Edexcel GCSE English Language Paper 2 Section B: transactional writing overview quiz quiz

56 marks

24 marks

40 marks

96 marks

Imaginative storytelling that invents characters and a full plot simply to entertain the reader

Poetry

Analysis of a text

Real-world non-fiction that argues, persuades, informs, advises or reviews for a reader

The form, the purpose, and the audience

The title, the author's name, and the date the piece was written

Length, font, margins

Three quotations

Letters are not an accepted form for this task and so never appear on the paper

If its register is wrong for the audience (too casual for an authority figure)

If it uses paragraphs

If it is too short to mark

Yours sincerely, with my kindest personal regards

Best wishes

Yours faithfully

Cheers

A review is always far shorter, while a summary has to retell every single event in full detail

A review has no opinion

A summary is more persuasive

A review forms and supports a judgement and reaches a recommendation; a summary only describes

A headline and an engaging opening hook

A formal sign-off such as 'Yours faithfully' placed at the very end

Stage directions

A bibliography

Rhetorical devices are completely banned by the exam board in any kind of persuasive answer

Overloaded devices bury the argument and tip into melodrama, so the reader feels harangued

Examiners cannot count them

They always improve the mark

A formal sign-off and a printed address block set out neatly in the top corner

A headline

Direct address to the audience and a memorable call to action

A bibliography

It adds extra words to the overall word count, and a longer answer is always worth more marks

It adds to the word count

It changes the form

AO6 is a fixed 16 marks awarded only for accurate writing, so checking recovers lost marks

About 5 minutes planning, 50 writing, and 5 proofreading

All the time writing

Ten minutes total

Exactly equal time split between this task and the Section A retrieval questions

The AO6 spelling marks and nothing else, since a plan only fixes accuracy errors

The AO5 organisation marks and a deliberate, finished ending

The reading marks

The synthesis question