IGCSE Language Assignment 1: writing to discuss, argue and/or persuade in response to a text or texts of approximately two sides of A4 in total.
The text(s) should contain facts, opinions and/or arguments. Candidates respond by selecting, analysing and evaluating the content of the text(s). They may write in any appropriate form that they wish. Different candidates in the same teaching set may choose to respond to different text(s) and/or in different forms.
In this piece, you reflect on the writing of another – but you have great freedom in your choice of format (see page 13 of the syllabus).
A newspaper opinion piece should be fun to pick apart – but you don’t have to present it as an analytical essay (It could, for example be a letter to the writer or the editor of the paper). Alternatively, you may wish to respond to an advertisement, a webpage, a couple of pages from a comic book, pages from a holiday brochure etc. Whatever the writing to which you respond, you need to ensure that you reflect on how the writer manipulates our response.
A writer’s job is to encourage us to adopt his/her views – or make us ‘believe’ in an imaginary world – or tempt us to think that our lives will be so much better if we just buy a particular brand of coffee. In a sense, everything that we read is a form of propaganda. Some of it is blatant (as in the comic books that I read as a boy)…
Seven Penny Nightmare
Best of Battle
…and some of it is more subtle (as in adverts and political language).