The exam-style question
This is a descriptive composition question, in the style of the First Language English papers. Read it as you would in the exam, then compare your plan with the model.
Write the opening of a description titled 'The Night Market'. Focus on creating atmosphere through the senses; you are not telling a story.
Aim for a controlled, vivid paragraph. This is our own original practice title.
Stimulus: The Night Market
You are asked to describe a night market as evening turns to full dark. Around you: stalls strung with coloured bulbs, some flickering; the hiss and flare of a grill where satay turns over charcoal; steam rising from a vat of noodles. Smells drift and mingle: frying garlic, sweet syrup, engine oil from the road behind.
A vendor calls prices in a sing-song that never quite stops. Children weave between legs clutching paper cups. Somewhere a radio plays an old song, tinny and warm.
The ground is slick in places, catching the light in oily rainbows. Cats wait in the shadows under the tables. As the last daylight leaves the sky, the bulbs seem to burn brighter, and the whole lane becomes a river of noise, heat and colour.
Describe the scene so a reader can hear, smell and feel it. Do not tell a story.
Model response: Descriptive composition
Description without a plot controls the senses and movement, from wide to close and from sight to sound to smell. Atmosphere builds, not events.
Reading a model answer helps. In a paid one-hour trial, a teacher helps your child write one like it on Descriptive composition.
Common errors we see
- Telling ('it was busy') instead of showing through precise detail
- Vague intensifiers ('really nice', 'very') doing the work of description
- Drifting into a plot when the task asks for none
- Naming a sense rather than evoking it
- No controlled movement or focus: detail piled up at random
How this maps to the mark scheme
Examiners mark against assessment objectives. These are the skills the paper rewards.
For descriptive composition, the objectives in play are listed below. The wording is summarised for Cambridge IGCSE First Language English (0500) on our qualification page.
- Articulate experience and express what is thought, felt and imagined.
- Organise and structure ideas and opinions for deliberate effect.
- Use a range of vocabulary and sentence structures suited to context.
- Make accurate use of spelling, punctuation and grammar.
Marks reward a vivid, controlled picture, an order that guides the reader and varied vocabulary and sentences. Accuracy is credited on its own line.
Other boards word their objectives differently, but the same skills earn the marks. Your board's official syllabus gives the exact weighting.
Where to go next
Learn the method in our guide to descriptive composition, then try the descriptive composition practice tasks. You can browse every annotated model response or see how we teach this in our First Language English tuition.
When you have written your own answer, take it to a paid one-hour trial lesson and the teacher who would continue will mark it with you.