Professional Documents
Culture Documents
(SPM)
a view through a former student's eyes
INTRODUCTION
Section A is where you are applying your knowledge on writing a talk, a speech,
a report, a dialogue, an article, a letter and so on. You are given 45 minutes to
answer this section. This section is compulsory for you to answer because only
one question is given that brings a total of 35 marks. How the examiner marks
the directed writing: from 35 marks; 3 marks awarded for format; 12 marks for
content points and 20 marks for language (grammar).
Section B is where you are applying all your knowledge in writing skills. This
section is where the rules of grammar take their roles. Therefore, prepare
yourself with adequate amount of grammar and how it works. Now, lets take a
bird's view on this section.
You are given five questions and only to answer one.
You are given an hour to read through all questions, to choose the
question you feel most comfortable with, to plan for the points, to write and to
check for any grammatical error. That’s seriously a lot of tasks to do within 1
hour. So my suggestion is that you must determine your chosen or most
comfortable type of written essay (either narrative, reflective, descriptive,
argumentative/persuasive or factual/expository). For me, I rather avoid choosing
reflective, descriptive, argumentative/persuasive or factual/expository essay
because these types of essay require a lot of knowledge on current issues. Thus,
I choose narrative essay.
This section carries 50 marks.
How the examiner marks the continuous writing: they mark the essay based
on impression which means there is no fixed formula to mark your essay, but
they will judge your essay based on your tenses, vocabulary, sentence structures
and so on. From there they will determine your marks. Later in this blog I will be
discussing on ways to earn high marks for your Continuous Writing.
Year Questions
2002 - (Descriptive) a teacher who has great influence on you
- (Factual/Expository) good result at school do not
guarantee success in the future
- (Descriptive) how I can help to make the world a better
place to live in
- (Open essay) colours
- (Narrative) completing a story
2003 - (Descriptive) a day wished never happened
- (Factual/Expository) country to choose and why
- (Descriptive) an invitation that cannot live without
- (Open essay) friends
- (Narrative) completing a story
2004 - (Descriptive) a festival celebrated
- (Factual/Expository) ways to promote tourism in Malaysia
- (Descriptive) my ideal school
- (Open essay) clothes
- (Narrative) completing a story
2005 - (Descriptive) biggest challenge in life
- (Factual/Expository) ways to keep oneself healthy
- (Descriptive) who would you be if you were given a
chance to be anybody
- (Open essay) music
- (Narrative) unexpected visitor
2006 - (Descriptive) an enjoyable weekend you had
- (Factual/Expository) ways television help students in
studies
- (Descriptive) your life in the next ten years
- (Open essay) food
- (Narrative) completing a story
2007 - (Descriptive) an embarrassing experience
- (Factual/Expository) giving opinions whether teenagers
today are only interested in entertainment
- (Descriptive) my early years
- (Open essay) tomorrow
- (Narrative) completing a story
2008 - (Descriptive) a hard-working person who succeeded in life
- (Argumentative) examination - good or bad
- (Descriptive) perfect future husband or wife
- (Open essay) stars
- (Narrative) completing a story
2009 - (Descriptive) unforgettable incident seen on way home
- (Argumentative) school children should not have long
holidays
- (Descriptive) favourite day of the week
- (Open essay) beauty
- (Narrative) completing a story
2010 - (Descriptive) most popular student in school
- (Argumentative) internet mostly a good thing - do you
agree?
- (Factual/Expository) ways to save the environment
- (Open essay) home
- (Narrative) completing a story
We can see that every year narrative essay question is asked and it is about
completing a story either given the beginning or the ending of the essay except
in 2005 where the question stated clearly on what is the main event of the story.
The rest of it, you can determine your own plot of story. Easy hah?
There is always a friends that 'master' a certain subject and for this identify your
friends who have the highest marks in Continuous Writing among you. Read
his/her essay and try to relate his/her writing to yours. It is not a bad thing
to copy the way they write the essay as long as it involve study and
education.
Try to find time to write an additional essay (which is your own personal
essay; not homework) for two or a week times and asked for your teacher's
comments. As for me, I started to write additional essays after finishing my trial
examination because my bahasa Inggeris grade was the lowest among the 10
subjects that I took. I started a bit late, but you should start NOW while you
have the time. Believe me it helps a lot because for my trial I got a B but for the
SPM examination I got an A+ for bahasa Inggeris and English GCE-O an 1A.
English GCE-O is the marking standard of British English and it only takes the
marks of your Continuous Writing. See how important it is for you to excel in
Continuous Writing.
There is nothing more important than having a good grammar skills. So,
language must be taken into consideration when writing an essay. Refer to the
above writing practises.
Unlike the other types of essays, a narrative essay requires you to have
a wide repertoire of vocabulary in the story you wrote. This is to avoid a dull
story to be presented to the reader; in this case the examiner. From my previous
writing, I wrote that the marking system for continuous writing is based on
impression. Thus, to give good impression to the examiner on the essay you
wrote, you must include a wide range of vocabulary and some interesting
phrases. Study the examples given below:
Example 1
"It was a boring weekend. We were lazy to read books and study, so we planned
for a camping trip. After gaining permission from our parents, we brought
necessary camping things and food for the camping trip. Then, we went to Mount
Tahan."
Example 2
"It was a mundane and lacklustre period after the school final examination.
Danny, Erik and I had had enough of reading books and studying, so we all set
on going a camping trip. After getting the green light from our parents, we
equipped ourselves with the necessary camping gear and enough food to last us
for the two-day camping trip. Then, we embarked on our journey to Mount
Tahan with high spirits."
From Terengganu 2010 Trial Examination; beginning with "I could not sleep
throughout that night..."
Stranded
I could not sleep throughout that night. Not even a minute.
It was just because I might miss the ships or boat that
passed by the island. I was shivering in coldeven it was just
a gentle breeze. I thought to myself that things would have
been different if I did not take part in that vacation. Never in Introduction
my wildest dream that aspectacular vacation on a cruise
ship at the beginning turned out to be a nightmarish affair.
'RIIIINNNNGGGG!!!!!!'
Note: the underlined words or phrases in the essay really help in earning me a
high marks.
Now back at the title above which is about a fixed plot. What is the meaning of
fixed plot? A fixed plot is the plot that you will be using during your exam. How
to do that?
The example essay above is from the question; beginning with "I could not sleep
throughout that night..."
But, what will happen if the question says; ending with "...It was truly the
experience of a lifetime." My suggestion is that you keep on using the same plot,
NOT the same essay by means memorising word by word, but change either
the beginning or ending with respect to the question given.
This an example for changing the ending with the same plot:
"...Then, the siren became louder and louder. At the moment, I knew they had
noticed me. Unexpected, tears of joy started to drop from my eyes. Now, looking
back to what had happened to me I realised that I am surviving alone at a
deserted island. Not everyone could say that they slept on leaves bedding and
have the sky as the roof. It was truly an experience of a lifetime."
Now, can you see what I am trying to make point here? By practising two or
three times, you can easily remember the plot. When writing the essay, try as
much as you can to relate the plot to the question asked. This is what I did
for my examination.
Note: the benefit of having a fixed plot is that the time that you usually used to
plan for your essay can be used to write. By the way, it is the written part is
submitted to the examiner, not the planning part, right?
WHAT TO AVOID?
1. AVOID WRITING SOMETHING THAT YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND
My teacher used to tell me that narrative essay is relatively a little bit easier that
the other types of essays; but it depends on the question itself! If your do not
understand a word or a phrase for a particular questions; DO NOT even try to
write about it! For example you are given this question:
How do the examiner even know that a student was memorising an essay or
not? It depends on the language on Directed Writing. Let say R got 6 marks for
language in Directed Writing but in the Continuous Writing R's language band
stands for A. By that time the examiner know that R was memorising an essay.
Thus, R's Continuous Writing essay will fall to the lower band. Directed Writing
does play a major role here.