hello and welcome to igcse success if you're new here a big hello to you i'm an english teacher and i post content here on youtube to prepare students for their cambridge first language english exam this little one just wanted to say a quick hello and if that sounds interesting to you you know what you have to do be sure to check out the videos on my channel because i break down a number of the core skills needed to succeed with first language english so in today's video today's learn with me video it's all about non-fiction writing with a focus on speech writing and showing a clear awareness of the audience and purpose i'll be taking you through yet another presentation and as always feel free to stop to have a go at the activities contained within i'll be showing you how to write a winning opening and what stylistic features and writing features you should try and use to to really impress cambridge and of course to engage your target audience and remember there really is no point attempting any directed writing question until you are confident writing in all seven text types and that's all i have to say so let's get on with today's learn with me video so let's start today's lesson so today we will be developing our non-fiction writing skills focusing closely on audience and purpose hopefully if you managed to watch my last three videos on the writer's effect question you should feel somewhat confident in being able to tackle a writer's effect question fingers crossed but now it's time to move on to the next core question and that is the directed writing question the only non-fiction writing task on the paper and i just want to say before i start there has been some confusion i think cambridge now referred to this question as the extended writing response and not the directed writing question i've known it to be titled that for many many years but i know with paper two there is a question called the directed writing question which is very very similar but i just want to make sure you are aware that all the videos on my channel for now are very much focusing on reading skills for paper one and not for paper two okay and i am sure you are aware that this question comes at it now comes at the end of the paper and it is worth 25 marks so it goes without saying you have to get this question right so what do you need to do for this question what skills are required well you will have to read a short piece of fiction sometimes though sometimes non-fiction cambridge are getting quite sneaky i know they used a non-fiction piece for the i think the march paper which i don't think they've done in a while or certainly i've never known them to do or to use a non-fiction piece and you are required to write a non-fiction piece between 250 and 300 words sounds easy right not really what is difficult about or what do students tend to find difficult about this question well you have to read the text that you are presenting with of course you need to understand it but you need to carefully select information from the text to essentially inform your writing to inform your piece so it's not a case of just writing any old letter or speech like most exam boards around the world no you have the added difficulty of really understanding i guess what you are reading understanding the characters and quite often having to assume the role of a character if that sounds you know completely confusing stay with me and certainly in part two when we start explicitly looking at the directed writing question it will make far more sense so the text types you need to know there are seven you need to be confident writing an article speech letter journal newspaper report formal report and interview for my year tens as i've mentioned i am using these lessons for my year tens they are new on their ig journey certainly the first few lessons are very much geared towards recapping i guess general nonfiction writing skills we are going to be dedicating what is left of this half term so we've got one more week left and next half term looking at these text types so the article speech letter and journal and we will tackle the other ones later in the academic year what i will say is that you do not want to be one of these and it happens every single year you don't want to open up your exam paper on exam day and just be hoping and praying that you don't get a newspaper report or a formal report it does happen so you need to be okay with all seven text types what is non-fiction writing i'm sure you are aware but just in case non-fiction writing explores real life situations it includes factual information and always has a clear purpose some of those purposes including to persuade to inform to advise um to entertain educate etc and non-fiction writing often intends to communicate information between individuals or groups so say for example you are writing a letter you are writing for a specific person or audience and you are providing that person with information tap on the task this is the acronym which i have used for many years i know some teachers like to use i think gap genre audience and purpose path i think is another one um there's there's lots of different acronyms what is important is that you are able to identify the text type you are writing which should never be too problematic because it always is clearly stated but you know the features i guess associated with that text type you are able to identify the audience and your style language tone etc suitable for your intended audience and the purpose why are you writing why are you writing the piece that you are writing you have to establish these three things as an imperative if you get them wrong chances are everything about your nonfiction piece will be wrong including your language and style okay so can you tap on the task i'm just going to read out three non-fiction tasks and i want you to see if you can identify the intended tap so the first one is you have been asked to write a speech for young students persuading them not to use their phones during the school day write the words off your speech you have been asked to write a journal entry from the perspective of a new student who has just joined your school and has completed their first day write the words of their journal entry and the last one is you have been asked to write a formal letter to your headmaster asking him to abolish homework wouldn't that be lovely write the words of your letter now pause the video now and see if you can identify the text type audience and purpose so as mentioned identifying the text type shouldn't be too difficult even for the directed writing task it is clearly stated of course the first one is a speech and the audience young student so you need to make sure your language your style suitable for your intended audience to keep them engaged and the purpose is clearly stated there to persuade it's important to know that cambridge will not always explicitly give you the purpose the second one of course it is a journal journals are often written for yourself unless of course it is some sort of published journal and the purpose is very much to i guess reflect and you know sometimes to describe and the last one of course is a formal letter the audience being your headmaster and i guess the purpose um would be very much to persuade him or her to abolish homework so why is identifying the tap accurately so important i'm going to read out this slide identifying the top of a text is important as it will directly influence the style of your piece and the language choices you make if you are asked to write a formal letter you will be expected to adopt a far more formal register compared to if you are asked to write to a close friend advising them on where to go on the next holiday your sentence structures your language choices your stylistic devices are your persuasive devices will all depend on who you are writing for and why you are writing the piece you are writing so now let's have a look at the following task in the bottom right hand corner you have been asked to write a speech for year 10 students and what students find difficult about school and how best to solve these problems write the words of your speech and there's a little check list on the right hand side is there a clear awareness of the type is there a clear awareness of the audience is there a clear awareness of the purpose are suitable stylistic devices devices employed for effect is vocabulary varied and used for effect and of course our sentence structures structures varied and used for effect let me read out this model opening and have a thing to yourself does this opening achieve those things high school can be some of the best and worst years of a young person's life undoubtedly it can be a tough five years for many reasons of course there's the relentless dream of homework that seems to batter our brains daily there's the half terminally sinking feeling we all experience when we are preparing for our end of topic test and there's that one class that we all reluctantly trickle to every week but do you know what is particularly challenging trying to navigate this crazy thing known as life whilst managing the herculean task of staying afloat at school so is it possible to finish high school relatively unscathed absolutely now hopefully you would agree with me that this opening achieved everything within that checklist let's look at some of the things that the opening does quite well of course we have varied sentence structures we've got some simple compound and complex sentences and we've got some effective sentence starters such as starting with an adverb undoubtedly we've got many many stylistic devices such as alliteration seems to batter our brains daily we've got that repetition of that plosive b sound really makes it stand out we've also got other stylistic devices such as hyperphora similar to a rhetorical question but we provide the answer straight away but do you know what is particularly challenging trying to navigate this crazy thing known as life and we've got effective vocabulary or ambitious vocabulary choices to impress cambridge but also to engage our target audience we've got that brilliant adjective herculean there we've also got many inclusive pronouns so you want to avoid using i all the time it's far better to use our and we to create that relationship with your audience and of course we've got our good friend the rhetorical question to really get the audience thinking about the subject matter it's really important that whatever non-fiction task you do whatever directed writing task you do you really hook the audience straight away so this is my challenge to you if you have been following this video i would like you to write your own opening to the same task and that task again i'll just read it out you have been asked to write a speech for year 10 students on what students find difficult about school and how best to solve these problems write the words of your speech if you are learning with me take 10 or 15 minutes type up your answer and be sure to put them in the comment box below i hope this video has been useful thanks guys and that's all for today guys as always leave your feedback in the comments below thank you again for all of your support and i will see you again very soon until next time bye