It includes an original worked plan and the slips that cost marks.
The task, and where you meet it
Directed writing is on the writing paper of every IGCSE and International GCSE English route we teach. You are given a source, either one text or two. The task names a form to write in, a reader to write for and a reason to write.
Your job is to read the material, take what you need, and turn it into a fresh piece that does what the task asks. The examiner rewards two things at once: how well you use the source, and how well you write.
Most students who lose marks here can write well. They lose marks because they start writing before deciding what the piece is for. A plan fixes that.
A planning routine that fits the clock
- Read the whole brief twice before you touch the source. On the second reading, underline three anchors: the form (letter, article, speech or report), the audience, and the purpose (to persuade, inform, advise or argue).
- Read the source with a pen. Mark only material that serves your purpose, however interesting the rest is.
- Group your marked points into three or four clusters. Each cluster becomes a paragraph.
- Order the clusters so the piece builds. Usually the strongest point goes last, unless the form suggests otherwise.
- Decide your opening and closing, with a phrase for each, so you never start from a blank.
- Write the register in one word at the top of your plan, and glance at it as you write.
The whole plan should fit in the margin. If it takes longer to write than to read, it is too detailed.
A worked plan, written for teaching
Here is one of our own original briefs, and the plan a student might make from it.
Brief: A community centre wants to close its evening youth club to save money. Write a letter to the centre’s manager arguing that the club should stay open.
A student’s margin plan might read:
- Form: formal letter. Audience: the manager. Purpose: persuade.
- Register: respectful, firm.
- Open: say who I am and why I am writing.
- Point 1: the club keeps younger teenagers busy and safe on dark evenings.
- Point 2: two of my friends found the confidence to stay in school there.
- Point 3: closing it saves little now but costs the community later.
- Close: suggest a cheaper way to keep it open, and ask for a meeting.
The plan already holds an argument, an order and a tone. The writing can now flow, because the decisions that usually interrupt a first draft have been made.
This is easier to improve with a teacher beside you. A paid one-hour trial starts from your child's own recent work.
Where the marks slip away
The first leak is ignoring the form. A speech that reads like an essay, or a letter with no sense of a recipient, loses marks that naming the form at the top of the plan would have saved.
The second is copying the source. When a response leans on the source’s own phrasing, it stops being directed writing, and markers notice fast.
The third is a drifting purpose. The piece sets out to persuade and quietly turns into a neutral description.
The fourth is an unbalanced shape: three paragraphs on the first idea and one rushed line on the rest. A visible plan lets you see the balance before you commit.
There is also a quieter loss. A student who never plans often writes a strong opening and then thins out, because the ideas were being invented as they went.
The middle sags, the argument repeats, and the ending arrives out of breath. Planning puts the thinking first, so your energy lasts to the final line.
How to practise this
Practise planning far more often than full pieces. Take a brief, set a short timer, and write only the margin plan: form, audience, purpose, register, ordered points, opening and closing. You can do several plans in the time it takes to write one response.
When you do write in full, keep the plan beside you and look back at it at each new paragraph. If you write something the plan does not contain, stop and ask whether it serves the purpose. Over a few weeks the plan shrinks to a few words you can build in the first couple of minutes of the exam.
Here is a self-test for after you write. Cover the response and say in one sentence what the piece was for and who it was addressed to.
If you cannot, the reader could not either. That is a planning fault you can fix next time.
How our teachers help in 1-to-1 lessons
Planning goes wrong in different ways for different students. One rushes the reading, another collects too much material, and a third forgets the audience.
In 1-to-1 lessons, our teachers watch your child make a few plans, name the pattern, and drill the fix. We use your child’s own writing, not a template.
Planning is a core habit in our writing-paper focus lessons and our First Language English tuition. Book a paid one-hour trial lesson and the teacher who would continue will mark a recent plan and piece with you.
For more, compare your work with the annotated model responses and try the practice tasks. Related guides are proofreading for accuracy and reading for explicit meaning.