This is arguably the key skill in English A Level specifications, and it’s often one that is difficult to develop. Students, after having been successful enough in their GCSEs to progress to AS Level, often feel they know how to write essays and are offended when bad habits are pointed out or corrected, especially when these are bad habits which derive from ‘frames’ used at GCSE level.
It can be helpful to approach essay development with an insistence on the academic nature of A Level writing, to emphasise how advanced it is in relation to GCSE, and to stress the need for such skills in Higher Education.
Do also check out the ‘sequencing’ activity in the suggested ways of using exemplar essays, for a focus on structure and making links throughout an essay. The ‘comparing exemplars with students’ own work’ activity can also be used to focus on style and the construction of an argument, and many of the highlighting tasks are helpful for showing students how to achieve things that they may find difficult in their own work.
The activities ‘Pause first’, ‘Writing as a class’ and ‘Mini self-evaluation’ from the ideas for productive, creative, original, transformative and editorial writing are also useful for analytical and essay writing. It’s also worth looking at the sets of ideas for analysing linguistic...
