From 2019 onwards, Exercise 6 could also be a report-writing task.

You will be given a particular context and asked to write a report on it. You are expected to write 150-
200 words, and the exercise is worth 16 marks.

Let’s look at a sample question:

Follow these steps to answer the question:

 1. Read the question carefully and ensure that you know what it is asking for. It may be helpful to
underline the important points in pencil.

2. Make a plan and spend not more than 5 minutes on it. It should give you a rough idea of the
details you want to include in your report, what you want to write in your introduction, body
and conclusion. Remember, the purpose of a report is to reflect on and evaluate something, so
make sure you keep that in mind when drawing up your plan.

3. Come up with a title. It should be brief and relevant and will give you a good start.

4. Write a strong, but concise, introduction. This paragraph should include the most
important details of the event that you are reporting on – the ‘who‘(your class),
‘what‘(a trip), ‘when‘(last week? last month?), ‘where‘(large recycling centre) ,
‘why(learn about recycling)’ and ‘how‘(if applicable).

5. You need to then organise your body according to what the question is asking for. For
example, you are asked to write a report on what you did on the trip (write about three
points. Example: spoke to employees, visited sorting unit, watched a plastic recycling
process etc.) and what you learned from it as well (write about two points. Example:
only 50% of materials brought in are recycled, recycling helps the environment). You
could have one paragraph on the former and one on the latter. Be clear.

6. The ending paragraph should briefly conclude the report. In the sample question above,
you are asked to write a suggestion for improvement, so this could be your conclusion.
Write a couple of sentences outlining your views on how the trip went (example: very
informative or too long) and one or two suggestions (example: hands-on-experience,
watch a video etc.).

Time Management

For the core paper 1, take about 20 minutes to finish this exercise, 5 minutes to plan, 10
minutes to write and 5 minutes to check your writing.
For the extended paper 2, take 30 minutes for the whole exercise. Take 5 minutes to plan your
report, by coming up with points to be included in the introduction, body and conclusion. Use
20 minutes for writing the report and the final 5 minutes to proofread and edit your report.