GCSE AQA English Language: Paper 2, Question 5

Have you asked your teacher to mark it too?

Hey, can someone please check my answer and give me a rough mark out of 40 and also an approximate grade?

Q:
‘It is people who have extraordinary skill, courage and determination who deserve to be famous, not those who have good looks or lots of money or behave badly.’

Write a letter to the editor of a newspaper in which you argue your point of view in response to this statement.

A:
Dear Sir or Madam,

I am writing to you to argue my point of view in response to who should be famous and who should not. Why would people who have good looks or lots of money or behave badly deserve to be famous?

Firstly, many people become famous purely because they are good-looking and I definitely don't think that they deserve it. For example, a person may post perfectly posed pictures on Instagram or hilarious videos on TikTok and get hundreds, thousands or even millions of devoted followers. They then get offered sponsorship by billion dollar companies which makes them even more famous. However, what many innocent young people don't realise is that the pictures they post are an illusion; they use special lighting and magic filters to make it appear 'natural'. This leads many young people who try to copy these fake 'looks' to feel like failures when they are actually chasing an impossible dream.

Secondly, criminals can become famous as they appear on the news where tons of people around the world can see what their names are and what they’ve done. Every year, more than 20% of criminals who commit serious crimes become famous due to news broadcasts and there are tons and tons of people out there who have extraordinary skill to find out what crimes they have committed. What do they get for it? Truly nothing, absolutely nothing! This is completely unfair! For example, Al-Qaeda (a terrorist group) are famous and all they did is just crash two planes into the Twin Towers in New York and another plane into the Pentagon in Washington; that day was very emotional and billions of people were devastated around the world. However, this caused Osama Bin Laden who was responsible for the 9/11 attacks in 2001 to become an extremely famous criminal, although dead, millions of people will remember him for lifetime and probably even 200 years later, he will be even more famous due to people learning about him. Someone who makes the entire world emotional should clearly not deserve to be famous. This is disgraceful.

Thirdly, have you thought about NHS workers who have helped during the pandemic? Well during lockdown, the NHS workers have actually saved approximately one million lives around the world! NHS chief executive, Sir Simon Stevens, said: “Thanks to the exceptional work of our researchers, NHS staff and patients, around one million lives may have been saved around the world. Research that would usually take years produced answers in record time – with results that have reverberated across the globe. Just as this virus has spread across borders, so too must the treatments and vaccinations that are humanity’s shared ‘exit strategy’ from this pandemic.” Nonetheless, NHS workers aren’t as famous as they should be despite all the effort they put in to save people’s lives. Could this be because there are loads of NHS workers? They might not necessarily have good looks or lots of money but they have worked unimaginably to save all these lives.

Lastly, those who are rich and famous and in the public eye are those who did not work painful hours getting a university degree; those who did not spend years slaving out a training course at minimum pay. Those who are rich and famous are those with mountains of money in the first place; those who won the national lottery. We have a whole society built on luck and money. If this does not seem wrong with you then I do not know what would! Sometimes the Euromillions can be over £100 million and all the winner did was cross a few numbers on a ticket made of paper.

Overall, I completely agree with the statement as people who have extraordinary skill, courage and determination worked outstandingly to achieve their fame while those who have good looks or lots of money or behave badly are rarely those who work hard and are normally those who just become famous on social media. So all I want to ask is: Why is it that those who are famous are rarely those who work hard?

Yours faithfully,
[My name]

If this is worth 40 marks then you will need to write a bit more than this as your paragraphs aren't that long. So maybe add a few more paragraphs or extend the ones you've done.

At the moment, i'd say this is worth about 20 marks but you could get higher marks if you add more detail.

If this is worth 40 marks then you will need to write a bit more than this as your paragraphs aren't that long. So maybe add a few more paragraphs or extend the ones you've done.

At the moment, i'd say this is worth about 20 marks but you could get higher marks if you add more detail.

Btw is this question from the 2020 paper?

Ok but I don't think it matters on how much you have written, it is about how well you organise your writing and use SPaG.

Ok maybe I should add a bit more detail but do you know what grade 20 marks would be?

Maybe but I'm not sure, my teacher gave me this question.

If this is from 2020 then the grade boundaries say 40 marks is a grade 5 so therefore, 20 marks would be a grade 5.

Only 40 marks to get a 5, that seems quite low!