Paper 1 Question 5 AQA English Language GCSE EXPLAINED
Summary of Mrs Wear’s “Top Five Things You Need to Know About AQA English Language Paper 1 Question 5”
Mrs Wear breaks down how to approach the creative writing task (Q5) in Paper 1:
What you need to do – You’ll always have two options: one with a picture, and one with a written statement or instruction. You can be asked to “describe” or “write a story,” but the marking doesn’t really distinguish between them. Mrs Wear recommends always picking the picture option, as it gives more inspiration and avoids vague prompts like “describe a place you think is beautiful.”
Marks and timings – This is the biggest question in the paper, worth 40 marks (half the paper). Spend 45 minutes here: 1 hour for Questions 1–4, then the rest on Q5. Don’t run out of time — examiners often see students write only a few sentences or nothing at all.
What skill is tested – The question is marked on two assessment objectives:
AO5 (24 marks): Content & organisation – how engaging, convincing and well-structured your writing is.
AO6 (16 marks): Technical accuracy – spelling, punctuation, grammar, and sentence variety.
Both matter. Many students drop marks on AO6 by ignoring punctuation and variety.
Keep it small and realistic – Don’t attempt an overblown, action-packed plot with vampires, car crashes and “it was all a dream” endings. Focus on a snapshot or a moment so you can show atmosphere, description, and character detail — exactly what AO5 rewards.
Must-use techniques –
Show, don’t tell: write cinematically, as if describing what a camera sees.
Metaphorical language: use metaphors sparingly to add sophistication, but avoid cramming one into every sentence or confusing the reader early on.
Flashbacks: a great structural feature that lets you add contrast and depth without needing an over-complex plot.
She finishes by reminding students to balance literal description with occasional figurative flourishes, manage their time wisely, and always aim for compelling, convincing writing.
For this question, you will always have two options of what you could do. One will always have a picture, and the second will be some kind of instruction or statement. You can also have a mix of either being asked to write a description or to write a story. It's important to note that there isn't really a distinction between the describe questions versus the write a story questions. You're not going to be marked down if you have a plot when you picked the describe question, and you're not going to be marked down if you uh describe a lot when you pick the write a story option. It really doesn't make that much of a difference. My recommendation is to always go for the picture question, and there's a
couple reasons for this. First of all, the picture gives you a lot more possible inspiration. You've got colors, you've got a sense of atmosphere, you've got ideas of various different things going on that you could describe. Also, the option for the statement so often is utter pants. It just doesn't help students to write the best possible answer they could. I mean, just look at this example that AQA themselves came up with. Describe a place you think is beautiful. That task is not clearly directing you to write fiction. That task is is suggesting you need to sit back in an armchair casually smoking a cigar and telling me about one night in Paris. It just doesn't make you do the best you can considering what
they actually want you to do. So, my recommendation is always go for the picture and don't worry about whether it's asking you to describe or write a story. This question is worth 40 marks. That is half of the entire paper. So, you need to be giving a lot of time to this question. That being said, questions 1 to 4 are arguably much harder to do in their time limits because you're having to constantly shift gears, think about different ideas, and that kind of thing. Therefore, if we think about how the whole paper is 1 hour and 45 minutes, AQA's recommendation and mine is that you spend the first hour on questions 1 to 4, and then 45 minutes on question 5. It is really important you don't allow
this questions 1 to 4 to overrun too much and then run out of time for question 5. I cannot tell you how heartbreaking it was for me as an examiner when I would see that a student had only managed to write two or three sentences. I even had a student once who just written, "I'm sorry." at the end. Oh, broke my heart. Don't be in that position. Make sure you manage your timing and give question 5 the time that it needs. The mark scheme of this question is broken down into two different assessment objectives. In other words, they're testing you on two different sets of skills. The first assessment objective, AO5, is called content and organization. Basically, it's about the quality of the story you
have written. How engaging is it? How convincing is it as a piece of fiction? All that jazz. AO6 is all about technical accuracy. The accuracy of your spelling, punctuation, grammar, but also the sophistication of it. Are you a basic who only ever uses full stops and commas? Or do you use colons, semicolons, dashes, varying your sentences for effect, using all of this sophisticated vocabulary? That's going to be the key to getting the high mark for AO6. AO5 is worth 24 of the 40 marks, while AO6 is worth 16 of the 40 marks. However, that doesn't mean that you should stop thinking that AO5 is way more important because actually in my time as an examiner, I'd often find that students performed a lot weaker in AO6
than in AO5. They could be amazing creative writers with really engaging stories, but then with AO6, they just didn't think about it. They didn't think about their sentence variation. They didn't think about their use of punctuation. And so, they fell a lot lower in that one and it brought down their overall potential score. It's also worth noting with AO5 just how much goes into it. There's so many bullet points there. And in my video where I go into a lot more detail on the question five mark scheme, I'll break down that mark scheme there. But for now, I just want to highlight that one of the key aspects of the mark scheme is that description in the far left column, compelling convincing communication as we can see
for level four. That is what the kind of overall summary is of your writing and that is what we can see in the later levels as well. As you can see here, essentially with each level, the quality of your communication is increasing or decreasing depending on whether we're looking from level four to one or one to four. And so, even though there's loads of different bullet points within the mark scheme for AO5, you shouldn't think of it as a box-ticking exercise and where if you tick off every single item in one level, then you're guaranteed to be in that level or if you tick some in one level and some in another or that kind of thing. It's not got a formula to it like that. Instead, AQA is going to be
asking examiners to just look at your answer as a whole and ask themselves, as a whole, what is the quality of your communication? This one is probably my most important tip and kind of like view as a plea from English teachers everywhere. Whatever you write about for question five, keep it small. Keep it realistic. Way too often, students try to have a kind of plot arc worthy of season 8 of Game of Thrones or like the third Fast and Furious film. Just like craziness, constant action, way too much going on, and everything really tenuously links together. You don't have time to do that. You can't fit season 8 of Game of Thrones in a page and a half. Just can't be done. What you need to focus on is capturing a
moment, capturing a snapshot. And that means that that will get you to focus a lot more on description, on creating atmosphere, on introducing characters. And that again is the key to doing well with AO5 of question five. One of the worst things you can do is have plots that involve a man walking down the street, and then he sees a bus crash, and he goes to save someone, but wait, there's a baby and it's about to fall off the bridge, but then he remembers that he's a vampire and he wants to bite the baby, so he gets into a fight with the baby's dad, and then the baby's dad dies, and then he wakes up and it was all a dream. I really like how CGP refer to this in some of their English textbooks. They
call it cinematic writing. They might not have come up with that, but that's where I saw it, so I'm going to give them the credit. Cinematic writing is the basic idea of like imagining that you are a camera, and you're trying to capture everything in the scene. You're trying to recreate again a snapshot from a film with words. And that kind of idea, that show don't tell idea, is what's going to get you to create the most convincing style for a fiction text. Now, if you have heard that phrase, as I know you will have done a million and one times from English teachers, and they're still giving you the feedback "Show, don't tell. Show, don't tell. Show, don't tell. Show, don't tell." And you're like, "I don't
know what this means anymore." You need to have a look at my video, "What is Show, Don't Tell?" And possibly also go over to streamenglish.co.uk. Maybe get some extra help from the courses over there. Another really big technique that is going to be useful to you is metaphorical language. Metaphors are awesome to use in your writing because they are a sophisticated skill, and they show your skill as a writer by using them. However, I love a chocolate biscuit. Oh, I love a chocolate biscuit. Hobnob or McVitie's, uh I'm easy either way. When I eat one, oh, it's good. When I eat three, oh, it's good. When I eat five, oh, it's good, but I should probably stop. When I eat half the packet, oh, I should really stop, but I
can't stop. When I eat the entire packet, man, I feel so sick. Why did I eat so many biscuits? This is not just a random tangent on biscuits. This is a comparison to why you should go easy with the metaphorical language. Don't have one in every single sentence. It's going to become too much. It's going to overload your reader. You should also never have one in your very first sentence. The reason I say that is because students often use metaphors before they've actually gotten across the literal of what is going on. And therefore, it leads to confusion in your reader because they're like, "Is that a metaphor or am I reading a fantasy text? And that guy actually did just melt into a puddle on the floor."
So, you need to make sure you've got that balance between literal description, where you go to town on using Show, Don't Tell and your word choice to really effectively communicate what's going on, versus every now and again peppering in the metaphorical language. The final technique I'm going to recommend is a structural one. I recommend you always have a flashback. And there's a couple reasons for this. Number one, part for AO5 tests you on is your effective use of structural features. And flashback requires skill. Second of all, it also gives you the opportunity to use other sophisticated techniques. For example, you can use your flashback to create a contrast between what a setting was like before
and what it is now. What a character was like before and what it is now. To give that deeper kind of understanding of a character or deeper understanding of a setting without having that, you know, season 8 plot arc again. So, always have a flashback. And if you feel unsure about how to do that, check out my video.