Directed Writing: Letters & Emails

What this lesson covers

Directed Writing: Letters & Emails is a 8-part O Level English lesson. Each part makes one point and then hands over to the next, so it can be read in a sitting or picked up again at the part you stopped on. It defines the idea in plain words before using it, works through an example step by step, breaks the topic into its parts and compares them, shows where it is used outside the textbook, names the mistakes that cost marks in an exam, ends with a recap of what to remember.

How it begins

Directed writing gives you input material, a form, an audience and a purpose. The mark splits: roughly a third for reading (did you use the material given?) and the rest for writing (is it well written, and is it the right kind of thing?). So a beautifully written letter that ignores half the input material fails, and a dutiful list of the input material in flat prose fails too. Both halves, every time.

The 8 parts

1. Three things are being marked at once
2. Formal letter: the parts that must be there
3. The same request, two registers
4. Using the input material without copying it
5. Email, and when the rules relax
6. Where marks go
7. What to remember
8. Watch one worked through