Writing to argue and persuade
English · GCSE · The School
Three things the question fixes
The second writing question on most language papers names a form, an audience and a purpose, and all three change what you write. A letter to a headteacher, an article for a broadsheet and a speech to your year group about the same topic should not look alike. Form decides the layout and the opening — a letter needs an address to a named person, a speech needs to be spoken aloud, an article needs a headline. Audience decides how formal you are and what you can assume. Purpose decides whether you are arguing a case or persuading somebody to act. Underline all three before writing a word; most lost marks in this question are decided in that first minute.
A line, not a list
Weak answers are a list: here is one reason, here is another, here is a third, in conclusion. Strong answers move. Each paragraph should take the argument somewhere the last one could not, so that the reader arrives at your final point rather than being handed it. A workable shape is to open with a position, concede what the other side gets right, dismantle it, then push to the consequence of being wrong. Plan the ORDER of three or four points before writing, because reordering a paragraph is easy on a plan and impossible in an exam answer.
Devices that do work
Direct address, a rhetorical question, a triple, a short anecdote, a deliberate one-sentence paragraph, a statistic — these earn marks when they carry the argument and lose them when they are decoration. A rhetorical question that the next sentence answers is doing work; three of them in a row is a tic. The test is simple: remove the device and see whether the paragraph still says the same thing. If it does, the device was ornament. Examiners reward the effect on a reader, not the presence of a named technique, and a piece that is merely a checklist of devices reads as exactly that.
Almost nothing separates a good answer from a very good one as reliably as taking the other side seriously. Naming the strongest objection and answering it shows you have thought rather than merely felt. "Of course a phone ban would be simpler to enforce. That is precisely the problem: it is the easiest thing to do, not the most useful." Notice the concession is real, and the turn is immediate. Then open well — not with "In this article I will argue", which spends a sentence announcing rather than arguing. Start with the specific: an image, a number, a moment. The generalisation can come second, once the reader is already listening.
Register, and the last five minutes
Match the voice to the named audience. Writing to a governing body, the register is measured and the case is evidence-led; writing a speech to your own year group, contractions and direct address are right and formality would sound false. Neither is more sophisticated than the other — the mark is for judging which the task wants. Leave five minutes to check the technical accuracy: sentence demarcation, paragraphing, and the spelling of words you chose deliberately. Those marks are separate from the content marks and are the cheapest ones in the paper to recover.