Letter? Article? Speech? Why Form is (Almost) Irrelevant in GCSE English Language Paper 2 Question 5

If you’re an English teacher – or even a student who has done GCSE English Language in a previous year – you will probably have heard this plaintive cry before: “Question 5 was a letter! Noooo! I hate writing letters!”  There are many permutations and combinations of this phrase. Most of them revolve around aforementioned deliverer of plaintive cry maintaining that they are much, much better at writing articles or speeches (or even leaflets or essays).  But not letters. When it comes to letters they lose whatever literacy they previously possessed and have just written the worst piece of writing ever. Like, literally, ever! In the history of the universe. If only it had been an article! They could write fantastic articles when they were, like, two years old.

That question was so unfair!  I only prepared for writing an article!

I could go on, but I think you get the idea. 

This is where, as a teacher, every fibre of my being resists the temptation of sighing deeply, shrugging my shoulders and rolling my eyes until they pop out of their sockets and splat with satisfying onomatopoeia on the smartboard.  You see, I’ve told them once, twice – times without number – that the form the text takes in the exam does not really matter.  In the classroom, in the corridor, when I root around for a spare pen because Danny has lost his for the millionth time, I have repeated, reiterated and  restated: “You’re not being judged on your ability to write a letter, full stop.  You’re being judged on the skills you use to write one. And those skills don’t change from a letter to a speech to an article. Ever. At least not for [insert name of exam board as appropriate].”

Of course, by Year 11 (and downwards), kids are already jaded beyond their age – thank you social media and technology in general.  They don’t even expect their teachers to tell them the truth (perhaps we spend too much time metaphorically stroking their heads and emphasising that their work really does, absolutely does, honestly does contain moments of sheer brilliance and that their mum was right after all). So I think that I, perhaps, have to carry a certain burden of guilt, because when I should have tossed a piece of work back with the pithy comment “Well, that was sh*t”, I have instead focused (at length, because feedback) on that single correct use of a capital letter at the beginning of their third sentence as the thing that will redeem everything.

Back, I suppose, to my point.  If you take any specification (I use AQA), take a look at Assessment Objective 5 and it very clearly says “Communicate clearly, effectively and imaginatively, selecting and adapting tone, style and register for different forms, purposes and audiences.”  Yes, it does.  So of course there should be an attempt in the exam to make a letter sound like a letter, and an article sound like an article – and so on.

However, look at the skills descriptors (which the markers use to, erm, mark) and form isn’t mentioned at all – only purpose and audience are retained.  And simply being a letter is not a letter’s purpose in any way, shape or form (see what I did there?). Yet so many students see it as the be all and end all. Plus the audience will always, always, always remain a person or persons you need to persuade that your opinion on something fleetingly relevant to your life is the only opinion of any importance, the only one that they should take into consideration.

Not only that, the other skills that the markers are looking for remain the same – whether it’s a letter, article, speech, leaflet or essay – the mark scheme is identical.  There is no additional nuance added for the markers if one year it’s a speech and the next year it’s an article.

Try convincing Amber or Ameen, Andrew or Aisha of that… They’re too polite to actively disagree with you but you can see the disbelief in their eyes. It’s like trying to convince hardened Hitlerjugend that democracy is the way to go.  Nope.  A letter is still a horrible thing to write. The worst thing. The impossible thing. One ends up considering some kind of deprogramming activity with diodes attached to skulls and electric currents and maybe, just maybe, lobotomies. 

Sometimes, I even take the whole thing to its logical limit. I put the mark scheme for Creative Writing (P1Q5) next to the P2Q5 mark scheme and ask learners to play spot the difference.  Apart from the question, they are identical.  Point proven, surely?  The skill always trumps the form, effectively. 

But no.  Every year, the same.  “Question 5 was a letter! Noooo! I hate writing letters!”.

Que sera, sera.

Image Credit - Freepik.com