English Language (Writing)

Formal letter

• For a formal letter you need to put your address and the date in the top right hand corner
• Put the recievers address underneath your address but on the left hand side
• When writing a formal letter you will need to write with a more serious tone
• Sign off with 'Yours faithfully' if you do not know who the reciever is and 'Yours sincerely' if you do know who the reciever is.

Informal Letter

• Writing an informal letter has much the same format as a formal letter
• Make sure to write your address and date on the top right hand corner of the page
• There is no need to write the recievers address
• Think about who the reciever is, if you are writing an informal letter it is most likely going to be a friend or family member 
• You can write this in a friendier tone and you can add things that are on a personal level to the reciever.
• Sign off with something like 'Take care' or 'Lots of love' rather than 'Yours faithfully' as this is too formal.

Report

• The format of a report is;
  Introduction
  Sub-heading/s
  Conclusion or solution
• Reports are usually written in a serious and formal tone
• The purpose of a report is to inform, persuade or advise someone about something
• When writing a report, what you write is based on research so everything you say has to be true and be based on evidence, so if you are making things up try and include some statistics or something so that what you say sounds believable. 

Review

• Write the title of what you are reviewing at the top of the page
• Write an introduction and include some details about what happens in the story/book/film/CD without giving too much away
• Write a small and brief paragraph on the characters and the actors (If it is a film) who play them, you could also include some information on the author/director/writer/singer in this paragraph
• Next write what is good if anything about what you are reviewing
• Write any bad points if anything 
• When writing about good/bad points don't inlcude opinion words just write it asthough that is what everyone thinks
• In your last paragraph write about your opinions and views on the book/film ect as a whole and give your rating out of five stars
• Also, include direct language in your review so that the reader really gets to see whether that book/CD/film ect would suit them, use phrases like 'If you like zombies then read but if not then I suggest this book wouldn't be right for you'. Include phrases like this in your introduction just before you write about the plot

Speech

• When writing a speech you really need to make the audience feel involved, do this by including direct language like 'you' and 'your'
• Use persuasive techniques and include a lot of passion in what you are saying to make it believable
• You could also include some rhetorical questions to make the audience think about the subject of the speech
• Think about your audience carefully, you wouldn't want to sound too over the top if you were talking to some business men but you would if you were talking to a group of children
• It depends on the context. whether you need to speak formally or not
• Organise your work into paratraphs

Leaflet

• Everyone knows what a good leaflet is supposed to look like, by this I mean brightly coloured background and large images on every page, but when you are in the exam do not spend all your time trying to fold your piece of paper into a beautiful leaflet shape, you need to concentrate on the writing as this is the only thing you will be marked on, you may leave some blank squares on the page and in them write 'image of ... here' to show that you know what a leaflet looks like but don't actually draw out the image
• Writing a leaflet has to be persuasive but it cant vary on whether it needs to be written in informal or formal language
• It doesn't really matter on how you want to lay it out but i would say the best way is to write in paragraphs, you could even add sub-headings to each paragraph

Newspaper article

• Inlcude a short and snappy title that may also be a pun
• Using paragraphs is very important, the first paragraph must be an introduction telling people about what the article is about if the heading hasn't already done so, in your intro try and include What? Why? How? and When?
• You could also include quotes from members of the public for example depending on the context of your article
• Don't make it sound too cheesy, an article has to sound believable
• Make every sentence sound interesting so that the reader wants to carry on and find out more