Writing: school and municipal stages

For these stages, the Central Commission does not provide assignments, but only
gives recommendations on their preparation. One of the main recommendations is
to offer students non-genre writing tasks: "express your opinion", "comment on the
quote", "recommend a book for the school library", etc. The task turns out to be
similar to task number 40 of the exam, but should not repeat it completely. The
number of words can be 100-120 or more.

Example

Time: 30 minutes. Comment on the following problem: Elderly people who live

alone should be taken care of. In your comment use information from the article
below:

Write 100-120 words. Remember to: make an introduction, express your personal

opinion on the problem and give reasons for your opinion, express your attitude
towards the information from the article, make a conclusion. Write in your own
words.

Explanation: The student is required to express his point of view on the proposed

problem, give reasoning and express his attitude to the information presented in the
article. The task is partly familiar from the task number 40 of the exam, so it does
not cause any difficulty. It is very important to teach students to read the
assignment in full and fulfill it strictly according to the criteria.

Typical mistakes:

 Inattention when reading the assignment.

 Inconsistency with the specified volume.
 Lack of introduction and conclusion.
 Elementary grammatical, lexical, punctuation errors.

Typical mistakes (regardless of genre):

 Lack of understanding of the format of the statement, genre.

 Genre replacement.
 Incomplete or inaccurate disclosure of the topic.
 Violation of logic (lack or misuse of logical means of communication,
abrupt transitions, lack of introduction and conclusion).
 Lexico-grammatical, spelling, punctuation errors.

Let's take a closer look at the most common creative tasks in the genres of story
and report.
Story

A story  is a small literary form with a plot (storyline). Text in this genre must
meet the following requirements:

 An original dynamic plot.

 The natural tone of the story.
 The use of such techniques as description, narration, reasoning.
 The presence of an individual author's assessment of events and factors, the
expression of feelings and emotions of the author and his heroes.
 The presence of elements of dialogical speech.
 A clear composition (beginning, main part with a climax, denouement).
 The presence of a title.
 Variety of linguistic means.

Recommendations for students for writing a story:

 Before you start writing a story, think over the storyline, characterization of
the characters, make a plan and jot down keywords for the points of the
plan.
 Note that the dynamics of events in the story is very important, it can be
emphasized using the words at first, before, until, while, during, after,
finally, when, etc., as well as the verbs happen, realize, start, run, appear,
disappear , occur, exclaim, sigh, mutter, say, wonder, etc.
 Use adjectives and adverbs to describe the characters' feelings and
actions. At the same time, instead of the boring words: big, small, good, bad,
very, use their synonyms and equivalents: enormous, tiny, terrific, horrible,
extremely, etc.
 Be careful with your grammatical tenses. For example, Past Continuous is
suitable for describing the weather at the time of the action, Past Simple -
for basic actions, Past Perfect - for events preceding the story.
 Please note that the story often describes characters, places, objects, events.
 Remember that the beginning and the end are very important in the story.

Example 1

Write a short story. Choose any subject but use in your story the following words
at least once (underline the word from the list when using it for the first time):
Fluffy, Ignorant, Board, Cord, Traffic.

Title your story using a word from the list. Include description of feelings and
emotions. Include direct and indirect speech. Make an unexpected ending. Write
200-250 words. Time: 1 hour 15 minutes.
Explanation: The student is required to write a story using specific words. The
main difficulty is in using these words correctly. At the Olympiad, there were
many difficulties with Ignorant - the participants confused its meaning with the
Russian word “ignoring” and used it in incorrect constructions. However, some
participants, on the contrary, successfully played with this ambiguous word.