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Please Reply: AQA English Language Unit 3b Specimen Tasks

I was just wondering what kind of GCSE creative writing tasks AQA have set in the last few years. Please reply :smile:
Original post by bluegirl64
I was just wondering what kind of GCSE creative writing tasks AQA have set in the last few years. Please reply :smile:


Well, AQA have 3 specific categories of which two are chosen by your school. In each category there are two different tasks, and your school must choose one task from each of the two categories they chose. The categories are:Moving Images, Re-creations and Commissions.

This year my school chose Moving Images and Re-creations. Generally, the tasks are very similar in these two categories, but they can change. In Moving Images, for the past few years, the task has been to write about TV shows, adverts, films etc. that you love or loathe, and with the re-creations you have to use poems as the basis of a piece of creative writing - so not that difficult.

Are you in Year 9? If so, I would strongly advise you to attempt some of the tasks in the Specimen Task Bank, available on AQA's website, and look over it to see how you can improve. Feel free to attempt some tasks, and then send them to me to have a look at - obviously, I am not a professional, but I should be able to give you some constructive feedback. What you also might want to consider is wider-reading - find out what books you'll be studying throughout the course - this is great if you're doing Lit. - and try to get a head-start by reading them. Not only will this give you a head start, but it will help your Creative Writing, as you'll learn new vocabulary and sentence structures that you can use to really impress your examiner.

Anyways, if you have anymore questions that you'd like to ask me, feel free to do so. :biggrin:

Good luck!
Reply 2
One of ours last year was an argument piece called 'don't get me started about...' Where we had to write an argument piece in something that annoyed us
Reply 3
Original post by kingaaran
Well, AQA have 3 specific categories of which two are chosen by your school. In each category there are two different tasks, and your school must choose one task from each of the two categories they chose. The categories are:Moving Images, Re-creations and Commissions.

This year my school chose Moving Images and Re-creations. Generally, the tasks are very similar in these two categories, but they can change. In Moving Images, for the past few years, the task has been to write about TV shows, adverts, films etc. that you love or loathe, and with the re-creations you have to use poems as the basis of a piece of creative writing - so not that difficult.

Are you in Year 9? If so, I would strongly advise you to attempt some of the tasks in the Specimen Task Bank, available on AQA's website, and look over it to see how you can improve. Feel free to attempt some tasks, and then send them to me to have a look at - obviously, I am not a professional, but I should be able to give you some constructive feedback. What you also might want to consider is wider-reading - find out what books you'll be studying throughout the course - this is great if you're doing Lit. - and try to get a head-start by reading them. Not only will this give you a head start, but it will help your Creative Writing, as you'll learn new vocabulary and sentence structures that you can use to really impress your examiner.

Anyways, if you have anymore questions that you'd like to ask me, feel free to do so. :biggrin:

Good luck!


Thank you so much for your advice, I will definitely go try one of the specimen tasks :smile: It'd also really help me if you explained exactly what you had to do for your creative writing and what you did do. Thanks again, please reply soon. :smile:
Reply 4
Original post by Lottie_
One of ours last year was an argument piece called 'don't get me started about...' Where we had to write an argument piece in something that annoyed us


Thanks :smile:
Original post by bluegirl64
Thank you so much for your advice, I will definitely go try one of the specimen tasks :smile: It'd also really help me if you explained exactly what you had to do for your creative writing and what you did do. Thanks again, please reply soon. :smile:


For my first Controlled Assessment, I had to write an article for a newspaper about a TV advert or film advert I love or loathe. Now, first of all, the question caused large amounts of controversy, as many teachers didn't know what AQA meant by 'film advert' - an advert before a film, or a film trailer - so I was forced by my school to write about a TV advert, as they didn't want my content mark to be low, in case I didn't do what AQA wanted.

As it was my first Controlled Assessment, I wanted to do really well, so, that evening, I spent a few hours researching different TV adverts, and ended picking Go Compare - how unique! Once I had chosen my advert, in lesson, I had to pick out things that I liked about the advert, and things that I loathed, and then see which I had more for - obviously, it was loathe! But make sure you do this, even if your teacher doesn't tell you to! If you're arguing a point, make a list of the good things and the bad things, so that you can counter argue in your essay - this will get you top marks. After I had done that, I had to start planning my essay and making drafts of what I would write, but your teachercannot check these drafts. Once you have planned, you write your essay.

Now, tips for an argumentative task: 1) Don't just try to cram the biggest words into your essay - this will stop your essay from flowing well, and just make it a pain to read. 2) Try to read other reviews, advisably of a different advert, to stop you from becoming tempted to plagiarise, and see how professionals structure their work. 3) Use a variety of linguistic devices, where appropriate - this means that you don't use the rhetorical question (seemingly everyone's favourite device) more than two times; instead, why not use satire/ irony, triplets, alliteration, humour, and the other more complex devices? 4) You need to make sure that your paragraphing, punctuation and grammar is impressive! Don't write in slang, even if the target audience is young people. Yes, the tone can be a little informal, but it can never be more than around 20% informal. Also, don't overuse exclamation marks, make sure you know the difference between 'you're' and 'your' and 'an' and 'a' - simple things like this will save you marks.

My second creative writing piece was to transform the poem 'Havisham,' by Carol Ann Duffy, or 'The Laboratory,' by Robert Browning, into a piece of creative writing. Now, I decided to merge the two poems together, as they both shared the same theme of vengeance and jealously, but most of my friends only did one. This was a piece of descriptive writing, so I needed to show rather than tell, and not make it too story-like. I was always told to pretend that I am a camera, and if I was there, what would I see, hear etc.? I'm not an expert at descriptive writing, but when you're writing creatively, try not to overdue your usage of similes and metaphors. Try to use other descriptive devices too, like oxymorons, juxtaposition etc., and use powerful verbs and adjectives.

Anyways, sorry if my tips for descriptive writing are a little short, but I'm a little rushed for time. If you have anymore questions, feel free to ask them, and I'll get back to you as quickly as I can. I hope it helps!


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(edited 10 years ago)

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