NEA: the Package

Your subject is the closure of a slate quarry village’s last shop. Scope the whole Package: subject kind, Welsh connection, three formats, word budget, and which piece is the timed one.

1. 01Name the subject and its kind

   The subject is one village losing its last shop. Under the specification’s six options this is a social issue, and arguably also a specific area of Wales — either is defensible and naming which you have chosen is the first thing to write down. The Welsh connection is direct and needs no argument, which is what you want.

2. 02Decide what material you actually have

   Facts: opening dates, population, distance to the nearest alternative, what the council or a community group has said. People: the shopkeeper, an elderly customer, somebody who has moved away. Your own stake: what the shop meant, whether you think it can be saved. Three kinds of material, so three formats.

3. 03Choose three formats that differ in shape

   A REPORT carries the facts and takes headings and sub-headings naturally, which the specification rewards. A PORTRAIT of the shopkeeper carries the people and the description. A DIARY or BLOG carries your own view. Report, portrait, blog: one impersonal, one third-person descriptive, one first-person argumentative. Compare that with report, article and letter, which would be three versions of the same register.

4. 04Set the word budget

   The whole Package is 1,500 to 2,000 words and one piece must be 400 to 600. A workable budget: report 700, portrait 500 as the timed piece, blog 500 — total 1,700, comfortably inside the range with room to grow. Write the budget down before you draft, because a piece that runs to 1,200 words will force you to cut a different one.

5. 05Choose the timed piece deliberately

   The timed piece must be 400 to 600 words, handwritten, in two hours, with no redrafting. Choose the one that depends least on facts you would need to look up and most on writing you can produce from notes — here, the portrait. A fact-heavy report is the worst possible choice for a task where you may take in only short bullet points. Then add the contents page and the bibliography, and the scope is complete.

Result: One social-issue subject, three formats chosen for their different shapes, a 700 / 500 / 500 word budget totalling 1,700, and the portrait nominated as the timed piece because it depends on writing rather than on facts you cannot bring in.

You are choosing between (a) the Welsh language in the workplace, (b) the history of a local male voice choir, and (c) sea defences on your stretch of coast. Apply the three tests and choose.

1. 01Test one — usable material

   (a) has an enormous amount of published material and almost nothing first-hand unless you can interview employers. (b) has minute books, photographs, and members you can talk to — all first-hand, all local. (c) has council documents, news coverage and a visible physical subject you can describe and photograph. On this test (b) and (c) pass comfortably and (a) does not.

2. 02Test two — a year of interest

   Be honest rather than aspirational. (a) is important but abstract, and abstract subjects are hard to stay with. (b) will hold your interest only if you care about the choir or know somebody in it. (c) has the advantage of changing while you write — storms, decisions, opinions in the village — which keeps a subject alive.

3. 03Test three — a view you can state

   (a): most people’s view is that the Welsh language should be used more at work, which is a position but not an argument. (b): a view might be that the choir matters less for its singing than for what it holds together — that is arguable. (c): a view might be that the money will be spent where the houses are worth most rather than where the risk is greatest — arguable, and checkable.

4. 04Check against Unit 1 Section B

   Ask the examiner’s own question of each: why did you choose it? (a) invites the honest answer ‘because it is on the syllabus’. (b) invites ‘because my grandfather sang in it and the minute books are in our house’. (c) invites ‘because the road floods and nobody agrees what to do’. Two of those are conversations; one is not.

5. 05Choose and scope

   Take (c). Report on the proposals and the costs; portrait of somebody whose house is affected; diary or blog covering the week of a decision or a storm. Local, first-hand, changing, arguable, and connected to Wales without argument. Then write the one-sentence view down and keep it in front of you, because every one of the three pieces must be consistent with it.

Result: Sea defences wins on all three tests and on the Section B question. The national subject failed not because it is unimportant but because it offers no first-hand material and no arguable personal position — and both of those are stated requirements of the Package.

You have finished a first draft of the report, 720 words. Build the routine that takes it from draft to submission, and say what each step protects.

1. 01Step one — check it against the plan

   Before any language work, check the structure: does the piece do what the plan said, in the order the plan said, within the word budget? Structural problems are cheap to fix now and impossible to fix after submission. If the report has become an opinion piece, decide which it is and make it that consistently.

2. 02Step two — discuss it with your teacher

   The specification explicitly allows discussion of the content, and this is the point to use it — while the piece is still a draft rather than a submission. Be clear with your teacher that you are asking about content and structure, not asking them to mark it. That conversation is permitted and recorded; a marked draft is a submitted piece.

3. 03Step three — the six accuracy passes

   Treiglo from the trigger list, verb systems, agreement and conjugated prepositions, spelling, punctuation, register consistency. One class of error per pass. On a 720-word report this takes about twenty-five minutes and it typically finds between six and fifteen things.

4. 04Step four — read it aloud

   Reading aloud catches what six silent passes miss: sentences that run out of breath, repeated constructions, a paragraph that says the same thing twice. It also rehearses the piece for Unit 1 Section B, where you will have to talk about it. Ten minutes.

5. 05Step five — the presentation check, then submit

   Headings and sub-headings present and useful; the word count recorded; every source noted with its date for the bibliography; the piece legible and complete. Then hand it in, and do not ask for it back. The mark it receives is the mark the unit records, and the whole routine exists because of that.

Result: Structure, discussion, six accuracy passes, read aloud, presentation check, submit. About an hour on a 720-word piece — which is a small price for the only revision the specification will ever allow you.

You have a week’s notice. The timed piece will be the portrait of the shopkeeper, 500 words. Build the bullet sheet, and show where the line between allowed and forbidden falls.

1. 01What the specification permits

   Short bullet points including statistics, facts, examples and relevant quotations. That is a genuine permission and it covers most of what a portrait needs: dates, ages, the number of years the shop has traded, two or three things the person actually said, one physical detail you noticed. What it does not cover is a completed piece of work prepared in advance, which may not be taken in.

2. 02The facts block

   Six to eight bullets: the shop opened in a particular decade; the person has run it for a stated number of years; the village population; the distance to the next shop; the date of the closure announcement. Numbers are hard to recall under pressure and easy to write on a sheet, so this is exactly what the permission is for.

3. 03The quotation block

   Two or three short things the person said, recorded accurately when you spoke to them. Relevant quotations are explicitly permitted. Two are enough for a 500-word portrait — a portrait built out of quotations stops being your writing, and the unit is marked on YOUR Welsh.

4. 04The language block — and its limit

   This is where judgement is needed. A list of individual phrases and constructions you intend to use is a set of bullet points. A paragraph you have written out in advance and intend to copy is prepared work. Keep it to items: an idiom, a comparative structure, a connective, a conjugated preposition you always get wrong. If a bullet reaches sentence length, it has stopped being a bullet.

5. 05Rehearse without the sheet

   In the week before, write the portrait once at home, then put it away and do not take it in. The purpose is not to memorise it but to discover which sentences are hard, so that the bullet sheet can carry exactly those. The sheet must be submitted with the completed task in some centres, so keep it clean and keep it honest.

Result: A one-page sheet: eight fact bullets, three short quotations, and a dozen language items. Everything on it is a bullet point, nothing on it is a written paragraph — which is precisely where the specification draws the line between permitted material and prepared work.

Your Package is on sea defences: a report, a portrait and a blog. Prepare the two hardest of the six answers in Welsh and show how each survives a follow-up question.

1. 01Answer four — the research

   Es i i ddau gyfarfod cyhoeddus yn y neuadd, a darllenais i adroddiad y cyngor sir. Siaradais i hefyd â dyn sy’n byw yn y tŷ agosaf at y môr. (I went to two public meetings in the hall, and I read the county council’s report. I also spoke to a man who lives in the house nearest the sea.) Three sources, three kinds — a meeting, a document, a person — which is what ‘signs of research, analysis, comparing and selecting’ looks like when it is said out loud.

2. 02The follow-up to answer four

   Expect: A oedd y cyfarfodydd a’r adroddiad yn cytuno? (Did the meetings and the report agree?) This is the cross-referencing question and it is the best question you will be asked, so have the answer ready: Nac oedden, ddim yn llwyr. Roedd yr adroddiad yn sôn am gost, ac roedd y cyfarfod yn sôn am bwy fyddai’n cael eu hamddiffyn. (No, not entirely. The report talked about cost, and the meeting talked about who would be protected.)

3. 03Answer six — what surprised you

   Y peth mwyaf annisgwyl oedd nad ydy pawb yn y pentref eisiau’r un peth. Roeddwn i wedi cymryd yn ganiataol y byddai pawb o blaid amddiffyn. (The most unexpected thing was that not everybody in the village wants the same thing. I had taken for granted that everybody would be in favour of defending.) Note the pluperfect and the nominal clause with nad — this is a reflective answer and it needs A2-shaped Welsh.

4. 04The follow-up to answer six

   Expect: A newidiodd hynny dy farn di? (Did that change your view?) Answer honestly and specifically: Do, i raddau. Dw i’n dal i feddwl bod angen amddiffyn, ond dw i’n deall nawr pam mae rhai’n anghytuno. (Yes, to an extent. I still think defence is needed, but I now understand why some disagree.) Conceding while holding a position is exactly what the balanced-conclusions clause rewards.

5. 05Practise the interruption itself

   The examiner is required to initiate a change of direction. Rehearse being stopped mid-answer and asked about a different element — from the research straight to why you chose the subject. If your six answers are separate and self-contained rather than a single memorised sequence, the change costs you nothing. If they are a speech, it derails you completely.

Result: Two prepared answers, each with its predictable follow-up, each self-contained. The research answer names three DIFFERENT kinds of source; the reflection answer admits a change of mind and still holds a position — and both are built so that an interruption cannot break them.