IGCSE English descriptive writing: structure, example and marking

What the examiner rewards

The composition task is unchanged in the 2027 to 2029 syllabus, though Cambridge updated the marking criteria. These are the two strands, with the coursework level descriptors for descriptive writing as a guide to what the top bands look for.

In the coursework version (Component 3) each composition is marked 10 for content and structure and 15 for style and accuracy, so accuracy and style carry the larger share. Check the specimen mark scheme for the exam split.

What makes writing descriptive rather than narrative

Cambridge's middle-level descriptor notes 'a tendency to write in a narrative style'. That is the most common reason good writers lose marks on a descriptive title: they tell a story about the place instead of describing it. In description, time moves slowly or not at all. Events, if any, are small: a door opens, light changes, a crowd thins. The interest comes from what is noticed and how it is put into words.

'Varieties of focus' is the phrase to build around. Move the reader's eye on purpose: from a wide view to a single detail, from outside to inside, from noise to silence, from one time of day to another. Each shift gives the piece structure and stops it reading like a list. Use all the senses, but choose the unexpected detail over the obvious one: not 'the smell of spices' but the cardamom that catches in the throat near one particular stall.

Figurative language should be controlled. One extended image that runs through a paragraph is stronger than five unrelated similes. Vary sentences for effect: a long, layered sentence for a crowded scene, then a short one when the focus lands.

A structure that works

1. Choose the title you can see most clearly. Spend five to eight minutes planning five or six shifts of focus.
2. Opening: place the reader inside the scene with a specific detail, not a weather report or 'I woke up'.
3. Wide view: establish the setting, its scale and atmosphere.
4. Zoom in: two or three paragraphs, each on a different detail, sense or person, each with one developed image.
5. Shift: change the time, light, mood or viewpoint to give the piece movement.
6. Close: return to an image from the opening, changed by what has come between, so the piece feels shaped.
7. Check: vary sentence openings, remove repeated adjectives, proofread punctuation.

Worked example

Title (invented): 'Describe a market as it closes at the end of the day.'

Model paragraph: 'By the time the call to prayer drifts over the rooftops, the fabric sellers have begun folding the afternoon away. Bolts of saffron and indigo are rolled tight and stacked like logs, and the bright walls of the alley turn, roll by roll, back into plain plaster. A boy sweeps the same square metre again and again, more interested in the cat watching him than in the dust. Only the perfume stall stays open, its glass bottles catching the last of the light, so that the whole lane seems to narrow towards one small, glittering doorway.'

Why it works: time is slow and nothing 'happens'. The focus moves from sound, to colour, to a single person, to one lit doorway. The image of 'folding the afternoon away' links the fabric to the ending day, vocabulary is exact ('bolts', 'plaster'), and sentence lengths vary. The final clause narrows the reader's eye, which is the kind of deliberate structure the top level describes.

Common mistakes

• Turning the description into a story with a plot, a problem and a resolution.
• Adjective stacking: 'the big, old, dark, scary house'. Choose one precise word.
• A list of senses in order (I saw, I heard, I smelt) with no shift of focus.
• Clichés such as 'the sun was a ball of fire' or 'a sea of people'.
• Over-writing past 600 words and losing accuracy, or under-writing below 300.
• Tense slips between past and present.
• No proofreading time, so punctuation errors drag down the style and accuracy marks.

How one-to-one lessons help with descriptive writing

Description improves through rewriting more than through writing more. In lessons a tutor takes one paragraph of the student's work and redrafts it with them on the shared whiteboard: cutting weak adjectives, sharpening verbs, changing sentence length for effect, testing whether an image really fits. Students see the difference a single precise word makes and start to hear it themselves.

The tutor also builds a bank of planning frames the student can adapt to any title (a place at two times of day, a crowd and one person in it, outside then inside), so the exam hour goes on writing well rather than deciding what to write about. Timed pieces are then marked against both strands with a short list of the student's own recurring errors.

Self-check

• Is time slow, with no plot taking over?
• Does the reader's focus shift at least four times on purpose?
• Is there at least one developed image, not just a scatter of similes?
• Have I used at least three senses with specific, unexpected details?
• Do my sentence lengths and openings vary?
• Does the ending echo the opening?
• Is it roughly 350 to 450 words and proofread?