every point should name a method, quote briefly, and say what the method does to a reader. A list of the council's measures with no comment on how they are written about will not climb out of the lower levels.
The article is argumentative, so its structure is its main method. It moves from a paradox, to evidence, to a redefinition of the problem, to a fair-minded concession, to the demolition of that concession, to a criticism of local speech, and finally to a remedy that is deliberately unexciting. Following that sequence lets you write about shape rather than collecting devices at random, and it gives you a natural place to comment on the pivots, which are where the writer does most of his work.
A weak answer becomes a summary of the heat problem: it is hot at night, the council has planted trees, more needs doing. It may quote the figures without noticing that the figures are a technique, or it may name features without effects, so that use of statistics sits on the page with nothing after it. The second common weakness is treating the concession paragraph as praise of the council and stopping there, missing that the writer builds it in order to knock it down. To reach the upper levels, comment on the order of the paragraphs, not only on their contents, and show how the plain sentences do the turning.
Question 5 Report
In lines 6 to 11, the writer gives details of the effects of the heat on the city during the summer just gone. State one of these details.
An AO1 retrieval question worth 1 mark. Lines 6 to 11 are the evidence paragraph of the article, the place where the writer stops generalising about Karvane and gives measured facts about a single summer. You are being asked to lift one of those facts accurately.
Any one of these in your own words is worth the mark. Rounding a figure loses nothing, but changing it does: writing that four hundred people were treated is acceptable, writing four thousand is not.
The paragraph is built as a single list sentence with three clauses joined by "and", then a short pair of sentences that turn the facts into the article's thesis. Every clause of that list is a separate detail, so you have several safe choices and need only one. The numbers are the giveaway: where an information text suddenly produces counted quantities, that is almost always the material a one-mark retrieval question is set on.
Candidates lose this mark most often by drifting into the causes of the problem given earlier in the passage. The dark slate roofs, the west-facing terraces and the grid of wide streets are decisions taken in 1912; they explain why the city overheats, but they are not effects of the heat in the summer just gone, and they lie in lines 1 to 5. The night-time heat retention explained further down the article is likewise outside the window. A second loss is copying the entire sentence from "In the summer just gone" to "tolerance", which shows the detail has been located but not selected, and can be read as three answers where one was asked for.
Facts in this paper are usually clustered. When the question gives you a six-line window, expect that window to contain four or five creditable details and choose the one you can state most exactly in a single clause.
Answer Details
An AO1 retrieval question worth 1 mark. Lines 6 to 11 are the evidence paragraph of the article, the place where the writer stops generalising about Karvane and gives measured facts about a single summer. You are being asked to lift one of those facts accurately.
Any one of these in your own words is worth the mark. Rounding a figure loses nothing, but changing it does: writing that four hundred people were treated is acceptable, writing four thousand is not.
The paragraph is built as a single list sentence with three clauses joined by "and", then a short pair of sentences that turn the facts into the article's thesis. Every clause of that list is a separate detail, so you have several safe choices and need only one. The numbers are the giveaway: where an information text suddenly produces counted quantities, that is almost always the material a one-mark retrieval question is set on.
Candidates lose this mark most often by drifting into the causes of the problem given earlier in the passage. The dark slate roofs, the west-facing terraces and the grid of wide streets are decisions taken in 1912; they explain why the city overheats, but they are not effects of the heat in the summer just gone, and they lie in lines 1 to 5. The night-time heat retention explained further down the article is likewise outside the window. A second loss is copying the entire sentence from "In the summer just gone" to "tolerance", which shows the detail has been located but not selected, and can be read as three answers where one was asked for.
Facts in this paper are usually clustered. When the question gives you a six-line window, expect that window to contain four or five creditable details and choose the one you can state most exactly in a single clause.
Question 6 Report
Using lines 30 to 39, identify two measures the council has taken to reduce heat in the city.
An AO1 retrieval question worth 2 marks, one for each of two separate measures. The stem restricts you to lines 30 to 39, the paragraph headed as an account of what has been tried. Two marks means two distinct actions, not one action described twice.
The rewritten building code and the new requirement for cross-ventilation and shading are two sides of the same reform, so the safest pair is drawn from two different sentences of the paragraph. That leaves an examiner in no doubt that two separate measures have been identified.
This paragraph is deliberately built as a list of achievements: four sentences, each opening with a verb of action, "painted", "planted", "opened", "rewritten". Counting the verbs is the fastest reliable way to separate the measures. The numbers attached to each, eleven schools, six thousand trees, nine buildings, are useful evidence but are not themselves the measure, so an answer that says only six thousand has not named an action and cannot be credited.
The most damaging error is answering from the paragraph that follows. Lines 40 onwards are the writer's judgement on these measures, that the paint does nothing for the flats above the eastern shops, that six thousand trees is a start on a deficit of sixty thousand, that the cooling centres close at night when the danger is highest. That material is criticism of the measures and lies outside the stated window, so it earns nothing here however well expressed. A second error is offering the fix the writer recommends at the end of the article, pale roofs, deep eaves, shutters and night ventilation, as though the council had already carried it out. Those are proposals, not measures taken.
For a two-mark retrieval, write two short numbered points rather than a paragraph. Separate points are easier to credit separately, and they force you to check that you really have found two different things.
Answer Details
An AO1 retrieval question worth 2 marks, one for each of two separate measures. The stem restricts you to lines 30 to 39, the paragraph headed as an account of what has been tried. Two marks means two distinct actions, not one action described twice.
The rewritten building code and the new requirement for cross-ventilation and shading are two sides of the same reform, so the safest pair is drawn from two different sentences of the paragraph. That leaves an examiner in no doubt that two separate measures have been identified.
This paragraph is deliberately built as a list of achievements: four sentences, each opening with a verb of action, "painted", "planted", "opened", "rewritten". Counting the verbs is the fastest reliable way to separate the measures. The numbers attached to each, eleven schools, six thousand trees, nine buildings, are useful evidence but are not themselves the measure, so an answer that says only six thousand has not named an action and cannot be credited.
The most damaging error is answering from the paragraph that follows. Lines 40 onwards are the writer's judgement on these measures, that the paint does nothing for the flats above the eastern shops, that six thousand trees is a start on a deficit of sixty thousand, that the cooling centres close at night when the danger is highest. That material is criticism of the measures and lies outside the stated window, so it earns nothing here however well expressed. A second error is offering the fix the writer recommends at the end of the article, pale roofs, deep eaves, shutters and night ventilation, as though the council had already carried it out. Those are proposals, not measures taken.
For a two-mark retrieval, write two short numbered points rather than a paragraph. Separate points are easier to credit separately, and they force you to check that you really have found two different things.
Question 7 Report
Describe a place during a spell of extreme weather. Write approximately 400 words.
This is one of the 30-mark writing tasks and it is descriptive rather than narrative. AO4 carries 20 marks for content and its effect on a reader; AO5 carries 10 marks for organisation, vocabulary, sentence variety and technical accuracy. The two grids are applied independently, so a vivid piece with unreliable punctuation and a plain piece with faultless accuracy end up in different places on each. Approximately 400 words is enough to render one place at one time thoroughly. It is not enough to survey a whole region, and the attempt to do so is what keeps most competent responses in the middle bands.
Two words control the answer. Place means the subject is the location and not the storm; the weather is the condition the place is in. Spell means a stretch of time rather than an instant, which permits, and quietly invites, a piece that changes as the hours pass. Extreme can mean heat, drought, snow, wind, flood or cold, and the choice matters less than the precision with which one of them is rendered. The task does not ask what happened to anyone, so a rescue or an escape is a distraction from the mode being assessed.
These are routes rather than requirements. A response that does none of them and still holds a reader for 400 words is rewarded on the grids below.
A weak response opens with a general announcement such as the weather that week was absolutely terrible and everyone was suffering badly, and then repeats it in different words. It relies on intensifiers rather than on detail, so that things are very hot, extremely cold or incredibly loud without ever being specific. It usually turns into a narrative about a family trapped indoors, at which point the descriptive mode is abandoned. On AO4 that is a straightforward response with an uneven hold on the mode. On AO5 the same piece often sequences its paragraphs by accident, and lists joined with commas replace varied sentence forms.
Choose one place, one kind of extreme weather and a span of a few hours. Spend the planning minute deciding the order in which the reader will be moved through the space, and make at least half the detail non-visual. Replace every intensifier with a precise noun or verb and the AO4 mark rises without another idea being added.
Answer Details
This is one of the 30-mark writing tasks and it is descriptive rather than narrative. AO4 carries 20 marks for content and its effect on a reader; AO5 carries 10 marks for organisation, vocabulary, sentence variety and technical accuracy. The two grids are applied independently, so a vivid piece with unreliable punctuation and a plain piece with faultless accuracy end up in different places on each. Approximately 400 words is enough to render one place at one time thoroughly. It is not enough to survey a whole region, and the attempt to do so is what keeps most competent responses in the middle bands.
Two words control the answer. Place means the subject is the location and not the storm; the weather is the condition the place is in. Spell means a stretch of time rather than an instant, which permits, and quietly invites, a piece that changes as the hours pass. Extreme can mean heat, drought, snow, wind, flood or cold, and the choice matters less than the precision with which one of them is rendered. The task does not ask what happened to anyone, so a rescue or an escape is a distraction from the mode being assessed.
These are routes rather than requirements. A response that does none of them and still holds a reader for 400 words is rewarded on the grids below.
A weak response opens with a general announcement such as the weather that week was absolutely terrible and everyone was suffering badly, and then repeats it in different words. It relies on intensifiers rather than on detail, so that things are very hot, extremely cold or incredibly loud without ever being specific. It usually turns into a narrative about a family trapped indoors, at which point the descriptive mode is abandoned. On AO4 that is a straightforward response with an uneven hold on the mode. On AO5 the same piece often sequences its paragraphs by accident, and lists joined with commas replace varied sentence forms.
Choose one place, one kind of extreme weather and a span of a few hours. Spend the planning minute deciding the order in which the reader will be moved through the space, and make at least half the detail non-visual. Replace every intensifier with a precise noun or verb and the AO4 mark rises without another idea being added.
Question 8 Report
Compare how the writers of Text One and Text Two present their ideas and perspectives about living in a place with a demanding climate. Support your answer with examples from both texts.
This is the AO3 task, worth 15 marks. It asks you to compare ideas and perspectives and the means by which they are conveyed. Two accurate summaries placed side by side, however detailed, cannot reach the upper levels, because nothing in them is comparative. The unit of credit here is the linked point: one idea, both texts, and a statement of how they stand in relation to each other.
The two texts are deliberately mismatched in kind, which is what makes the comparison rich. Text One is a first-person memoir of a childhood in Villanueva, written by an insider who has since left. Text Two is analytical journalism about Karvane, written by an observer who quotes research, counts admissions and criticises a council. That difference of form drives almost every difference of perspective, so an answer that names it early has a frame for everything that follows.
Work through shared topics, not through texts. Choose four or five areas where both writers say something, for example the climate as an agent, adaptation, local pride, the use of detail, danger, and the direction of the ending. For each, state the shared ground, then the divergence, then support both halves from the text. Useful connectives are whereas, by contrast, similarly, where the first writer does X, the second. If a paragraph of your answer contains evidence from only one text, it is a summary paragraph and should be rewritten. References must be drawn in balanced measure from both texts, and a response that neglects one of them cannot reach the upper levels.
The commonest weak answer writes half a page on Villanueva and then half a page on Karvane, joined by a sentence saying they are both about difficult weather. Everything in it may be accurate and it will still sit in the lowest levels, because the comparison has not been made. The second common failure is unbalanced coverage, usually because the memoir is easier to quote, leaving Text Two represented by a single statistic. A third is comparing subject matter only, noting that one place has wind and the other has heat, without touching the far more interesting disagreement about whether adapting to a climate is a skill or an excuse.
The highest marks go to answers that compare method as well as opinion. When both writers do the same thing, such as rejecting a comfortable word or supplying exact detail, say so and then show what each one gains by it. A comparison of two techniques used for opposite purposes is worth more than a list of two opinions that happen to differ.
Answer Details
This is the AO3 task, worth 15 marks. It asks you to compare ideas and perspectives and the means by which they are conveyed. Two accurate summaries placed side by side, however detailed, cannot reach the upper levels, because nothing in them is comparative. The unit of credit here is the linked point: one idea, both texts, and a statement of how they stand in relation to each other.
The two texts are deliberately mismatched in kind, which is what makes the comparison rich. Text One is a first-person memoir of a childhood in Villanueva, written by an insider who has since left. Text Two is analytical journalism about Karvane, written by an observer who quotes research, counts admissions and criticises a council. That difference of form drives almost every difference of perspective, so an answer that names it early has a frame for everything that follows.
Work through shared topics, not through texts. Choose four or five areas where both writers say something, for example the climate as an agent, adaptation, local pride, the use of detail, danger, and the direction of the ending. For each, state the shared ground, then the divergence, then support both halves from the text. Useful connectives are whereas, by contrast, similarly, where the first writer does X, the second. If a paragraph of your answer contains evidence from only one text, it is a summary paragraph and should be rewritten. References must be drawn in balanced measure from both texts, and a response that neglects one of them cannot reach the upper levels.
The commonest weak answer writes half a page on Villanueva and then half a page on Karvane, joined by a sentence saying they are both about difficult weather. Everything in it may be accurate and it will still sit in the lowest levels, because the comparison has not been made. The second common failure is unbalanced coverage, usually because the memoir is easier to quote, leaving Text Two represented by a single statistic. A third is comparing subject matter only, noting that one place has wind and the other has heat, without touching the far more interesting disagreement about whether adapting to a climate is a skill or an excuse.
The highest marks go to answers that compare method as well as opinion. When both writers do the same thing, such as rejecting a comfortable word or supplying exact detail, say so and then show what each one gains by it. A comparison of two techniques used for opposite purposes is worth more than a list of two opinions that happen to differ.
Question 9 Report
Write a story (true or imaginary) entitled 'The Longest Summer'. Write approximately 400 words.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Answer Details
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Would you like to proceed with this action?