AQA ENGLISH LANGUAGE
How to get good marks for AO6 for English Language writing tasks (P1Q5 and P2Q5)
PART 1
This is the 1st guide in a 3-part series focussing on AO6 — the 16 mark assessment objective for the English Language writing tasks. The mark scheme is identical for both papers, so the guides apply to fiction and non-fiction writing.
Contents of this guide
This guide is part of the English Language AO6 series:
Part 1 - Introducing AO6 and sentence demarcation
What this series is about — the two AOs for writing
The three guides in this series apply to both English Language writing questions (P1Q5 and P2Q5) since they both use the same mark scheme. There are two assessment objectives for these questions:
AO5: “Communicate clearly, effectively and imaginatively, selecting and adapting tone, style and register for different forms, purposes and audiences. Organise information and ideas, using structural and grammatical features to support coherence and cohesion of texts.” (24 marks)
AO6: “Candidates must use a range of vocabulary and sentence structures for clarity, purpose and effect, with accurate spelling and punctuation.” (16 marks)
AO5 is essentially the macro-level assessment — how good is the content of the whole text? AO6 is the micro-level assessment — how good are your sentences?
AO5: whole text. How good are your characters/ideas, plot/argument, narrative voice/style, structure, cohesion and paragraphing? This is the focus of our various creative writing skills guides for these questions and we have lots of information about this.
AO6: sentences. How accurate are your sentences? How well written are they, including vocabulary choice? How varied are they in length and structure?
This guide is focussed entirely on AO6 — getting good marks for your sentences.
The six bullet points for AO6 in the AQA mark scheme
Focus of the bullet point
Example descriptor
Level 2 — Grade 5
Example descriptor
Level 4 — Grade 8-9
1. Sentence demarcation
Sentence demarcation is mostly secure and sometimes accurate
Sentence demarcation is consistently secure and consistently accurate
2. Punctuation
Some control of a range of punctuation
Wide range of punctuation is used with a high level of accuracy
3. Sentence forms
Attempts a variety of sentence forms
Uses a full range of appropriate sentence forms for effect
4. Grammatical accuracy
Some use of Standard English with some control of agreement
Uses Standard English consistently and appropriately with secure control of complex grammatical structures
5. Spelling*
Some accurate spelling of more complex words
High level of accuracy in spelling, including ambitious vocabulary
6. Vocabulary
Varied use of vocabulary
Extensive and ambitious use of vocabulary
Notes on the mark scheme bullet points
* The spelling bullet point won’t be covered in this series as it would broaden the scope too much — we’ve already had to split it over 3 different guides! Just write some stuff on a computer and see what words it flags up as spelled wrongly. Then learn those spellings.
What does it all mean? 5 key questions for doing well at AO6.
This assessment criteria creates the following key questions that you need to be able to answer to do well in AO6. In this first guide in the series we’ll go through question 1, which is the most complex one to explain. In the second guide we’ll look at the second and third questions, and in the third guide we’ll look at final two questions.
1. What is a sentence and how do you know when one starts and ends in order to “consistently” do demarcation accurately?
2. How do you accurately do the punctuation that students often get wrong?
3. How do you use a “wide range” of punctuation?
4. How do you create “varied sentence forms” with “complex grammatical structures” and with “control of agreement”?
5. What is “ambitious” vocabulary and how do you use it “extensive[ly]”?
Q1: What is a sentence and how do you know when one starts and ends? (Bullet Point 1 - “sentence demarcation”)
This first part is quite technical, but it’s important for understanding not just how to demarcate sentences, but also for some of the punctuation rules to come (bullet point 2 in the mark scheme), and for understanding what it means to create “varied sentence forms” (bullet point 3 in the mark scheme). This part of the guide will lay the groundwork for all that. It’s quite complicated, but we’ll keep things as simple as we can. There are 4 steps we need to go through.
Step 1. Sentences are made up of clauses
The first thing you need to understand is that sentences are made up of clauses. Every sentence contains at least one clause. We’ll talk a bit more about what clauses are in the next step, but you need to understand that they’re a thing. A sentence is a collection of one or more clauses.
Sentences come in types — you would have learnt about this in primary school — and the type of sentence is determined by the number of clauses and by the way those clauses are combined. We discuss this in more detail in our guide to sentences, but here’s a quick reminder:
Simple sentences are just one clause
Compound sentences are two or more clauses joined by coordinating conjunctions (or by semi-colons or dashes, more on this in the next guide)
Complex sentences are two or more clauses joined by subordinating conjunctions or relative pronouns
Compound-complex sentences are a mix of compound and complex sentences
If any of that is completely alien to you, look at our guide to sentences. But if you’re clear that a sentence is a collection of one or more clauses, you’re ready for the next step.
Step 2. Each clauses has one main verb
The next thing you need to understand is that each clause contains one (and only one) main verb. The main verb in a clause is the verb that conveys its tense. So, if you change the tense of the clause, the main verb is the one you change. Sometimes clauses have other verbs in them too, but these are not main verbs. They are generally participles, which don’t convey tense (they’re what’s called non-finite verbs). Let’s look at a quick example to make this a bit clearer:
Harriet walked through the freight yard towards the woods, hopping over the tracks and humming to herself.
This sentence is made up of one clause (it’s a simple sentence), but it has three verbs: one main verb (walked) and two present participles (hopping, humming). You can tell that “walked” is the main verb because it’s the one you need to change if you want to change the tense. At the moment it’s in the past tense; the present tense version of this sentence would be this:
Harriet walks through the freight yard towards the woods, hopping over the tracks and humming to herself.
Notice that “walked” is the only verb that changes — the two present participles stay exactly the same. That is because “walked” is the only main verb in this sentence. And that is because this sentence only contains one clause (e.g. it’s a simple sentence).
Let’s look at another few quick examples — see if you can spot the main verb (the one that conveys the tense) in each one. We’ll explain afterwards. These are simple sentences, so they contain just one clause, and therefore one main verb. But what is it?
Shopping is fun.
Running as fast as possible, she went to the station.
Her voice was very loud in the silence.
She had not eaten a burger like this before.
Some of these are slightly tricky. Let’s go through them quickly:
Shopping is fun. Here the main verb is …. is. The past tense version would be Shopping was fun. In this case the main verb is the verb ‘be’, which is one of the trickiest ones to spot (see below).
Running as fast as possible, she went to the station. Here the main verb is … went. This is the past tense of the verb ‘go’ — another tricky one to spot (see below). The present tense version would be Running as fast as possible, she goes to the station. Notice that the whole sentence is the same, except for the main verb.
Her voice was very loud in the silence. Here the main verb is … was. This is ‘be’ again. the present tense version would be Her voice is very loud in the silence.
She had not eaten a burger like this before. Here the main verb is … had eaten. This one is tricky because it’s in the past perfect tense, so there’s an auxiliary and a past participle (it’s a verb phrase, technically speaking) and because it’s negated (it’s got a “not” in the middle). There’s not nearly enough room to explain all this here, but you should be able to see the tensed verb is ‘had’ — that’s the one you’d change if you switched to present (She has not eaten a burger like this before).
If you’re thinking this is hard, don’t panic. Sometimes it is (like with example 4, which is why we included it here), but most of the time it isn’t that hard. And you don’t have to be an expert. You just have to know what a main verb is. Why? Well, when it comes to identifying clauses, which is essential for correct sentence demarcation, being able to recognise the main verb(s) is the key step. We’ll look at this in more detail in step 3, coming up soon.
Verbs to be careful of when trying to identify the main verb
The two verbs that often throw people are ‘be’ and ‘go’ because they’re very irregular in English, and people don’t always realise they’re verbs. ‘Be’ has lots of irregular forms (is, are, were, etc) and ‘go’ becomes a seemingly different verb in the past tense (went). Try not to get caught out by this.
Step 3. Counting the clauses means counting the main verbs
So far we’ve said:
All sentences are made up of clauses
Every clause has one main verb in it (and no more)
From this, we can deduce the following:
The number of main verbs in a sentence is equal to the number of clauses in a sentence
So, if there is one main verb then there must be one clause; if there are two mains verbs then there must be two clauses; and so on.
Now, this is a slight over-simplification, which we’ll discuss in the box below about what are called compound predicates, but for most regular sentences, this is the rule. The number of main verbs equals the number of clauses.
Let’s look at some examples sentences with the main verbs marked in bold.
When she stepped onto the footpath and into the shady woods, the passage from warmth to cool was like swimming into a cool plume of spring water in the lake.
This sentence has two main verbs and therefore two clauses. (It’s a complex sentence, though that doesn’t really matter for our purposes — we just need to be able to spot the clauses.)Airy clouds of buzzing gnats swirled away from her, spinning from the sudden movement, like pond creatures in green water.
This sentence has just one main verb and therefore only one clause. It’s a long clause, and there are several participles, but only one main verb (only one that conveys tense).Barbs of fox-tail and witch grass prickled up in tufts, and the ruts in the clay were coated in slimy green algae.
This sentence is shorter than the last one, but it has two main verbs and therefore two clauses. (It’s a compound sentence, though again, this doesn’t really matter for our purposes.)
Being able to do this yourself — being able to count the clauses in the sentences that you write — is really important if you want to know how to demarcate your sentences correctly. It takes a long time to explain (as you’ve probably noticed by now), but it’s actually very simple.
To count how many clauses you’ve written, you need count how many main verbs there are.
That’s it.
Why does this matter? It mattes because finding out how many clauses you’ve written is the trick to figuring out where a sentence ends, as we’ll see in step 4.
Compound predicates - a slightly tricky exception to the simple rule above
SECTION UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Where is the main verb? What is the subject of the verb?
Is there a new subject/verb combo? If so, there’s a new clause.
She broke into the sunlight and suddenly sensed that she was not alone.
SECTION UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Step 4. Where does a sentence end? Demarcating sentences correctly.
End of sentence = end of last clause that is not followed by a conjunction or a colon/semi-colon
Slowly she walked, gazing up at the dark canopy, and she did not notice the loud buzzing of flies, which grew louder and louder until she smelled a bad smell and looked down, a glittering green snake, not poisonous, lay dead on the path ahead of her, it was about three feet long, and its stomach had been stomped flat.
What’s coming up in the next two guides in the series
In the next guide we’ll look at the second and third questions:
2. How do you accurately do the punctuation that students often get wrong?
3. How do you do a “wide range” of punctuation?
We’ll look at the last two questions in the final guide:
4. How do you create varied “sentence forms” with “complex grammatical structures” and with “control of agreement”?
5. What is “ambitious” vocabulary and how do you use it “extensive[ly]”?
We’ll also look at one final example extract to check your understanding of everything.