How to get good marks for AO6 for English Language writing tasks (P1Q5 and P2Q5)

Q4: How do you create varied “sentence forms” with “complex grammatical structures” with “control of agreement”? (AO6 — bullet points 3 and 4)

We’re getting into the more “artistic” parts of this assessment objective now, the parts that are not just about learning the rules. Writing good sentences is, in our view, the most important part of writing well, and talented writers can just write brilliant sentences without thinking about “the rules”.

However, there are some things that any writer can do to help with these parts of AO6, and we’ll run through them now.

Control of agreement (bullet point 4)

The first thing we’ll cover is what the mark scheme means by “control of agreement” in bullet point 4. This is about using correct grammar, and “agreement” is a slightly technical grammatical term. However, for most students getting this right boils down to two things:

1. Don’t mix up the tenses in your writing. The most common way that students get this wrong is by switching between the present tense and the past tense by accident. This happens more often when students try to write stories in the present tense, which is why we recommend using the 3rd person limited past tense narrative voice. But it’s something you need to be aware of and to check for when you proofread your work in exams: have you got the tenses right?

2. Make sure you use plural and singular forms correctly. This is the other form of grammatical agreement that students sometimes get wrong. Consider a pack of wolves, for example. There are many wolves in a pack, so that sounds like it should be plural, but it is a pack, which is singular.
   - A pack of wolves was circling the camp. This has correct agreement.
   - *A pack of wolves were circling the camp. This is grammatically incorrect — the agreement is wrong.
   There are lots of examples like this, where students inadvertently use the plural form when they should use the singular one. Examples like the wolf pack aren’t too problematic, as they’re tricky to get right. But students also make agreement errors in less unusual situations. Here are some other examples of errors in agreement with singular and plural forms, with the relevant parts underlined.
   - *Stories that frighten us or unsettle us gives us the means to explore the things that scares us. (Here, the agreement is wrong throughout with a mixture of plural and singular nouns and verb endings)
   - *Scary stories are controlled fear. If something becomes overwhelming, then we can simply close the book. It allows everyone to escape reality. (Here, “It” refers back to “Scary stories” so should be the plural “They” instead of the singular “It”)
   - *Reading made-up stories are so much more enjoyable. (Here, “Reading” is the subject and it is singular, so the verb should be “is” rather than “are)

   It’s not always easy to spot this kind of error, but this is something you should check for when you proofread your work. Be mindful of whether you’ve used the correct verb form (singular or plural) for the noun, and the correct pronoun form if you use one of those.

Using varied sentence forms (bullet point 3)

In essence, using “varied sentence forms” means mixing up the clauses and phrases in varied ways in your sentences. (We discussed clauses in detail in the first guide in this series, so we’re just going to assume you know what they are in this guide.)

There are websites that provide things like “15 great sentence structures to make your writing more sophisticated” but we don’t really approve of this. The problem with learning these stock structures (e.g. Start the sentence with 3 adverbs: Gently, kindly, urgently, she hugged her sister) is that these structures have become cliches, and they sound artificial. They don’t make you sound like a good writer; they just make you sound like someone who has looked at one of these websites. To do well in this part of the AO6 mark scheme, you need to be more natural in your writing.

There are, however, some simple things you can do to help you meet this part of the assessment objective in a more natural way:

1. Fronted subordinate clauses. This is an easy one. You would have learnt about this at primary school. You can vary your sentence openings by fronting the subordinate clause.
   For example:Because she knew it would hurt him, she said yes.

2. Embedded relative clauses. Embedding clauses (and adverbial phrases — see below) in the middle of a sentence is the best way to meet this part of the assessment objective. You’ll need to use commas here to separate the embedded clause from the rest of the sentence (we discussed this in the second guide in this series in the bit about “non-essential phrases”). The easiest type of clause to embed is the relative clause.
   For example:The man, who looked like he was close to tears, stood up.

3. Embedded adverbial phrases, including participle phrases. The easiest thing to embed is some kind of adverbial phrase, including a participle phrase (e.g. one using a present participle). This generally requires commas too. Usually it involves putting the adverbial phrase that could be used as a sentence starter in the middle of the sentence instead.
   For example:She knew, on today of all days, that it was the right thing to do.
   Participle phrases can be particularly effective for this.
   For example:She ran, not thinking about herself or her own wellbeing, straight towards the volcano.
   In both of these examples the adverbial phrase could have been used as a sentence starter, which can also be effective, but being able to embed these kind of phrases is more sophisticated in sentence structure terms.

4. Using minor sentences (sparingly). We almost didn’t include this one on the list because it risks losing marks for poor sentence demarcation (see the first guide in the series). However, when used sparingly, minor sentence (e.g. words or phrases that are not a full clause) can be an effective way to vary the way you construct your sentences.
   For example (the underlined bit is the minor sentence):Our lives here are inexpressibly trivial and momentous at once. Both repetitive and unprecedented. We matter greatly and not at all.
   If you can do this from time to time, in such a way that your marker can see that you’re doing it deliberately and not making a grammatical mistake, then it can be effective, especially as minor sentences are short and punchy. But be careful.

5. Use some very long sentences. If you’re able to write long sentences, with multiple clauses, then it’s very likely that you will use varied sentences forms by accident — or out of necessity. There is a risk here, not least when it comes to sentence demarcation — often students attempt to write long sentences but end up comma-splicing several shorter sentences instead — but if you can write in grammatically accurate long sentences, then the formal variety will usually take care of itself.

These 5 methods are all simple ways to use more varied sentence forms.

However, the best way to understand how to write really good sentences is to read sentences written by professional writers and look at how they are constructed. The last part of this section of the guide contains 10 sentences that use “varied sentence forms” in natural and interesting ways. Read through them and look at how they are constructed:

1. Drops of water, shaken loose from the vines, pittered all around her.

2. From a quarter of a mile away, I could hear the noise of the wood in the wind — a soft marine roar.

3. We saw the sea, deceptively calm and blue and serene with icebergs, stretching away eastward under an ashy sky.

4. When he was a small child, six years old or about that, his father’s apprentice had been making nails from the scrap pile.

5. They loll on the grass in quiet groups, men and women of various races, mostly in their twenties and thirties, confident, cheerful, unoppressed, fit from private gym workouts, at home in their city.

6. For most of us, the first experience of love, even if it doesn't work out — perhaps especially when it doesn't work out — promises that here is the thing that validates, that vindicates life.

7. In the bedroom darkness, while Jack at her side quietly snored, she seemed to peer over a cliff edge.

8. When she saw the first video of monkeys dressed in human clothes, it just seemed random and, frankly, pretty ridiculous to Maisie.

9. She didn't understand what the appeal was — why anyone would take the time and effort to make these weird, tiny videos, let alone why they ended up in her feed — but they made her smile, and that, after all, was the point of TikTok.

10. It came as quite a shock, then, when a week or so after she saw the first monkey video, Maisie found herself watching her first monkey murder — a masked gibbon, clad in leather gloves, its proud pink behind thrust towards the camera, strangling a little moustachioed tamarin.

One thing you can do with sentences like these — or with ones you find in your own reading — is to literally steal the sentence structure (not the actual sentence) and practise writing other sentences that use the same structure, but with different words. This is pretty easy to do, and if you really struggle with writing varied and complex sentences, you can have a few “interesting sentence structures” in you arsenal, ready to use in the exam, whatever question you’re asked to write. This can only help with your mark for AO6.

Another way is just to practise writing sentences, for fun. This is more noble. Just spend some time writing sentences with interesting structures. You can get a computer program or the AI of your choice to correct the punctuation and grammar, if need be, while you practise, but just have some fun with sentences. That’s what this GCSE is meant to be all about.