Pearson Edexcel International GCSE in English Language (Specification A) · 4EA1 · Free · no account needed
Transactional writing — the six forms, and what each one needs
Paper 1 (4EA1/01): Non-fiction Texts and Transactional Writing, Section B: Transactional Writing. 45 marks for writing to a named reader with a named purpose, in one of 6 forms: article, speech, letter, guide, review, leaflet. For each: what it has to show, what earns nothing, what a strong one does and the mistakes that cost marks. On Incandio you then write one and have it marked, AO4 and AO5 separately.
The paper
Paper 1 (4EA1/01): Non-fiction Texts and Transactional Writing, Section B: Transactional Writing: questions 6 and 7, answer one. 45 marks — AO4 27 and AO5 18, judged separately — with 45 minutes advised: half the paper's 90 marks in a third of its 135 minutes. Writing is 30% of the whole qualification.
- AO4 · 27 marks
- Communicate effectively and imaginatively, adapting form, tone and register of writing for specific purposes and audiences.
- AO5 · 18 marks
- Write clearly, using a range of vocabulary and sentence structures, with appropriate paragraphing and accurate spelling, grammar and punctuation.
The 6 forms below are the only ones this paper sets. Imaginative writing is a different paper — the Creative Writing guide covers it.
The 6 forms, and what each one needs
Article · Speech · Letter · Guide · Review · Leaflet
Article — in the specification: article for a magazine or newspaper
Semi-formal and public. An article speaks to a readership it cannot see, so it may be lively, personal and opinionated, but it is addressed to strangers and never to a friend.
What it has to show
- A headline or title; a strapline and sub-headings where they genuinely help.
- An opening overview paragraph that gives the reader the argument in miniature, so someone who stopped there would still know where the piece stands.
- Effectively sequenced paragraphs, each developing one aspect.
- Sparing bullet points are acceptable in addition to continuous prose.
- A conclusion that lands the position.
What earns nothing — not required
- Columns
- Images
- A by-line
- A publication masthead
- Hyperlinks
What a strong one does
- Take a position rather than surveying both sides neutrally, and let the reader know where the piece stands.
- Open with something other than a restatement of the title — examiners repeatedly name an intriguing question, a powerful statement or a short sentence.
- Hold a readership in mind throughout, not just in the first paragraph.
- Reach past the obvious content: examiners note that few candidates take the less obvious angle, and those who do reach the top levels.
The mistakes that cost marks
- Listing the subject rather than arguing about it — naming one sport after another with a benefit attached to each, which is a catalogue, not an article.
- Collapsing into one long anecdote, so the piece becomes 'purely anecdotal'.
- Dumping subject knowledge — encyclopaedic detail instead of writing aimed at a reader.
- Reproducing layout: columns, a picture, a fake by-line.
How the form changes the mark
- AO4 turns on whether a READERSHIP is felt. An article that would read identically as a school essay is capped at 'appropriate' use of form.
- Sub-headings, where used well, are credited as AO4 form AND as an AO5 structural feature — the same choice can feed both objectives.
Speech
Spoken and public. Direct address is the defining move. It may be warm, funny or urgent, but it is being SAID to people who are in a room, and it has to hold them.
What it has to show
- An opening that makes clear an audience is being addressed.
- A closing formulation that flags to the audience that the speech is ending.
- Continuous prose, in paragraphs, with an introduction, development and conclusion.
What earns nothing — not required
- Any script formatting — no speaker labels, no stage directions, no bracketed pauses
- Sub-headings
- Bullet points
What a strong one does
- Make an immediate impact through direct address, rather than 'I am here today to talk to you about…' — examiners name that formula as what the successful responses avoided.
- Sustain the sense of a live audience all the way to the end, not merely greet them and then write an essay.
- Use rhetorical patterning with a purpose: the corpus specifically credits anaphora, the list of three, and the rhetorical question.
- Land a conclusion that gives the audience somewhere to go.
The mistakes that cost marks
- Writing a narrative — a long story about one incident with the 'lesson' bolted on at the end. Examiners report that this shape shows little sense of the form and barely speaks to the audience at all.
- Formatting it as a script.
- Marching through the question's three bullets without ever using a rhetorical feature — the reported signature of the middle band.
- Writing solely in upper case for emphasis.
How the form changes the mark
- Of all six forms this is the one where AO4 is most visibly won or lost, because the audience is either present in the prose or it is not.
- A speech with no closing formulation fails the universal 'conclusion' requirement twice over — as structure and as form.
Letter
Set by the named recipient, and this is the whole game. A headteacher and a newspaper editor are both formal but not identically formal; a peer is not formal at all. The candidate must pick one and hold it.
What it has to show
- An appropriate salutation AND an appropriate valediction, matched to the formality named in the question: 'Dear Sir/Madam' with 'Yours faithfully'; 'Dear Ms Prendergast' with 'Yours sincerely'; 'Dear Jamal' with 'Best wishes, Sam'.
- Typical formulations where they fit — 'I look forward to hearing from you' in a letter of application or a request for action.
- A date is acceptable, being a usual feature of a handwritten letter.
- Clear introduction, development of points, conclusion.
What earns nothing — not required
- Addresses of sender or recipient
- Any special layout with addresses
- A reference line or subject header
What a strong one does
- Establish in the opening why this letter is being written and to whom — the recipient must be inferable from the prose alone.
- Sustain one consistent level of formality; a slide from 'Dear Sir' into 'you guys' is an AO4 register failure and a visible one.
- Make a case that asks something of the recipient, rather than merely holding an opinion in their direction.
- Consider a persona where the task allows it — examiners credit candidates who wrote as an elderly reader, a parent, a school inspector.
The mistakes that cost marks
- A salutation with no sign-off. Examiners mention it by name: a letter that opens properly and then simply stops, with no closing line.
- Mismatched pair — 'Dear Mr Hughes' closed with 'Yours faithfully'.
- Writing out postal addresses, which earns nothing and eats the clock.
- A brief complaint that urges the recipient to agree without ever giving reasons — the shape examiners describe at the bottom of the mark range.
- Misreading the recipient: writing to the public when the question named an editor.
How the form changes the mark
- This is the only form with a genuinely mechanical AO4 check. A missing valediction is a real, citable, form-level omission and the feedback should name it as such — not as a matter of taste.
- Register drift is the most diagnosable AO4 fault in the whole paper, because the letter states its own recipient in line one.
Guide
Helpful and direct. A guide talks TO its reader in the second person and assumes they are about to do the thing. It may be light, but it must be genuinely useful.
What it has to show
- Some stylistic conventions of a guide: a heading, sub-headings, occasional bullet points.
- Predominantly continuous prose — bullets are a seasoning.
- Clear organisation with an introduction, development of points and a conclusion.
What earns nothing — not required
- Pictures
- Columns
- Boxes or panels
- A contents page
What a strong one does
- Address the named audience convincingly and keep addressing them — examiners single out guides that never lose sight of who they are written for and speak to those readers directly throughout.
- Give advice that is specific and practical rather than a definition of the problem.
- Use persuasive as well as informative technique — a reported failure is the guide that becomes a long checklist of instructions, with no attempt to persuade anyone to follow them.
- Order the advice so that it builds, rather than arriving in the order it occurred to the writer.
The mistakes that cost marks
- A bullet-pointed list with no prose around it.
- Explaining the topic instead of advising on it.
- Losing the specific audience — advice for 'young people' that would suit anybody.
- No conclusion, because a list has no natural ending.
How the form changes the mark
- The AO4 judgement rests almost entirely on audience: a guide for teenagers and a guide for parents about teenagers are different pieces, and a candidate who could swap them has not realised the purpose securely.
- Over-bulleting is an AO5 problem as well as an AO4 one: ideas that are bulleted are rarely 'developed and connected'.
Review
Personal and evaluative, addressed to strangers who are deciding whether to bother. Opinion is the point, but it must be earned by description.
What it has to show
- No special features are expected — Pearson's guidance says exactly that.
- Continuous prose with an introduction, development and a conclusion.
- A title is acceptable but nothing about the form requires one.
What earns nothing — not required
- A star rating
- A summary box
- Headings
- Any of the visual furniture of a published review
What a strong one does
- Describe vividly enough that the reader can picture the thing, THEN judge it — description without judgement is not a review, and judgement without description is not persuasive.
- Reach an actual verdict and stand behind it.
- Give the reader a reason to trust the reviewer: specific noticing, not adjectives.
- Balance — the top-band move on this form is a qualified verdict, praising something while naming what it cost.
The mistakes that cost marks
- Writing a narrative of the event and never evaluating it.
- Evaluating in the abstract with nothing described.
- Adding a star rating, a summary box or headings the form does not have.
- Forgetting that the reader was not there.
How the form changes the mark
- Because the form imposes nothing, AO4 here is almost purely PURPOSE and READER. The discriminator is whether the piece performs the act of reviewing — describing for someone who was absent, then judging for someone deciding.
- This is the form where a marker is most likely to drift into marking it as Paper 2 descriptive writing. It is not. Vivid description is a means; the verdict is the end.
Leaflet — in the specification: text of a leaflet
Brisk, warm and directly addressed. A leaflet is picked up by someone who has not chosen to read it, so it has to earn each paragraph.
What it has to show
- Sub-headings, used to guide the reader — the corpus specifically credits sub-headings phrased as questions.
- Some information in bullet points, but predominantly continuous prose.
- Introduction, development, conclusion.
What earns nothing — not required
- Panels or folds
- Pictures
- Contact boxes
- Columns
What a strong one does
- Guide the reader through with a structure they can see — a top-band leaflet examiners have praised used a run of question sub-headings to lead the reader from one section to the next.
- Use bullets strategically rather than habitually; the same exemplar is praised for exactly that word.
- Hold a reassuring, practical tone toward a reader who may be worried.
- Close, rather than run out.
The mistakes that cost marks
- An essay in leaflet clothing — examiners report that essay-style answers come out flat and dull in tone, however sound their content.
- Over-use of bullet-pointing as the structure, which examiners tie directly to failing to connect and develop ideas and to having no conclusion.
- A hectoring tone, or impractical 'solutions' — both reported at the lower levels.
- Random assertions in no order.
How the form changes the mark
- Guide and leaflet share one marking profile: Pearson's own form guidance treats them as a single entry. They stay separate FORMS because the specification lists them separately and a question will name one.
- This form produced the corpus's clearest Level-5-but-not-full-marks exemplar, and the gap was named as 'sustained sophistication'. It is the best available anchor for the top of the scale.
Forms that are not on this paper
- Blog — A blog post is not one of the six text types on 4EA1/01. It is a staple of other boards' papers, which is exactly why a general-purpose model reaches for it.
- Report — A report is not on this paper. Candidates may be asked to respond to a report in the stimulus (November 2024 Q6 did exactly that), but the FORM they write is a letter.
- Diary — A diary entry is not on this paper.
- Essay — An essay is not a transactional form at all. Writing an essay when a leaflet or speech was asked for is a reported AO4 failure, not a task Pearson sets.
- Script — A script is not on this paper — and Pearson's guidance says explicitly that a speech must NOT be formatted as one.
- Story — Narrative and imaginative writing belong to Paper 2 Section B, not here.
- Instructions — A set of instructions is not on this paper; a guide is the nearest real form.
- Podcast — A podcast transcript is not on this paper; a speech is the nearest real form.
- Email — An email is not listed on this paper. A letter is the real form.
- Interview — An interview is not on this paper.
- Advertisement — An advertisement is not on this paper. The specification also excludes advertisements from the reading texts as 'essentially transient'.
- Webpage — A web page is not a form. A website is a LOCATION — the form is still an article.
Carry on through English Language A
- Creative writing — Paper 2 Section B — imaginative writing, a different paper and a different grid
- The anthology — the twenty texts Paper 1 Section A and Paper 2 Section A are set on
- English Language A — the three examined areas
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