GCSE · English Language · AQA · Spec 8700
Producing clear and coherent writing for purpose and audience
Send the same message to your best friend and to a manager offering you a job, and one of them will be very confused. Good writing changes with its reader.
Start with the reader
Who are you writing to?
Pick a writing situation, then choose the column it belongs in. Commit first, then read why. When you have sorted all six, switch the rule and sort them again.
How formal should the writing be? Look at who is being addressed and your relationship with them.
Still to sort
Formal (0)
For people the writer does not know.
Where the line is: The test is whether you know them. A stranger calls for formal, and so does a reader whose position gives them standing, such as a councillor or a manager.
Conversational (0)
For familiar people.
Where the line is: Familiar is not the same as close. People you know, like your classmates, are familiar. Close family and your best friends are closer still.
Intimate (0)
For close family and friends.
Where the line is: Keep this for the people closest to you. Knowing someone a little is not enough.
Notice what happened when you switched. The two formal pieces split apart: one argues, one gives information. The two intimate ones split too. Who you are writing to and why you are writing are two different decisions, and you have to make both.
AQA examiners describe weaker viewpoint responses as too informal for the task and as failing to engage with the concerns of the audience it names, while stronger ones adopt a suitable tone and style for that audience and purpose. They also criticise words forced into sentences where they ignore the context, meaning or tone.
Choose the form
The shape of a formal letter
Here is the start of a stronger version of the library letter. Every highlighted part is a convention of the form.
Tap each highlighted part to see the convention it follows.
Reading “14 Orchard Row Millbrook”
What to notice
The first thing a formal letter sets out is the sender’s address: the writer’s own.
English Lit · Paragraph craft
Build a paragraph that joins up
Each slot is a sentence with a job. Tap a slot to see its job, then fill it to see the sentence that does it. Or switch to the worked example to see the whole paragraph.
The library letter, paragraph 2. Paragraph 1 opened with the writer’s memory of reading in the library’s beanbag corner.
Tap a slot to fill or empty it.
Selected slot
Tap a slot above
AQA GCSE English Language: every writing task specifies an audience, a purpose and a form, and the Paper 1 scenario is set up to differ from the Paper 2 one. Find all three before you plan.
AO5 rewards clear, effective and imaginative communication, with tone, style and register chosen and adapted to the form, purpose and audience, and organisation that uses structural and grammatical features to make the text coherent and cohesive.
Examiners treat linking clearly expressed points into a cohesive whole, through control of connected paragraphs, as central to reaching Level 3 in the writing task. At the top level of the content and organisation descriptors, tone, style and register assuredly suit the purpose and audience, structural features are varied and inventive, and paragraphs are fluently linked with smoothly integrated discourse markers.
WHAT YOU'VE LEARNED
A quick recap of today's lesson.
No register is right in general. The person you are writing to decides it.
What you need to know
- Writing has a purpose: to describe, narrate, explain, instruct, give and respond to information, or argue.
- Register is how formal the language is. Tone is the mood or attitude the writing conveys.
- How formal to be depends on the relationship: formal for people you don’t know, conversational for familiar people, intimate for close family and friends. The standing of the person you address signals the level of formality.
- Choose vocabulary, grammar, form and structure to suit the audience, purpose and context. A word forced in where it ignores the meaning or tone weakens the writing.
- Each form has conventions. A formal letter sets out the sender’s address, the date, the recipient’s address, a greeting and a sign-off; website copy may use subheadings and bullet points.
- Cohesive writing links its ideas into one connected whole, using paragraphs, topic sentences, discourse markers and returns to earlier ideas.
The big picture
Good writing fits its reader and its job. Before you write, read the task for its audience, purpose and form. Register is how formal the language is, and the relationship decides it: formal for people you don’t know, conversational for familiar people, intimate for close family and friends. Tone is separate: the mood or attitude you convey. Choose vocabulary that fits rather than words forced in to impress, follow the conventions of the form, and link your paragraphs so the piece reads as one connected whole.
Key points
Worked example
Problem
Ms Khan, a café manager you have never met, emails to ask when you are free to work on Saturdays and what experience you have. Your first draft of the reply says: “hiya!! im free most saturdays lol. done loads of babysitting for my cousin so yeah. cheers x”. Rewrite it so it fits the reader.
⚠ Watch out
Going formal for every task by default. Formal suits people you don’t know. Written to your classmates or your closest family, the same stiff language misses its readers, just as slang would miss a councillor.
Memory hook
Who? Why? What shape? Then glue. Reader, purpose and form decide what you write; cohesion glues it into one piece.
Check yourself
Think of a message you sent this week. Who was it for, how formal were you, and what was it for? Would the same words have worked for a different reader?
Flashcards
(14)What are the six purposes for writing?
What is the difference between register and tone?
Which register suits which reader?
In a writing task, what signals how formal you need to be?
What should guide your choice of vocabulary, grammar, form and structure?
What goes wrong when you force an impressive word into a sentence?
When is a formal letter the right form?
What kind of message suits an informal letter?
What does a formal letter set out?
Name two conventions website copy may use.
What makes a piece of writing cohesive?
What is a topic sentence?
Give one way to join a paragraph to an earlier one.
What do discourse markers help a writer do?
Tap any card to flip it, or use Study as deck to go through them one at a time. In the full lesson these run as a spaced-repetition deck — you rate each card Hard, Good or Easy and the tricky ones keep coming back until they stick.
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Keep me postedMore AQA GCSE English Language topics
- Analysing form and structure of a text
- Citing evidence and quotation effectively
- Evaluating texts critically with textual references
- Identifying and interpreting explicit information and ideas
- Identifying bias and misuse of evidence
- Maintaining a consistent point of view across a text
- Reading in different ways for different purposes
- Reflecting critically and evaluatively on text
- Selecting structural and organisational features for impact
- Synthesising information from more than one text
- Using a range of sentence structures
- Using subject terminology to analyse language and structure
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