Paper 2: Written productive skills
Duration: 1 hour 30 minutes
Weighting: 25%
Paper 2 is externally set and externally assessed. It consists of two sections.
- Section A (250–400 words): Based on the options—cultural diversity, customs and traditions, health, leisure, science and technology
- Section B (150–250 words): Based on the core—communication and media, global issues, socialrelationships
The aim of this component is to assess the student’s ability to communicate accurately in writing for avariety of purposes. It requires the student to demonstrate his or her productive skills.
Section A
This section of the paper consists of five tasks requiring different types of texts. Each task is based on adifferent option, from which the student chooses one. Students’ factual knowledge of the options will not be tested as such, but can, and should, be used to support what the student wishes to communicate. Each task requires an answer with a specific text type, such as a formal letter or a report. To this end, studentsneed to identify the purpose(s) of the task in order to use register and style appropriate to the text type.
Students should:
- use language accurately and appropriately
- develop and organize ideas relevant to the task
- produce the features of the required text type correctly.
Section A requires students to produce text types from the following list.
TEXT TYPES (Cliquez sur le lien!!)
- Article
- Blog/diary entry
- Brochure, leaflet, flyer, pamphlet, advertisement
- Interview
- Introduction to debate, speech, talk, presentation
- News report
- Official report
- Proposal
- Review
- Set of instructions, guidelines
- Written correspondence
Section B
The student writes a reasoned argument in the form of a response to a stimulus text dealing with a topiclinked to the core. The text could be a news report or a comment by a public figure. The response should engage with details of the text in order to develop some coherent discussion of the topic area, which is informed by what has been learned during the study of the core. There is no prescribed answer—what is assessed is the student’s ability to express his or her reflection on, or personal response to, the stimulus.
