Format for writing a Newspaper Article

Newspaper article are included in Paper 1, Section 1-Directed Writing for O-level English Language Paper. It carries 30 marks and the word count must be restricted to 300 words.

Format of a Newspaper Article

•  Heading:

A very catchy headline relevant to the information should be added at the start which you intent to discuss.

• Beginning:

The first sentence of the article has to be striking. It should instantly engage the reader’s attention. This is important to arouse the interest about the topic especially if your article is argumentative in nature. The first sentence may also anchor your opinion. Some effective openings could be as follows:

• A provocative statement (Drinking can help boost your imagination),
• Quotation (pen is mightier than sword),
• A direct question (How do you feel the virtual reality over shadowing your children’s imaginative faculties?),
• An unexpected claim (Technology is making humans more primitive),
• A succinct summary of a situation (Global warming is responsible for most of the earth environmental problems)

• Introduction:

Once the attention is grabbed the writer introduces the real purpose of the topic beginning with some general ideas relevant to his topic. And gradually broadens his theme. The beginning acts as a funnel starting from general to particular ideas of the topic.

• Body:

The writer should broaden his point through adding illustrations and examples to compare and collate certain points.

The body should be nicely paragraphed. Each paragraph must begin with an effective topic sentence or a thesis statement that would engage the reader with the forthcoming information.

All paragraphs must be linked with transition words.

• Ending:

Don’t end randomly. Try to avoid such obvious expression as In conclusion or To sum up. To conclude effectively, you might

ü  Refer back to an opening statement

ü  Look into the future

ü  Suggest a new angle

ü  Make an original observation

ü  Make a short definitive statement

ü  Quote a famous saying

ü  Make a humorous comment

• Subheadings:

Subheadings are added to break the article up and highlight some important things (facts, examples, quotes, proverbs e.t.c) which the writer wants the  readers find in the article.

• Sentence Structure:

Simple, compound and Complex sentences are used in newspaper articles. There is a variation in using different sentence structures so as to avoid monotony in style. This helps in keeping the reader’s interest intact.

Tips for 500-word Essays

500-words Essay writing tips

In O-level English paper 1, Composition section students are required to write a 500 words essay. Now writing a 500 word essay would seem a difficult task for students who lack practice and are not very well versed in English Language. Well, it is not that difficult a job if you understand a few technical ways of essay writing. Do not lose heart if you do not get immediate results. Good results will appear gradually with time, especially when learning a foreign language. You will need constant practice and read  through carefully some tips for writing 500 word essays.

How to write a 500-word Descriptive essay?

Like all other essays it is can be easily divided into three or four parts. Every part should aim to separately give a clear description of the objects, people, atmosphere or moods of the surroundings, personal emotions or events. Every paragraph should focus on one of the points mentioned above. The use of suitable metaphors or similes could further add detail explanation to the points under description.  To compare things associated to that particular point is a good way of adding variety to the description. Shift your focus.

How to write a 500-word Narrative essay?

Technically Narrative essays comprise of a beginning, complication, rise of the complication/climax and resolution. These are the basic components given in a simple way. Nevertheless, it is not necessary to follow the same sequence of the features as mentioned above in writing a narrative essay. However, if you are aware of these basic features then the division of the paragraphs and stretching it up the desired word count should not be a problem.

How to write a 500-word Discursive essay?

1. Your essay must have a strong introduction. There are many ways to begin your essay. You may begin with a famous quotation, or add some proverbs relevant to the topic or mention an incident from your personal experience, or even start by eliciting a question to draw the attention of the readers towards your thesis statement. Yes, whatever way you may choose to begin you must add a thesis statement.
2. A thesis statement is a short statement that actually summarizes the main point of your essay. The topic given in the examination is a very broad one, which means that many things could be written about it. So, think of as many possible sub topics you can and identify one thesis statement that you wish to discuss. Once you have decided your thesis statement keep only those sub topics that would support your thesis statement and eliminate the rest.
3. Body

• The body of your essay may have 3 or 4 main paragraphs. Each paragraph should discuss one main point beginning with a topic sentence in support of your thesis statement.
• Arouse emotions and feelings in the reader and share your experience about the topic being discussed.
• Give examples from newspaper reports, personal experience or statistical data that you have come across to validate your point.
• Always give a concluding statement/line to a paragraph that would reinforce your topic sentence. It can also touch upon some information coming up in the next paragraphs;

4.  Conclusion. Close your essay with a  60 or 50 words concluding paragraph. This must summarize and restate only the most notable ideas discussed in the body. Do not introduce a fresh point in the conclusion.

Follow these essay tips, read extensively different writing materials and practice. A good grade awaits on the way.

Some phrases, sentences and paragraphs for Letter to the Editor

Some useful phrases to include in the letter

• after reading your Sept. 29 article on
• cartoonist Harris Mehboob should be aware that
• an affront to those of us who
• did a slow burn when I read difference of opinion
• how can anyone state, as did Lala Zaidi (June 3), that fail to agree
• I agree wholeheartedly with
• I am horrified by the Ang. 11 report
• I am one of the many “misguided” people who was outraged by
• I am puzzled by the reference to the
• I am writing on behalf of long-term effects of
• I found the short story in your September issue to be
• I disagree with the Reverend Prime Minister premise Feb. 7)
• I must take issue with infuriating to see that
• I really enjoyed who said
• I take exception to the opinions expressed by
• I strongly object in response to a July 3 letter writer
• I was disturbed/incensed/ pleased/angry/disappointed to read that it seems to me letter writer Zulfiqar Bajwa’s suggestion (Aug. 9) was intriguing, but neglected to mention one side of the story
• on the one hand/on the other hand point in dispute
• read with great/considerable interest
• presented a false picture
• regarding Senator Sam Blundel’s new bill for the hearing-impaired recipe for disaster
• the article on women in trades did much to
• several letter writers have commented upon

SENTENCES

• A Dec. 9 writer is incorrect in saying that the Regional Transit Board was abolished several years ago; we are, in fact, alive and well.
• I am writing to express my appreciation for your excellent coverage of City Council meetings on the local ground water issue.
• I commend you for your Aug. 11 editorial on magnet schools.
• I disagree with Elizabeth Saunders’ Apr. 5 column on city-supported recycling.
• I look forward to seeing a published retraction of the incorrect information given in this article.
• In Daily Dawn Dec. 9 column on the living will, she uses statistics that have long since been discredited.
• In his December 1 Counterpoint, “Tax Breaks for the Rich,” Gerald Tetley suggests that out of fear of giving the rich a break, we are actually cutting off our noses to spite our face.
• I was disappointed that not one of the dozens who wrote to complain about the hike in municipal sewer rates noticed that the rates are actually lower than they were ten years ago.
• Many thanks for your unpopular but eminently sane editorial stand on gun control (July 2).
• Please consider the cumulative effect of such legislation on our children.
• Please do not drop Flora Lewis/Cal Thomas/Ellen Goodman/George Will from your editorial pages.
• Several important factors were omitted from your Apr. 6 article on wide area telephone service.
• The writer of the Mar. 16 letter against triple trailers seemed to have little factual understanding of semi-truck traffic and professional truck drivers.
• Your Aug. 3 editorial on workers’ compensation overlooked a a crucial factor.
• Your June 29 editorial on child care failed to mention one of the largest and most effective groups working on this issue.

PARAGRAPHS

• Has anyone noticed that the city has become overrun with dogs in the last several years? Most of these dogs have no collars and run in packs of five to eight dogs. If I had small children, I’d worry when they played outdoors Where have these dogs come from? Whose problem is it? The city council’s? The health department’s? The police department’s?
• Your story on the newest technology in today’s emergency rooms featured the views of hospital administrators, medical care-givers, and manufacturers’ representatives. Nowhere was a patient mentioned. Is overlooking the patient also a feature of today’s emergency rooms? (If it is, it’s not new.)
•  To those of you who have been expressing yourself in these pages about the presence of wild geese in the city parks: Hello! A park is supposed to be natural. It is not meant to be as clean as your kitchen floor.
•  It has messy leaves and gravel and bugs and, yes, goose grease. If you can’t handle nature in the raw, there’s always your back yard.
•  Count at least six women (the undersigned) who were outraged at your “news story” on the recently appointed Episcopalian bishop for our area. You devoted several lines early on in the story (thus implying their relative importance) to Ms. Dinah Morris’s clothes, hairstyle, and even the color of her fingernail polish. Do you do this for new male bishops?
•  There was an error in your otherwise excellent article about the Lamprey Brothers Moving and Storage. In addition to brothers Henry, Colin, and Stephen (whom you mentioned), there is also brother Michael, a full partner.
•  A flurry of letter writers urges us to rally against the proposed congressional pay raise. I wonder if they understand the protection that such a raise would give us against special interest groups. Let’s give this one a closer look. It may actually be a sheep in wolf’s clothing.
•  I commend Meg Bishop for the use of “people first” language in her Jan. 2 column. By using expressions such as “people with severe disabilities” rather than “the severely disabled” and “people with quadriplegia” rather than “quadriplegics,” Bishop helps change the way society views people with disabilities.

Directed Writing: Format of Speech Writing

Directed Writing: Format on Speech Writing.

1. Speeches are to inform, share, support or persuade your audience on certain topics/topic given to you in section 1- directed writing.
2. Beware that you have to write exactly how you speak before your audience. In  fact, it is the easiest in its writing style.
3. Start with opening your speech marks.”   “,or ‘     ‘ both are fine.
4. Begin with greeting your audience.Keep in mind the type of speech being delivered (formal or informal). Eg. ’Good morning friends’, ‘hello’, ‘greeting my dear fellow peers’, ‘good evening ma’am, respected teachers’ e.t.c.
5. A greeting should be followed by a brief introduction. E.g. ’My name is Sara and  I am representing my class…’,’I am a student of O-level and my name is Awab’,’I am speaking on behalf of my staff members or I hereby speak on behalf of my residential community’ e.t.c.(depending on the type of speech, either formal or informal).
6. Do not confuse it with a debate. (I happen to give a question on speech writing to my class, many students involved in debates, they commenced their speeches on the same lines as done in debates’ ‘The motion of the house is…’).
7. Proceed by informing the audience about the purpose of your speech. What is the speech about? ‘I am here with you to discuss/inform/share/ask your views about the raising  rates of the edibles at our school canteen’, ‘I would/will like talk on increasing issues on misconduct of my fellow peers on campus’ e.t.c.
8. Speech should be written in a way as it must be spoken. Thus, it is the only genre in directed writing where the candidate is permitted to experiment with the  pattern of sentence structure (SVO)  used as a standard in English language. e.g. ‘ On behalf of my class I would like to speak on some imperative issues  never discussed before.’ could be written as ‘There are some  imperative issues, never been discussed, ever, before here on campuson, so on behalf of my entire class, I would like to speak on those, today’.
9. A speech is a genre where the candidate can use the ‘ing’ form wherever he desire.e.g.‘I am speaking  here in front of you..’,’today we will be discussing…’,’I  am representing  my class…’.
10. In an informal speech the candidate can use ellipses of fillers to give it a realistic flavor. E.g. ‘hmm, Good morning! friends… my name is SSara’. The repetition of the letter  ‘s’ highlights a stress given by the speaker. And the speech begins with ‘hmm’, another technique that shows whether the speaker is hesitant or either preparing himself to begin his speech.
11.  Moreover,this technique may help to identifya sense of anxiety or tension projected in the speech. Furthermore, these are best suited in writing an informal speech.
12. NOTE:The fillers and ellipses should be used sparingly, otherwise, it would give an impression to the examiner that the candidate is deliberately using these tools to show the examiner of his awareness of this technique.
13. A speech must have rhetorical questions (those questions that do not make your audience think hard about something) to show the speaker is in immediate interaction with his audience. E.g. ‘I hope you understand what I mean?’, “I hope you all are doing well?’, ‘do you have any questions on this matter? I would love to answer those’.
14. Writing a speech does not permit you to add ‘slangs’ or any nonstandard form of English words like ‘I wanna talk too ya’,’you gotta luv it’,’Hiya chicks’.
15. Contractions are included. E.g.’ I’m here’ instead of ‘I am here’.
16. Certain colloquial words could only be included in an informal speech for instance ’hey fellas’, for ‘Hello fellow friends’, ‘This campus is great deal’, in place of, ‘This campus is a great place’.
17. In speech writing make use of exclamation marks. This would show stress being laid on some spoken words.
18. The candidate can italicize the words or use upper case like ‘ARE YOU with me!’. Other variations like underlining the sentence or a particular word would suggest a rise and fall in intonation of the speaker. And this would add a realistic feel to your speech.
19. Remember you have to write as if you are speaking to your audience at present.Hence, whatever you write must show as if you are infront of your audience and aware that speech writing differs from other forms of written genres in this respect.
20. End your speech by thanking your audience for listening to you.’Thank you all for being with me today.’ In an informal speech you could add a joke stating how the audience put had up with you for so long.
21. You may also end with asking them to present their queries on the matter.e.g. ‘would you like to ask some questions? I would appreciate to have a question answer session with you all’.
22. Another way of signing off can be by adding a ‘quote’
23. In the end a simple ‘Thank you and good evening’, ”Thank you and see you all again’ would do.
24. Remember not to exceed the word limit.
25. Do not forget to close the speech marks at the closing of your speech, students often tend to forget it in the end.

Worried about English Paper 2? Read what CIE Examiners have to offer.

Reading (Paper 2)-

50 marks
I hour 45 mins

 These tips contain useful advice and highlight some common mistakes made by students.They are collected under exam question sub-headings to help you focus on what is expected for Reading paper.

 Paper 2 Section 1- 25 marks

• Though this question is called Summary it is not a summary in the sense of being a general description of a situation but instead it is a focused list of the specific ideas or details contained in the passage, after anything irrelevant to the two questions has been removed.
i) read and underline relevant material; count that there are at least 15 points altogether,           and preferably 20 (fewer for Paper 1)
ii) transfer the points into a plan, whilst changing them into your own words
iii) group the points logically (using arrows/brackets); put them in order (using                                numbers), and decide which ones can be combined into one sentence
iv) write the summary in two paragraphs (one for Paper 1), using complex sentences
v) check the summary for accurate expression; adapt the length and improve if necessary by      adding material overlooked or by removing repetition.

 Remember that summaries never include:
 i) examples
ii) repetitions
iii) direct speech
iv) figurative language
v) minor details.

All these must be removed from the passage, and then you use only the facts, which are
what you have left.

 • Find all the points you can for each part of the question; do not stop when you get to 15 as these may not be the same ones the examiner has on their list. The only way to be sure of getting all 15 Reading marks is to use everything relevant.

 • To get all 5 Writing marks you need to show evidence of clear and concise summary style throughout, precise focus and the use of your own words.

 • Do not give your summary in the wrong form as this is penalised i.e. do not offer bullet points or a list, or write in the first person, or comment on the content of the passages, or present a narrative, or use quotation.

 • Though you must use your own words whenever possible, you do not have to find synonyms for technical objects e.g. solar heaters.

 • Both halves of the question are equally important and should be done in the same way and given the same length of about half a page.

 • Summaries much longer than half a page are no longer summaries and will be penalized in the Writing mark.

 • To be concise enough for summary style and to get in all the points you should use complex sentences containing two or three points in each.

 • Do not repeat points, or express them vaguely; (these will be given an R (repetition) or PNM (point not made) respectively in the margin, and discounted.

 • There is no need to introduce or conclude a summary, and doing so wastes time and words. Start by using the wording of part of the question e.g. ‘The features of the desert were…’

 • Notice exactly which part of the passage is to be summarised in the question and do not include information from other parts of the text.

 Do not forget that 10 words for the summary are already given, therefore try to keep the summary upto or leass than 150 words

 • Your summary must be in a paragraph of continuous writing, not as a list.

 • Use the bullets points to help you structure your piece of writing.

 • You are expected to develop the ideas contained in the passage, and add original details of your own, but your response should remain based on the passage and not stray too far from it. This is not a creative writing exercise.

• It will help you enormously to highlight the material you are going to use in the text, and then write a quick plan in order to organise it into a logical structure before you start writing your response. This will enable you to avoid repetition and to make sure you are fully answering the question.

• Use everything which is relevant, not just some of the material. On the other hand, there may be some parts which you should ignore because they are not covered by the question.

• You should not copy big chunks of text and you should use your own words when not actually giving details.

 • You can either integrate the two, e.g. advantages and disadvantages, or deal with them separately. You can decide on your own structure for your answer, but what matters is that there should be a structure of some kind, and one which the reader can discern.

 • If you are given bullet points to remind you what should be included, use them to check you have covered what is required, and they can also help you to structure your answer. The material from the passage should be put into the appropriate section and not repeated.

 Paper 2  question 2- 25 marks

 • Skim read the passage for gist before you look at the question. Then scan the passage to find the answer to each of the questions in turn.

 • Be aware that the questions are graded in an increasing level of difficulty.

 • The answers to the questions will be found in chronological order in the text.

 • Responding precisely to the wording of the question is very important in this part of the exam.

 • Notice how many marks there are for each question. This will help you to understand the length of the answer and the number of points required. Obviously the question with 2 marks is expecting more than the question with only 1 mark.

 • There is no need to repeat the whole of the question before beginning of your answer. ‘He means that…’ or ‘It is because…’ are enough to provide a grammatical introduction to your sentence.

 • Where you are asked to give a word or words you do not need to answer with a full sentence.

 • When you are asked to find words they are separate not consecutive words unless you are told otherwise. Do not give several words if asked only for one, even if you think there are other correct answers.

 • Notice which questions specifically ask you to use your own words and do not then repeat 
in your answer any of the words contained in the phrase to be explained.

source: cambridgestudents

tips for speech writing