Writing Task 1: Map / Plan (change over time): Question 8
Syllabus W.task1
The maps below show Marrowgate Docks in 1970 and the same site, renamed Marrowgate Quay, in 2020. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant. Write at least 150 words.
Map 1 (1970): The docks form a rectangular harbour basin, open to the estuary on the north side. A row of warehouses lines the quay along the western side of the basin, and a fish market stands at the southern end of the quay, next to the harbour entrance road. To the east of the basin is a coal yard, with rail sidings running from it to a goods yard further east. Workers' terraced housing occupies the area to the south of the fish market and coal yard, across the harbour entrance road.
Map 2 (2020): The harbour basin itself remained in the same position, but the warehouses along the western quay had been converted into apartments, and a marina for pleasure boats had been built inside the basin, replacing the working fishing berths. The fish market at the southern end of the quay had been replaced by a row of restaurants and cafés facing the water. The coal yard and rail sidings to the east had been removed and replaced by a public park, with a promenade running along the water's edge from the apartments to the park. The terraced housing to the south of the old fish market site remained, though the harbour entrance road in front of it had been widened and a cycle path added alongside it.
Show worked solution Hide worked solution
Worked solution
Examiner notes: why this is a band 9 response
Task Achievement
The overview goes beyond simply naming individual changes and identifies the underlying pattern, full conversion of commercial and industrial buildings versus retention of the basin and road network, before the body paragraphs work through the changes systematically from west to east and then south, covering every significant feature on both maps.
Coherence & Cohesion
Paragraphing separates the fully-converted waterfront buildings from the residential area that changed only in a minor way, and cohesive devices (“by 2020”, “the terraced housing… remained”) make the contrast between conversion and continuity explicit without a mechanical list of connectors.
Lexical Resource
A wide range of precise redevelopment vocabulary is used and varied naturally (“converted into”, “replaced by”, “removed entirely”, “made way for”), avoiding repetition of a single verb for every change, appropriate to a higher-band response.
Grammatical Range & Accuracy
Complex sentences with non-defining relative and concessive structures are controlled accurately (“though the road running past it was widened”), and the passive voice is used correctly throughout to describe changes made to the site by others, with no errors of tense or agreement.
Common pitfalls specific to this task
See commonMistakes above: the most damaging is treating the marina as an entirely new structure rather than a new use created inside the unchanged harbour basin. A band 9 answer must distinguish clearly between features that changed use and features that changed shape or location.