What the portfolio is

Component 3 is one of the two routes to your writing marks: candidates take Paper 1, and one of Paper 2 or Component 3. The portfolio is internally marked and externally moderated, and it carries 80 marks — the same as Paper 2.

• Assignment 1 (30 marks) — writing to discuss, argue and/or persuade in response to a text or texts.
• Assignment 2 (25 marks) — writing to describe.
• Assignment 3 (25 marks) — writing to narrate.

Three rules worth tattooing on your folder: the assignments must clearly demonstrate different writing intentions and styles; past examination questions must not be used as coursework tasks; and each piece is about 500–800 words.

Assignment 1 — writing in response to text(s)

This is the only assignment with reading marks: 15 for writing and 15 for reading. Your teacher (or you, with approval) chooses one or two stimulus texts — typically about two sides of A4 in total.

• The text(s) must contain facts, opinions and/or arguments that you can select, analyse and evaluate — not simply information. Purely informative texts are not suitable.
• Literature texts are not usually suitable for this assignment. Newspapers, magazine articles, travel writing and text-based websites are.
• You may write it as a discursive / argumentative / persuasive speech, letter, article or report.

What earns the reading marks: giving an overview of the argument as a whole, commenting on specific ideas, arguing for or against them, examining them for inconsistencies, and offering complementary or opposing views — including recognising and commenting on bias.

Choosing a stimulus text

Reading a text for bias

You cannot evaluate an argument you have only skim-read. Interrogate the stimulus text with four questions.

• What is the claim? Reduce the whole piece to one sentence. If you cannot, the writer may be hiding behind detail.
• What is the evidence? Statistics with no source, a single anecdote, an expert with an interest in the outcome — all are weak support you can name.
• What is missing? Who is not quoted? Which cost is not mentioned?
• How is the language loading the dice? Reform or cuts. Investment or waste. Same policy, different verdict.

Overview or detail?

Assignment 2 — writing to describe

Assignment 2 is prose descriptive writing, assessed for writing skills only (25 marks). Cambridge asks you to develop ideas and images that create a convincing, well-defined picture, with varieties of focus.

• Varieties of focus is the key phrase: pull back to the whole scene, push in to a single detail, and move between them deliberately.
• Anchor the description in a viewpoint. Someone is doing the seeing — a waiting passenger, a stallholder, a latecomer. Their mood colours the scene.
• Refresh tired imagery. If a phrase arrives ready-made in your head (silence you could cut with a knife), it will arrive ready-made in the examiner reading too.
• Because it is coursework, you can redraft. Write it, leave it a day, then cut every sentence that adds no new picture.

Assignment 3 — writing to narrate

Assignment 3 is narrative writing, also assessed for writing skills only (25 marks). You may write in any form — a short story, an opening chapter, a set of diary entries, an autobiographical account.

Cambridge asks for a plot that is well defined and developed, using features of fiction writing such as description, characterisation and convincing details.

• Structure the time. You control what is scene (slow, dramatised) and what is summary (fast). Confident narrative moves between the two.
• Give the reader one strong character. A named person with a want and an obstacle is worth more than five sketched figures.
• Convincing detail beats invented drama. The specific, ordinary, true-sounding detail is what makes a reader believe the extraordinary one.
• Redraft the opening last. First openings are almost always throat-clearing; you usually find the real first line in paragraph two.

Which assignment is it?

Tap a requirement, then tap the assignment it belongs to.

Different intentions and styles

Skill to the assignment that pays for it

Tap a skill on the left, then the marks it earns on the right.

Drafting, feedback and authentication

Coursework is not a slow exam. Its whole advantage is process — but there are rules about how that process runs.

• Candidates are not expected to work under timed conditions, and it is generally better to complete more than three assignments during the course, then choose the best three for the final portfolio.
• Tasks should arise from the programme of study — often a shared class experience, with the final title chosen by you and negotiated with your teacher.
• Centres must complete and submit a coversheet to authenticate the work. The work must be yours.
• Your teacher may give feedback, but they cannot write it for you — so the redrafting has to be your own judgement, applied.

How to redraft well: do not re-read looking for typos. Re-read asking one question at a time — where does this drag?, then where is the picture vague?, then where is the sentence shape monotonous?

The word count

Turning evaluation into a form

Assignment 1 is not an essay about a text — it is a piece of writing with a job to do, which happens to be built out of a text. The form you choose changes how the evaluation sounds.

• Letter to the editor — you are one voice among readers: personal stake, controlled indignation, a specific request at the end.
• Speech — an audience in front of you: direct address, rhythm, a line worth applauding.
• Article — a readership you must first interest: an arresting opening, then the argument.
• Report — an organisation that needs a decision: neutral register, clear sections, a recommendation.

Whichever form you pick, the reading marks are still earned the same way: overview, specific ideas, argument for or against, inconsistencies spotted, opposing views offered.

Which sentence evaluates?

What separates a good piece from a very good one

Because coursework is redrafted, the difference between bands is usually not ideas — it is control.

• Style that conveys subtle meaning rather than merely being correct — irony, understatement, a deliberate change of pace.
• Structure built for the reader, not for you: paragraphs that hand over cleanly, an ending that answers the opening.
• Vocabulary purposefully selected and precisely used — the exact word, not the biggest one.
• Accuracy that is invisible: spelling, punctuation and grammar that never make the reader stop.

The redraft that always pays: cut ten per cent. Delete every sentence that repeats a point already made, every adjective doing no work, every phrase you have heard before.

The big ideas to know

You have now covered all three portfolio assignments and what each one is marked for. Press Finish to see your score.