Writing to a real prompt

The test gives you one topic with several sources beside it, not a choice of topics. There are four here so you can practise more than once. Pick one, read it twice, decide what it says to you, and write the piece that shows it — you are not marked on agreeing with it.

• Story or essay — either can score Excellent. Pick the one whose shape you can hold for seventy minutes. A story you cannot finish costs more than an essay that is merely solid.
• Ten minutes planning is not lost writing time. The 20 double-weighted marks are Content and Organization: what you found to say, and whether it holds together.
• One idea, properly. A piece that takes a single moment seriously beats one that covers a year in a list.
• Count your words once, in the middle. Nothing deducts marks for length. But a piece under 500 words has usually not developed anything yet, and that is what the Content mark sees — the number is a symptom, not the charge.

Each of these puts you in front of somebody who can say no. Be clear about what you want, give them a reason to care, and stay someone they want to help.

• Name the action in the first two sentences. A reader who reaches paragraph three not knowing what you want is already deciding no.
• If you offer a fallback, put it at the end. Suggesting something else that would do the same job is realistic and reasonable — but lead with the specific ask, or you have softened the one thing you came to say.
• Give one reason that is about them, not only about you. The clubs the school runs; the readers the library counts; the customer who comes back.
• Nothing demands, nothing flatters. The guide wants an email that addresses someone in authority and persuades them to act. Anger does the first and loses the second.
• Restating the situation is not Content. They already know what happened. What they do not know is what you want and why it is reasonable.

Leave it overnight if you can, then read it as a stranger would. The instruction that does the most work here is this one: for every score, name the sentence that proves it. A score you cannot point at is a guess.

What the five levels mean. Alberta's guide gives you two fixed points, and they are the useful ones: a response that is merely a repetition of the situation presented scores Limited, and a closure that is mechanical and/or moralistic scores Satisfactory. Around those: Excellent, a reader would remember it; Proficient, it does what it set out to do and you can see the choices; Satisfactory, nothing goes wrong and nothing lands; Limited, the reader has to do your work for you; Poor, the reader cannot follow it.

Category	What to do to your own page	What moves it up
Content (double)	Point at your best sentence and ask whether anybody else would have written it.	One specific thing only you would have noticed.
Organization (double)	Say out loud why each paragraph follows the one before. Where you cannot, that is the answer.	An opening that starts somewhere, and an ending that is not a moral.
Sentence Structure	Count how many sentences in a row begin the same way, and how many run the same length.	A short sentence placed where the weight should land.
Vocabulary	Swap your best word for a vaguer one and see whether the sentence loses anything.	A better verb, not a rarer noun.
Conventions	Read it aloud, which catches what rereading does not.	Fixing what makes a reader stop, before what only a marker sees.

The email is marked on two categories, not five. Content is your ideas, details and tone — ask whether a stranger could say what you want and why within two sentences. Content Management is words, sentence structure, usage and mechanics together — the bottom three rows above, applied in one pass.

Then count the words. 500 to 1000 for Assignment I, 250 to 500 for the email. The ending is where most pieces drop a level, and running out of room is how that happens.

Word	What it means
The text	A few lines — a quotation, a short exchange, a described picture. It is there to start you thinking, not to be summarized back.
The question	Usually some form of what does this say to you about. The words to you do real work: no particular answer is being looked for.
The form	Assignment I asks for a narrative or an essay — a story you tell, or a case you make. Assignment II names its form for you: a business email.
Suggested time	About 70 minutes for Assignment I and 40 for the email. Suggested, not enforced — but the word counts are built for those times.
The ten minutes first	The test opens with ten minutes when you may talk both assignments over in a group of two to four, or think alone, and make notes. Use it to choose, not to start writing.

• Summarizing the prompt back. The text is the start, not the subject. A piece that explains the quotation has not written about anything yet.
• Running out of time on Assignment I because you began writing in the ten minutes meant for choosing. A finished solid piece outscores a brilliant unfinished one.
• Choosing a form for how it sounds. An essay you can hold beats a story you abandon at the turn.
• Being angry in the email. Content covers your ideas, your details and your tone, and anger loses you the third of those while you are busy with the first two.
• Thesaurus words. You may use a thesaurus in Part A, and Vocabulary is marked on whether the word is right, not rare.
• An ending that tells the reader what to think. And that is why you should always try your best is mechanical and moralistic at once, which the guide calls Satisfactory — acceptable, not strong.