Writing in a range of forms

You are given a piece of your own work back with 12 out of 20. Using only the Appendix A descriptors, work out what a 16 would have required.

1. 01Locate the band you are in

   10 to 12 reads: expresses themselves clearly and relatively accurately; USUALLY plans carefully and accurately; pays attention to register, form and audience by varying the style; appropriate use of personal style; expresses an opinion effectively with relevant reasons; a range of linguistic resources and QUITE a firm grasp of grammar and syntax.

2. 02Locate the band above

   13 to 15 reads: clearly and accurately (the ‘relatively’ is gone); plans carefully (the ‘usually’ is gone); pays CLOSE attention to register; CONSISTENT use of personal style; supports the opinion with relevant reasons; a wide range of resources and a FIRM grasp of grammar.

3. 03Name the three differences precisely

   Accuracy must become reliable rather than relative. Planning must become invariable rather than usual. And the personal style must become consistent across the whole piece rather than present in patches. None of those is a vocabulary problem.

4. 04Locate the top band

   16 to 20 adds ‘intelligently’ to the expression, ‘in detail and carefully’ to the planning, ‘confident’ to the personal style, and ‘strong reasoning’ to the opinion. So the ladder from 12 to 18 is: make accuracy reliable, make planning invariable, make style consistent, then make it confident and the reasoning strong.

5. 05Convert it into three actions

   One: an accuracy sweep on every piece, every time, so ‘relatively accurate’ becomes ‘accurate’. Two: a written plan before every piece, including in the examination, so ‘usually plans’ becomes ‘plans carefully’. Three: choose a stance in the first paragraph and hold it to the last, so the personal style is consistent rather than intermittent. Those three actions are worth more marks than any amount of new vocabulary.

Result: The gap from 12 to 16 is described by the grid itself as reliability of accuracy, invariability of planning, and consistency of personal style — three habits, none of which requires knowing more Welsh than you already know.

The idea is: the number of Welsh speakers in this village has fallen, and the local Menter Iaith is trying to reverse it. Write the opening sentence three times — for a formal letter, for a blog, and for a leaflet — and name the marker that carries each register.

1. 01Formal letter

   Yr wyf yn ysgrifennu atoch ynglŷn â’r gostyngiad yn nifer y siaradwyr Cymraeg yn y pentref hwn. (I am writing to you concerning the fall in the number of Welsh speakers in this village.) Markers: yr wyf rather than dw i; the composite preposition ynglŷn â; the demonstrative hwn rather than yma.

2. 02Blog

   Dw i’n poeni. Mae llai a llai o bobl yn siarad Cymraeg yn y pentref lle ces i fy magu. (I am worried. Fewer and fewer people speak Welsh in the village where I was brought up.) Markers: the contracted dw i; a short opening sentence; the personal relative clause lle ces i fy magu.

3. 03Leaflet

   Ydych chi’n siarad Cymraeg? Mae angen eich help chi ar y pentref hwn. (Do you speak Welsh? This village needs your help.) Markers: a direct question to the reader; the second person chi; the idiom mae angen … ar, ‘X needs Y’, which conjugates: mae angen help arnoch chi.

4. 04Check the mutations that changed

   In the letter, nifer y siaradwyr uses the genitive with no word for ‘of’ — the specification’s own rule. In the blog, ces i fy magu keeps fy plus the nasal mutation of magu — but m is not a nasal-mutable radical, so magu is unchanged; a learner who ‘corrects’ it has invented an error. In the leaflet, y pentref hwn takes no mutation because pentref is masculine.

5. 05State what did NOT change

   The content is identical in all three: the number has fallen, and something is being done. Only the register moved. That is the exercise the examiner is setting whenever the rubric names an audience, and doing it deliberately is what the descriptor ‘varying the style accordingly’ rewards.

Result: Three openings, one idea. The register was carried by six or seven small signals — yr wyf against dw i, a composite preposition, a direct question, the second person — and by nothing larger.

Your Package subject is the future of a small Welsh-medium primary school in your area. Choose three of the seven formats and justify each choice by what it lets you do that the others do not.

1. 01List what the subject contains

   Facts and numbers (pupil roll, catchment, council proposals); people (the head teacher, a parent, a former pupil); and a personal stake (your own view of what closure would mean). Three different kinds of material, so three different forms.

2. 02Choose the factual form

   A report or article carries the numbers and the proposals. It lets you use the impersonal — cynhaliwyd cyfarfod, ‘a meeting was held’; adroddwyd, ‘it was reported’ — and it lets you use sub-headings, which the specification explicitly rewards. This is also the natural home for the research the Package must show.

3. 03Choose the human form

   A portread of the head teacher, or an interview with a parent. A portrait carries description and character; an interview carries two voices and lets an opposing view be heard without you having to endorse it. Either one gives the reader a person rather than a policy, which is what the descriptor ‘personal and relevant comments’ is asking for.

4. 04Choose the personal form

   A diary entry from the day the proposal was announced, or a blog written afterwards. This is where your own attitude belongs — and the specification says the Package’s prevailing feature should be the candidate’s personal views. A diary lets you be uncertain; a blog lets you argue. Choose according to which you can sustain in Welsh.

5. 05Check the three against each other

   Report, portrait, diary: one impersonal, one about somebody else, one about you; one full of facts, one full of description, one full of reaction. Three registers, three voices, three vocabularies. Compare that with report, article and letter, which would be three versions of the same register and would make the ‘range of linguistic resources’ clause impossible to satisfy.

Result: Report, portread and diary — chosen because they differ in VOICE (impersonal, third person, first person) and in register, not merely in name. That spread is what lets one Package demonstrate a range of linguistic resources.

The task is a Unit 5 Section B article in Welsh responding to an English-language piece about young people leaving rural Wales for work. Build the plan, then write the opening paragraph in Welsh.

1. 01Line 1 — the position

   Position: the problem is real but the usual explanation, that young people simply prefer cities, is too simple; housing and transport matter more. Writing the position as a sentence with a BUT in it guarantees that the piece has an argument rather than a topic.

2. 02Lines 2 to 4 — the developed points

   Point one: wages are only part of it — evidence, the cost of a first house against a local salary. Point two: transport decides whether a rural job is reachable at all — evidence, the last bus. Point three: Welsh-medium work exists but is invisible to school leavers — evidence, the Menter Iaith and local employers. Each point names its evidence in the plan, so no paragraph has to be filled with opinion later.

3. 03Line 5 — the counter-view

   Counter-view: some leave because they want to, and a community that treats every departure as a loss patronises them. Answer: the argument is not about preventing departure but about making staying possible. Naming the honest objection here is what the specification’s ‘balanced conclusions’ clause is asking for.

4. 04Line 6 — the close

   Close: the question is not why they leave but whether they could have stayed — which returns to the opening position, changed by the three points.

5. 05Write the opening in Welsh

   Mae’r erthygl yn iawn i ddweud bod pobl ifanc yn gadael cefn gwlad Cymru. Ond mae’r rheswm a roddir yno — eu bod yn well ganddyn nhw fyw mewn dinas — yn rhy syml o lawer. Yn fy marn i, tai a thrafnidiaeth sy’n penderfynu’r peth. (The article is right to say that young people are leaving rural Wales. But the reason given there — that they prefer city life — is far too simple. In my view it is housing and transport that decide the matter.) Three sentences: the source acknowledged, the position stated with a BUT, and the two points announced.

Result: A six-line plan and a three-sentence opening that acknowledges the source, states a position and announces the argument. Note the emphatic construction in the third sentence — tai a thrafnidiaeth sy’n penderfynu — which is exactly the A2 word order the Unit 6 inventory asks for.

Sweep this paragraph in the fixed order and name the rule for every change. ‘Es i i Bangor gyda fy brawd. Roedd hi’n bwrw glaw, ond aethon ni i’r castell beth bynnag. Gwelais i tri castell yng Ngwynedd y llynedd. Mae’n gyfrifoldeb ar ni i ofalu am nhw. Yr wyf yn meddwl bod nhw’n bwysig, a dw i’n gobeithio gwelith pobl ifanc nhw.’

1. 01Pass one — treiglo

   ‘fy brawd’: fy takes the nasal mutation and b becomes m, so fy mrawd (my brother). ‘Gwelais i tri’: the object of a short-form verb softens, so dri. ‘tri castell’: tri takes the aspirate mutation, but c becomes ch — so tri chastell. Three errors in one pass, all from the trigger list.

2. 02Pass two — verbs

   ‘gwelith pobl ifanc nhw’ mixes systems. Either use the periphrastic future — y bydd pobl ifanc yn eu gweld nhw — or keep a short form but attach the object correctly. The cleaner repair for a learner is the periphrastic: dw i’n gobeithio y bydd pobl ifanc yn eu gweld nhw.

3. 03Pass three — agreement

   ‘ar ni’ must be the conjugated form arnon ni (on us). ‘bod nhw’n bwysig’ needs the possessive-style nominal clause: eu bod nhw’n bwysig (that they are important). And ‘gofalu am nhw’ takes the conjugated preposition: gofalu amdanyn nhw (to look after them).

4. 04Pass four and five — spelling and punctuation

   Nothing is misspelt here. The punctuation is sound: the comma before ond is correct, and beth bynnag needs none. Recording a clean pass is useful — it tells you the sweep is finding real errors rather than manufacturing them.

5. 05Pass six — register

   The paragraph opens in a narrative spoken register (Es i, Roedd hi’n bwrw glaw) and then jumps to Yr wyf yn meddwl before dropping back to dw i. Fix the ending to match the beginning: Dw i’n meddwl eu bod nhw’n bwysig. The corrected paragraph reads: Es i i Fangor gyda fy mrawd. Roedd hi’n bwrw glaw, ond aethon ni i’r castell beth bynnag. Gwelais i dri chastell yng Ngwynedd y llynedd. Mae’n gyfrifoldeb arnon ni i ofalu amdanyn nhw. Dw i’n meddwl eu bod nhw’n bwysig, a dw i’n gobeithio y bydd pobl ifanc yn eu gweld nhw.

6. 06Note the seventh change

   ‘i Bangor’ became ‘i Fangor’ in the corrected version: i takes the soft mutation and b becomes f. That one was in the original and is easy to miss because Bangor is a familiar place name — which is exactly why the sweep reads the trigger list and not the meaning.

Result: Seven changes: three mutations, one verb system, three agreement or conjugation errors, one register repair. Every one was found by a pass that was looking for a single class of error, and none required knowing any Welsh that the paragraph did not already use.