Most secondary students choose to concentrate on their continuous writing when it comes to Paper 1 of the English O-Levels at the cost of their situational learning. After all, the part of continuous writing has a bigger count of words (350 to 500 words) than the one of situational writing (250 to 350 words). All components are worth 30 marks each though.

Students should ensure that they don't overlook their situational writing for this purpose. Here are some suggestions which will help them perform better.

1. Your stand needs to be clear in the first paragraph

The points should be clear, but many students fail to include it in their introduction. Even if it sounds like they are repeating the same thing, students will need to explain in the introductory paragraph what their essay is about and why they're writing it. This will indicate that they grasp the intent and intention behind the issues of the situation.

2. Highlight and connect keywords as you write

The situational writing query is often a wall of content, unlike continuous writing questions which have at the very most two sentences. Students will highlight keywords to provide visual clues for the criteria of the problem. Once those keywords are identified, they will need to mark them out. This will mean that when it comes to task accomplishment, they are not marked down.

3. In the essay, use the same or similar keywords

Students should deliberately use the same keywords to explain the part of the question that they are addressing. It removes any doubt if points are overlooked by the student unintentionally, mainly if written in a different sequence than how they are presented.

4. Go through the first two or three paragraphs carefully

One pervasive error students make would be to go straight to the bullet points and to miss out on the first few paragraphs of the question.

These few paragraphs, however, are essential as they reveal hidden clues to the situation, and keywords are often buried in the paragraphs. In order to identify critical information, these paragraphs should be read attentively and carefully.

5. Please note the handout issued

The topic of situational writing consists of two sections-the questions itself and an accompanying handout. It's easy to forget about the given handout under pressure. Students should try to annotate it as extensively as possible, to gain as many insights into the question as possible. They should also make explicit, direct references to the handout in their response.

Of course, to get the most effective guidance with writing, it's always best to join our O Level English Tuition Programme where we look at all the crucial aspects of writing. On top of being able to try out different expressions and strategies, students will also receive invaluable feedback on their writing, which can only happen in lessons with OLevelEnglish.com