Critical writing (part c): a reflective commentary analysing the language choices made in the part (b) original piece, explaining how they suit genre, audience and purpose.

What this dot point is asking

Unit 2 part (c) is the critical writing task: a reflective commentary in which you analyse the original piece you wrote in part (b). It is the moment where the unit's two halves meet, because you turn the analytical skills from Unit 1 on your own writing. The marks come from precise linguistic analysis of your choices and a clear account of how each serves genre, audience and purpose, not from retelling how you wrote.

The answer

Analyse, do not narrate

Treat your own piece as a text to be analysed with the language levels, quoting it as evidence just as you would quote an unseen source.

Use the language levels and metalanguage

Select the most significant features rather than commenting on everything; a focused analysis of a few telling choices beats a line-by-line crawl.

Link every choice to genre, audience and purpose

Reflect and evaluate

The top band is reflective. As well as justifying what you did, you can acknowledge a choice you considered and rejected, weigh how well a feature worked, and reach a measured judgement on how successfully the piece met the brief. Honest evaluation (noting a place the writing could be sharper) reads as genuine critical awareness rather than self-congratulation.

Structure of a commentary

A clear commentary often opens by restating the brief (the genre, audience, purpose and mode you were writing for), then works through your key choices grouped by effect or by level, and closes with an evaluative judgement. Keep it tightly linked to your own text throughout, so it is evidently a commentary on this piece and no other.

Examples in context

Model commentary extract (on a travel-writing opening). My piece is travel writing for a weekend magazine, intended to engage an educated adult readership, and several of my choices were made to meet that brief. I opened in the present tense ("The bus coughs to a halt") to drop the reader straight into the scene, a convention of literary travel writing that suits a leisure audience reading for pleasure rather than information. To build atmosphere I selected a semantic field of heat and weight ("thick", "white", "pressing"), and personified the heat through a simile ("like a hand") so that the environment feels active and slightly threatening, heightening the reader's sense of place. Structurally, I placed a short sentence ("What I had not expected was the silence") after a longer, accumulating one, using the contrast in sentence length to land the central surprise of the piece with emphasis. I considered opening with a more conventional descriptive overview of the landscape, but rejected it as too static for an opening that needed to hook; the in-the-moment present tense does more to pull the reader in. On reflection, the figurative language is effective but slightly dense, and a plainer sentence early on might let the reader settle before the imagery builds. This extract analyses choices with metalanguage, quotes the writer's own text, ties each choice to genre and audience, and evaluates honestly, which is exactly what part (c) rewards.

Try this

Q1. What is the difference between narrating your writing and analysing it? [2 marks]

• Cue. Narrating retells the process; analysing names a choice, quotes it, and explains its effect for genre, audience and purpose.

Q2. What pattern should each commentary point follow? [2 marks]

• Cue. Choice, evidence (quote your own piece), effect, and the frame (genre, audience, purpose or mode) it serves.

Q3. Write a commentary explaining how the choices in your piece suit your intended genre, audience and purpose. [20 marks]

• What the marker wants. Analysis of your most significant choices with metalanguage, quoting your own piece, each linked to the brief, plus reflective evaluation of how well the piece succeeded.