igcse english coursework portfolio

Assignment 3: Narrative Writing ( CIE IGCSE English Language )

Revision note.

Assignment 3: Narrative Writing

Assignment 3 of your coursework portfolio is a piece of narrative writing. To reach the highest levels of the mark scheme you are required to create a developed, well-defined plot and include features of fiction writing, such as characterisation and setting.

The following guide is broken into the following sections:

Assignment examples

How to write to narrate, narrative writing techniques.

In this assignment you are only examined on your writing skills, and your piece of writing should be between 500 and 800 words in length. There are 10 marks available for content and structure, and 15 marks available for style and accuracy, as follows:

Narratives may be written in any relevant form, such as the opening or closing chapter of a longer story, or a short story in itself, but features of fiction writing should be evident. Your ideas should be explored and developed imaginatively. Remember, a story that entertains is normally a successful one!

You may be asked to write a story that creates suspense and atmosphere, or something that explores relationships and emotions. Alternatively, you may be asked to write about adventure, achievement or something that contains unexpected events. Any possibility that addresses specific readers and maintains the reader’s interest and engagement are valid. The best short stories are based on a single plot idea, have a maximum of two main characters and tend to be set in a place familiar to you.

Narrative story writing develops an idea to a conclusion. The way to achieve this in an exam is by planning an ending with a resolution (you should plan whether your story will end happily or not).

In order to adhere to the conventions of story writing, it is best to: 

• Plan your writing in an order which takes your character (and reader) on a clear journey:
• The best way to do this is to plan one main event
• Ensure your plot is simple enough to be coherent and cohesive
• Consider employing structural techniques, such as a flashback:
• This can give background information to the reader and provide context
• Ensure you use past-tense verbs for this
• Develop your characters:
• Consider essential narrative character archetypes, such as “villain”, “victim”, “hero”, etc.
• Decide on how your characters fit these descriptions 
• When describing people, focus on relevant details only:
• You could focus on their body language or movements
• If using dialogue, the verbs you use to describe how your characters speak can reveal more about them than what they say, e.g. “shrieked”, “mumbled”, “whispered”
• It is effective to repeat ideas related to colour
• You can repeat ideas for emphasis:
• For example, black and grey or green and blue

Narrative writing responses should be structured into five or six paragraphs. You should plan your response carefully as you have limited time to create a cohesive plot. Writing a response which has not been planned is likely to have an abrupt ending, or no ending at all, which will not get you high m arks.

There are lots of different narrative structures or arcs that you could use to plan your story. Bearing in mind you only have 15 minutes to plan, your story needs to be controlled and concise. One of the easiest ways to achieve this is to consider a five-part narrative structure, such as Freytag’s Pyramid:

Remember, each paragraph does not have to be the same length. In fact, better answers vary the lengths of their paragraphs for effect. What is important is to develop separate ideas or points in each paragraph, and to avoid repeating the same descriptions throughout your response. 

Once you have planned out the structure of your narrative, it’s a good idea to consider how to incorporate methods and techniques into your response. Below we have included some guides to help you when thinking about setting, characterisation and other linguistic techniques to make your narrative as engrossing as possible.

As this task assesses the ability to communicate clearly, effectively and imaginatively, it is important to consider how to use language constructively in a short story to convey an atmosphere or mood. Building an effective setting is key as it contributes to atmosphere and mood.

• Your setting should reflect your main character’s mood:
• You may know this as pathetic fallacy , which reflects the character’s mood in the environment, e.g., “the lonely road”
• As your setting reflects your character’s mood, your setting may change as the story progresses:
• Contrasting scenes is an effective way to convey ideas and to engage your reader:
• For example, your story may have started on a sunny afternoon, but may end as the sun sets or as a storm approaches 
• Whatever way you decide to contrast the scenes, ensure it reflects your character’s mood
• The best answers build a clear setting before introducing other information, such as introducing character:
• Describing setting is best done with sensory language as we experience places with all of our five senses
• This means you could describe the dark, light, colours, sounds, smells and weather
• The best way to clearly create setting is to allow an entire paragraph to describe the scene without confusing readers with other information like who is there
• Ensure all of your descriptive language builds the same mood and avoid mixing ideas. For example: “The graveyard was dark, cold and smelled like fragrant flowers” is confusing for your reader
• However, do not give too much away all at once!
• Keep your reader guessing and asking questions, such as “What is going on?”, “Why is this like this?” and “Who is this?”
• Think of establishing a setting a bit like the game “Taboo”, in which you have to describe something without stating explicitly what it is

Characterisation

This question asks you to create a short story and therefore you will need to build some elements of detailed characterisation. This means you need to consider what your character(s) represent. They may represent an idea, such as hope or strength or abandonment, or you could include a villain to represent injustice or evil. It is best to limit yourself to two characters in the time you have.

Well-rounded characters are taken on a journey: a character should undergo some form of development or change. The mark scheme rewards answers which clearly and effectively convey ideas, meaning that you need to consider the most effective ways of building a character in a short piece of writing. Ideally, you should focus more on indirect characterisation than direct characterisation:

Here, we will consider how to plan your character(s) effectively to engage your reader. This is what the examiner is looking for in your answer:

Linguistic devices

When considering your choice of language and the techniques you wish to employ, you must always remember that you are making deliberate choices for effect. It is important to consider the connotations of words and phrases, and how these may add depth to your writing. For example, do your word choices evoke certain emotions or feelings in the reader, or do they reveal aspects of a character’s personality, background or emotions? You should employ the principle of “show, not tell” in order to bring your writing to life in the reader’s mind.

Below you will find a brief explanation of some of the key techniques you could employ in your narrative (or descriptive) writing:

• Ensure that your response is a well organised and thoughtful interpretation of your title
• Demonstrate your ability to shape a narrative, including incorporating moments of tension and drama
• Use characterisation to create believable protagonists and characters
• Avoid cliches or over-used narratives, such as abandoned cabins in the woods
• Do not just “tell” a series of events:
• Consider imaginative ways to tell your story, apart from just a chronological account
• Include your characters’ thoughts and feelings, not just what happens
• Do not over-complicate your language unnecessarily:
• Do not underestimate the power of simple words and sentences to create significant impact
• Start at your story’s main setting, not in the journey or build up
• Ensure that all of the words you choose contribute to the overall atmosphere and effect you want to create
• Vary your sentence and paragraph lengths to keep the style and tone dynamic
• Do not over-use dialogue:
• Only use dialogue if it drives forward the plot and you are able to punctuate it correctly
• Consider the “message” of your story and how your characters represent this
• Consider the narrative perspective which will work most effectively for your story

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Author: Deb Orrock

Deb is a graduate of Lancaster University and The University of Wolverhampton. After some time travelling and a successful career in the travel industry, she re-trained in education, specialising in literacy. She has over 16 years’ experience of working in education, teaching English Literature, English Language, Functional Skills English, ESOL and on Access to HE courses. She has also held curriculum and quality manager roles, and worked with organisations on embedding literacy and numeracy into vocational curriculums. She now manages a post-16 English curriculum as well as writing educational content and resources.

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Your Complete Guide to IGCSE Coursework

This guide includes everything you need to know about all the IGCSE coursework.

Like many of our other Complete Guides this article is not meant to be read in its entirety – just skip to whichever section is most relevant to you.

By Rebecca Lally, Saoirse Boyle, Hazel Fricska, and Nina Hopley

English Language

What do you need to do?

You need to submit 3 pieces of work, each of 500-800 words: a descriptive and/or narrative piece; an informative, analytical and/or argumentative piece; and a response to a text. Our teacher got us to write multiple practice pieces for each of the three text types during year 10 so that we could pick our favourites to redraft at the start of year 11. Your coursework portfolio is worth 50% of the total marks, which can help make up for lower scores in the exam if you know that is where you will struggle.

You need to pick different topics for each piece; this will allow you to create contrast through the portfolio and showcase different styles of writing. The descriptive piece offers the most creative freedom, although your teacher should offer some general guidance. We wrote pieces restaurants for our informative writing coursework and, for the media response piece, we wrote open letters to Wayne LaPierre, an American gun rights lobbyist.

Any advice?

• Don’t use a thesaurus. Switching out every other word for a supposedly better synonym is not what will make your work good! Your writing will come across as stilted and pretentious.
• Channel your efforts into creating fluidity and a consistent voice. Read through your work in your head and then out loud. Whilst reading ask yourself some questions: Where do the words start tripping over each other? Are you repeating anything?
• Try to show, rather than tell. Don’t fill your work with fluffy adjectives. Take the restaurant review as an example. You can say the food was “great”, “scrumptious”, “delicious”, “incredible”, but this doesn’t give  the reader any new or important information! Instead, describe the different textures, the different colours on the plate and the flavours of the food.
• Listen to your teacher. Your work will be internally assessed by a panel of teachers. You are allowed one draft – make it count. Make it as good as you can before you hand it in; once you have received feedback make sure to take all their advice on board.
• Let others read your work. Friends, parents, classmates. Tell them to be brutal, to pick it apart. A fresh pair of eyes can provide valuable insight and notice little things that you won’t. This can be especially helpful to do with students from other English classes! Their teacher may have approached a requirement in a different way and this may help you see aspects of your work from different perspectives.
• Your creative piece is an opportunity to show off your beautiful writing and rich descriptive language. Don’t worry about the plot. You will not be able to write an entire story in less than 800 words without sounding rushed. Focus on creating atmosphere and providing insight into your character(s).
• Be as specific as possible in your informative piece. Again, no fluffy adjectives! What information is most important to the reader and how will you relay this to them?
• In your media response piece, acknowledge every single point the text makes, explicit or implicit.  These points must be analysed and evaluated.  You must show that you understand the general tone of the text and the opinion of the writer. Do you agree with the journalist? Follow these pointers to write a cohesive and well-developed argument.

You need to produce a detailed essay, up to 2000 words in length, answering a question set by the school. You will need to do your own research from a variety of sources, evaluate different information and form your own opinion/argument. This year, we were asked to evaluate the significance of Gustav Stresemann, a chancellor and foreign minister from Germany’s Weimar years.

• Define the question clearly. Take significance: what does ‘significance’ mean? How is it different from importance? How will you measure it? Are there different kinds of significance? Answer these questions in your introductory paragraph.
• Read widely on the topic before you start writing, or even planning. This is the phase which should take the longest. It is really, really hard to write or plan an essay until you are totally familiar with the topic. By developing an opinion before you start writing, you can be consistent through the entire essay and really drive your point home.
• Read from a variety of reliable sources. Read any and all sources put on moodle by your teacher, check out books from the MMC, use JSTOR. This will set you apart from other candidates.
• You don’t need to mention every event in a period of time, or a person’s life.  Decide what is most important and what adds substance to your argument.
• Keep your ‘background information’ concise. The assessor is a History teacher – just assume they already know the details of the Weimar constitution, or the state of Germany at the time. The point of this essay is not to say what happened, but to evaluate events and develop your own argument.
• Keep referencing the question! You literally cannot use the keyword of the question, in our case, ‘significance’, too many times.  You defined your criteria at the start of the essay, you should use these criteria and explain how information fits into it.
• Don’t just organize chronologically. Organise chronologically and, within that, thematically. Reference events that happen later or earlier if it backs up an assertion that you have made.
• Compare and contrast similar events. What was different about the handling of situation A and situation B? What was the significance of each event? How much did each event impact the following years?
• Acknowledge both sides of the story, the role played by other figures and surrounding circumstances.
• Listen to your teacher’s advice. Like in English it is your teacher who will be assessing it and they have your best interests at heart.

Geography coursework is worth 27.5% of your overall geography grade. You will be taken on a field day to collect data and, after that, you have the summer to write it all up.

2017’s topic: “ An Investigation Into the Impact of Skiing on the Natural Environment” , carried out at Col de la Faucille.

2016’s topic: “ An investigation into River Processes on La Promenthouse”, carried out at La Promenthouse river.

Before going on the field trip, you will be given class time to prepare your investigation. You will come up with a research question, hypotheses to test and you will write out justifications for these hypotheses. The data collection will occur in groups and you can share results with students from other classes. But, you will be on your own when it comes to writing up your final report.

• Don’t leave it all to the end of summer, or the night before it is due! Especially if you did not finish your introductory work at the end of the year. It was a lot more time consuming than anyone expected.
• Focus on the analytical part of the coursework – this is what you should spend the most time and effort on. Any analysis or assertion you make is fine, as long as you can back it up with data and/or geographical theory.
• Use at least 4 types of graphs. Don’t just use the same scatter graphs or bar charts over and over again. Your teachers will have suggestions for other types. Building a GE graph may be more time-consuming, but it is more interesting than an excel column graph and will help you stand out from the other candidates.  
• Make your draft count. This is your only chance to get feedback, so make it as good as it can be. Your teacher is there to help.
• Don’t stress about the word count. Even our teacher admitted it would be very difficult to get an A* in 2000 words. You shouldn’t write a thesis, but it’s totally ok if you end up with 4000.
• Follow any checklist or rubric you are given. Make sure you are fulfilling every requirement. Don’t miss out on easy marks!

You will complete up to 8 prep sheets; it is preferable you make 8 to the best of your ability, as this will show the examiners you have a wide variety of skills. You will then do a final piece of work based on 2 of your prep sheets. You do have the option to do two exams, rather than coursework and one exam. While the coursework is more work overall, you will be under less time pressure than if you were taking an additional exam.

To score highly, you will need to perfect your technical skill. It is also crucial to demonstrate your artistic development – you can do this by including small mind maps based on a theme/unit, and by doing small ‘test’ sketches exploring various arrangements for a more detailed piece. In addition, your prep sheets should be aesthetically pleasing, as presentation does count. Bluetack your pieces of work to the sheet when you first hand it in, so you can rearrange the layout, or remove/add/improve any work. Use a variety of mediums to show versatility. Fortunately, the course will force you to create large projects and use different media (batik, lino, still life, collage).

It is okay if you feel that you need to redo almost every prep sheet that you handed in during year 10 – with time and patience, you will improve. When you have time away from the art class, during the holidays, reflect on the work that you have finished and try to perfect it. This way, when the deadline comes around in year 11, you will have finished and will be ready to focus all your artistic energy on the exam!

The most daunting thing about coursework is how many weeks you have to complete it! The themes are open ended and you have a lot of freedom. Unfortunately, this can paralyze rather than inspire. Art is time-consuming, and you are juggling it with 8 other subjects which each have their own homework and tests. You might push art to the side in order to tackle more imminent deadlines, dreaming of the great work you will produce when you have the time to sit down and devote yourself to it… but this will not happen. There is never going to be a ‘good time’ to do it. I ended up spending 6 days solid over the Christmas break drawing my final piece, and by day 3 I had started to despair, but I am so glad I finished it.

You should be prepared to fail: allocate time to hate your work, feel frustrated by your work and then pick yourself up and start again. Grab a black sharpie and title all of the documents that you are given by the department, such as, “ Year 11 coursework requirements” and, “Art unit planner”, with PLAN TO FAIL. This will remind you to get your head out of the clouds and make you start work immediately. Coursework is composed of prep sheets and a final piece (that has its own prep sheet as well): it is a lot of physical work to produce.

• Plan to fail! It will go wrong, take a direction you did not intend or even want! You must factor in time to start over.
• C ommit to ideas. Brainstorm your theme exhaustively in the first week of the assignment to find an idea you really love, then commit. Don’t start over halfway through.
• Don’t start year 11 with incomplete prep sheets. Finish them all before the coursework final is due.
• Finish every drawing. You may hate it, but if you don’t finish it, you won’t learn anything from it.
• Use the guidelines the art department gives you. Pin them up on a notice board and share them with your parents – keep those deadlines firmly in sight.
• Use the Art room at lunchtime , consult your teachers regularly for advice and guidance.

You need to complete*:

• Two stylistically different compositions
• Two solo performances
• A group performance

*There is also set work covering the work of one artist (for us, Felix Mendelssohn), World Music, and the music of one particular region (for us, Latin America). These are not part of the coursework component but are part of the syllabus.

It is ok if you have never played an instrument or studied music theory – as long as you love the subject. It may be wise to take private lessons in music theory and an instrument from the beginning of year 10. If you already play an instrument and know some music theory, you are ahead of the game!

In year 10 you are informed about the coursework, but class time is not devoted to it until year 11. Because the deadline is so far away, it is rare anyone starts working on it. Many of my peers decided to take the internal exam after realising they wouldn’t have the time to acquire the skills needed. Get started immediately. Record your performance to the best of your ability in year 10, even if you find it disappointing. In year 11 you will have the opportunity to listen to it again and re-record, challenging yourself further on the content. Same for compositions – experiment with melodies and sounds even if you are not confident. When Year 11 begins you will have a starting point to build from.

For compositions, as they have to be very different, listen to music from a variety of genres. In doing this you will find out what you like and it will be easier to create something you enjoy. If you find using Garageband difficult, talk to Mr. Aram. He always makes himself available to help, so don’t be shy or insecure about your work. He is not expecting you to be a musical prodigy!

When you are happy with your compositions in Garageband you then have to transpose everything into note form, using software like Sibelius. This is time-consuming  and challenging, especially if you are not confident with musical notation. So, plan to learn and ask for help before it’s too late. Go to the music department at lunch or work on your score with your classmates so that you all struggle together and can help each other.

Music is such an enriching subject that allows insight into different cultures and can lead to global understanding and communication. You want your compositions to reflect this exposure – which is very challenging because you need a certain level of skill. You can acquire these with help from teachers and extracurricular lessons but it all takes time as you still have 8 other subjects with equal demands. Ultimately, plan to fail and to experiment so that you have the time to achieve your best.

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Coursework Training Handbook 0500, 0522 and 0524 Cambridge IGCSE

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