Coursework: Planning, Drafting and Redrafting: Question 10
Syllabus W3, W5
A candidate has been given this general redrafting checklist to use whenever she rereads a coursework draft:
- Structure, does the writing flow logically, with no abrupt or disconnected statements?
- Repetition, are the same words and sentence openings avoided?
- Register, is the tone consistent throughout, rather than shifting between formal and casual?
- Opening and ending, does the piece begin and end effectively?
Below are the FIRST and SECOND drafts of the same short opening to a narrative coursework assignment.
First draft: "It was raining. It was cold. It was dark outside. I walked to the bus stop. I waited for the bus."
Second draft: "Rain hammered against the bus shelter as I hurried through the darkening street, breath clouding in the cold. I reached the stop with minutes to spare and settled in to wait, watching for headlights through the downpour. I checked my phone again, though there was nothing new to see."
(a) Using the checklist, identify TWO specific criteria that the second draft has clearly improved compared to the first. [2]
(b) Identify the ONE checklist criterion the second draft has NOT yet fully addressed, and explain in one sentence what would still need to change to address it. [2]
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Worked solution
Assessment focus
This question tests the kind of critical, methodical rereading that coursework’s untimed process rewards: applying a general checklist item by item to a draft, rather than forming a single vague impression that a later version is simply “better”.
Applying the checklist (part a)
- Structure: the first draft is five short, self-contained statements with no connection between them. The second draft links the same underlying content (rain, cold, walking, waiting) into a flowing sequence where each detail causes or leads into the next.
- Opening effectiveness: the first draft states bare facts with no atmosphere; the second draft uses sensory detail (hammering rain, clouding breath, headlights through the downpour) to put the reader inside the moment, which is what an opening needs to do.
What is still unaddressed (part b)
Criterion 2, repetition, is only partly fixed. The first draft’s most obvious repetition, “It was… It was… It was”, has gone, and the opening sentence no longer starts with a bare pronoun. But the second and third sentences of the second draft both open directly with “I” (“I reached the stop…” and “I checked my phone…”), reintroducing the same repeated-opening pattern the checklist flags, just later in the paragraph. A further pass would need to vary at least one of these two openings, for instance foregrounding the headlights, the wait, or the phone itself instead of the pronoun.
Why this works
Working through the checklist criterion by criterion, rather than judging the second draft as a whole, is what allows a specific, remaining weakness to be caught even in an already-improved draft. Register is not mentioned in either answer because it was never actually inconsistent in either version. A checklist only earns credit for criteria it genuinely tests against the text in front of it.
Common pitfalls specific to this task
- Praising the second draft generally (“it flows much better”) without linking the improvement to a named checklist criterion, as the question requires.
- Deciding no criterion remains unaddressed because the second draft reads well overall, rather than checking each item individually against the actual wording.
- Suggesting the opening-and-ending criterion is unaddressed simply because no ending is shown, rather than noticing the specific, checkable repetition flaw that is actually present in the extract given.